Do you sometimes look at people and wonder how they got to where they are? Many times, it’s because they have surrounded themselves with others who challenged and boosted them allowing them to harness the impact of referential power.
Whether you, your client or employee is looking for more positive influences in their life – or is someone seeking to improve positive influence on others – referent power and creating positive spheres of influence are at the heart of leadership development acumen.
French & Raven’s Forms of Power further distinguishes those into personal and positional power groups. Since 1959 these concepts have applied to leaders and individuals across many spectrums in life. Referent power can lead to enthusiastic and unquestioning trust, compliance, loyalty, and commitment from subordinates.
As executives, leaders and development coaches, improving your knowledge of how people influence, and are influenced is key to improving outcomes. All relationships have a certain deference threshold that exists whether people recognize it or not. Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy by Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith points out that the deference threshold impacts the personal and positional power forms in a variety of ways that can have positive or negative affects depending on alignment with someone’s core values given a certain situation.
If you’d like to join a spirited conversation around power, positive influence, and the deference threshold, join us for an upcoming session of this course or grab it on demand and listen in on your own schedule.