Understanding power dynamics and goal alignment helps leaders choose effective strategies for resolving conflict and strengthening professional relationships. This three-step framework emphasizes assessing influence, identifying shared interests, and applying appropriate power strategies.
Key Insights
- Assessing power involves recognizing who holds influence in different contexts and understanding that power can shift depending on the situation.
- Open discussions about goals help uncover shared interests, laying the groundwork for productive collaboration.
- Leaders should choose strategies such as collaboration, negotiation, or influence based on the power/goal landscape, while avoiding domination due to its negative impact on trust.
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Welcome back. Let's talk a bit more about these three steps that you reviewed in the video. When it comes to assessing the balance of power, you know, sometimes it's pretty obvious.
Yeah, you have more power than I. You have more influence than I. You might even be in the same grade.
And I understand that you have more power than I because of the reputation that you've created for yourself. And sometimes the power is just between the two of us. So I do have to ask questions like, who has the most influence when we're making decisions together? Who has the final say? Who's more likely to start the important discussions? Who tends to lead the discussions? Do levels of power vary by domain? For instance, the difference between financial decisions and operational strategies.
So I do want to take a look at that. It says assess it, be aware of it. Step two is to compare and contrast your goals.
And again, it's kind of, it's a little bit less definite in how to assess the degree of goal confluence in a relationship, but we can certainly always talk about it. Let's sit down and have an informal discussion about what is most important to each of us and see where we can find those commonalities between the two of us that we call shared interests. Usually, we can find them if we spend time talking.
Who's the hardest person to talk to? The difficult personality. What does Lincoln tell us to do? Try to get to know them better. I think step three is where we have to make a decision.
What's our most effective power strategy? And again, we know that if our goals are similar and the power is balanced, it's pretty easy to move into collaboration, isn't it? Negotiation might be the best way to exert some power within the relationship, but maybe we just need to call a truce and look for common ground and focus on the big picture, make sure we're communicating well, and we probably can do some trades in the negotiation that are going to be reasonably satisfying to both of us. When influence is the best way forward, make sure we're informing the other person, and look for ways to publicly support one another. And again, I think that's a good strategy or approach to keep in mind, whether I'm in a conflict or not, is how supportive am I of the people around me? Influence does not mean coercion, by the way, and so it's influencing based on data, influencing based on experience, influence based on logic, not coercion.
Now, that domination where power balance and confluence are both low, this is really uncomfortable, and it's uncomfortable for everybody who's watching it. And so you really do want to ask yourself the question, especially if you're the person being dominated, if there is a conflict and distrust, why is it happening? What's going on here? What am I doing to contribute to the negativity? Have I given in to dominant people in the past? And does that influence how I'm feeling in this situation? If I can't align my goals with this other person, can I at least get us a little bit closer so that we can do something that's of value? I have to remember, especially if this is occurring in my own team, that practicing servant leadership is really important. Focusing on other people's needs before my own is really important because I'm exemplifying that it's important to try to understand other people before I overreact.
The conflicting goals and unbalanced power quadrant, if you will, if it's allowed to just continue, then this is where we know that it's unhealthy, and it's full of tension, and there's distrust. If you get too focused on your direction or on your power, you may forget to consider how others see what's really good about you, which is your really strong determination to do good, hard work. Again, I think we want to do everything we can to move towards collaboration, negotiation, or influence before we succumb to domination, either the doer or the receiver.
So exercise three, four, the imbalance of power. You do have a case study that you are going to review. And what I'd like you to do with the case study is to determine what power strategies the team members could use to resolve the problem.
Be sure that you are listing specific actions the team members could take to resolve the conflict. It is, I think, an interesting case study and one that you can probably relate to, not maybe because you've experienced it personally, but you certainly have heard about situations like this. And so again, which power strategies do you think the team members could use to resolve the problem, and how are you going to go about it? Good luck with that.
