What is the difference between power and persuasion? Which type of leader do you think achieves the best results: the leader who relies on power tactics or the leader who relies more on persuasion?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Power is usually defined in terms of the ability of one person (the agent) to influence another person (the target); moreover, power also consists of the ability to resist influence attempts from others. In organizations, power often consists of control over people; over rewards, promotions, and benefits; over decisions; and over resources. Power can also be defined in terms of the five traditional power bases, plus facilitation power and ecological power. According to French and Raven, the five major sources of power are reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, expert power, and referent power. A meta-analysis found that leaders’ use of referent power, expert power, and reward power were positively related to high employee performance.

Persuasion: There are a variety of persuasion tactics available to leaders, such as rational arguments, ingratiation, exchanging favors, acting assertively, building coalitions, and appealing to higher authorities. Other scholars verified that these tactics can even be used to influence one’s superiors (Hochwarter, Harrison, Ferris, Perrewe & Ralston, 2000; Schriesheim & Hinkin, 1990; Wayne, Liden, Graef & Ferris, 1997). Rational arguments are generally the most useful for influencing one’s superiors. In contrast, the more aggressive strategies can backfire when trying to influence one’s superiors.
Yukl and his colleagues argued that there are four core tactics: rational persuasion, consultation, inspirational appeals, and collaboration. These are described below:
Rational Persuasion: The use of logic and facts to explain why the request is reasonable and beneficial.
Consultation: Involving others in making suggestions for improvements to the plan in order to win their support for the proposed activity.
Inspirational Appeals: The use of emotionally arousing appeals to values and ideals that support the request.
Collaboration: Offers of assistance in terms of either help in performing the requested task or providing resources used to carry out the request.
Yukl and his colleagues validated the extended Influence Behavior Questionnaire by administering it to four different samples of working adults and their superiors (Yukl et al., 2008). They found that these four core tactics were effective in gaining commitment (i.e., a willingness to carry out the requested actions) both when they were used on peers and on subordinates (this was tested in three of the samples). In addition, they wanted to know how using these tactics influenced the quality of the leader-member exchange relationships. In two of the studies, the subordinates rated both their leaders’ use of the influence tactics and their evaluation of the quality of the leader-member exchange relationship. They found that the four core influence tactics were positively related to the quality of the leader-member exchange relationship. Their findings suggest that more effective leaders use these influence tactics and that using them improves the quality of relationships with others. After all, who wouldn’t want to work with a leader who’s rational and logical, who’s collaborative and helps out with the work tasks, who consults others about decisions that concern them, and who’s inspiring and has good values? In addition to these four core tactics, the researchers also found that ingratiation (using praise and flattery) was also useful for influencing peers and that ingratiation positively influenced the quality of the leader-member relationships.