In this content series we’re using Culture Partners’ model, the Results Pyramid to examine workplace culture generally and coaching cultures in particular.
In this article, we’ll consider power structures.
Knowledge is power
The way that power is derived and distributed in organisations is a very powerful indicator of its culture.
The sources of power are many and various, official and unofficial, formal or informal and can be used for fair as well as foul means. Let’s consider the more obvious categories.
‘Knowledge is power’ so the saying goes and now more than ever in this information age this is indeed so.
Do people guard their specialist knowledge or share it freely and willingly?
The written word is a very strong source of power and can be used to inspire or belittle.
A manager who leads by exerting expert power may well generate respect in an environment that values technical ability but will experience problems when developing capability and independence in their team
Willing commitment or reluctant compliance?
Organisations have long recognised the power of reward and managers who have the discretionary power to reward performance or behaviour will often claim that the ‘carrot and stick’ is an effective tool for motivation.
It’s a blunt tool at best and may disguise the fact that what appears to be a willing commitment is actually just reluctant compliance.
The use of physical power is sadly not just restricted to the school playground and the increasing instances of bullying at work support this view.
Of course, power is not just found in the leadership ranks and employees too can exert the power of inertia or disruption to thwart many a change programme.
However, they probably need to be mobilised in number to have any noticeable effect and this is more difficult given the modern trend for dispersed workforces.
The problem with expert power
There is also position power, expert power and personal power and these are more directly linked to questions of coaching culture.
A manager who leads by exerting expert power may well generate respect in an environment that values technical ability but will experience problems when developing capability and independence in their team.
Expert power requires expertise and with knowledge bases being constantly and speedily eroded by technological and other changes, there exists a massive source of pressure to keep up to date.
Power is not just found in the leadership ranks and employees too can exert the power of inertia or disruption to thwart many a change programme
Weak power sources
A team whose cultural expectation is for its leader to be the expert will become demoralised and uncertain where this is not the case.
Similarly, many managers, often newly promoted ones, rely too heavily on their position of power, but waving a business card and job description in people’s faces is unlikely to produce sustainable high performance and will probably produce the exact opposite.
These are the power sources of the uncertain and the insecure.
A coaching culture has personal power at its core
Personal power comes from a combination of having a clear set of beliefs and values and behaving in accordance with them.
Where the people whom we lead and manage can share and identify with those values they become willing followers and advocates.
In practical terms this means that coaching should be divorced from the hierarchy and coaches selected on their ability to coach rather than their seniority.
It means that coaching should have a developmental as well as a remedial focus and be seen to be utilised by even the strongest performers.
Waving a business card and job description in people’s faces is unlikely to produce sustainable high performance and will probably produce the exact opposite
Advocating for a coaching approach
Senior leadership involvement is vital, but this need not be as deliverers of coaching support themselves.
Indeed, those leaders who have actually received and benefited from coaching can be seen as the most potent advocates of a coaching approach.
The strongest use of personal power within a coaching culture that I can see is where a leader is prepared to take a coaching approach with their team irrespective of how they are managed by their own boss.
If you enjoyed this, read: How to integrate a coaching culture into your organisational structure
One Response
Good to see power in its
Good to see power in its corporate context spoken about so candidly here. But the French and Raven view of power referred to obliquely in the piece is quite traditional in terms of its zero-sum quality.
It tends towards an individualised view, although the important point is made herein that power resides not just in people but in every artefact of the organisation, including the strategies, policies, procedures, and internal/external comms that shape our experience therein. The dominant discourse needs to be openly acknowledged…and, in so doing, we need to recognise the subaltern voices who are not offered space therein to be heard. In that respect, contemporary notions are more helpful in that they underscore us all as both objects and vehicles of power. And coaching needs to acknowledge the power that resides in dyadic relations – as psychoanalysis has been compelled to do – so as to allow both partners to reflexively engage in that situation. The coach in particular needs to question the extent to which they are sustaining corporate power dynamics that are unhelpful.