My Reflection Blog this week is to review my personal comforts of using personal influence to gain power, and do I embody the characteristics of what is considered a likeable person. Lastly, as a leader am I able to influence up and down effectively within my organization. 

Personal Influence

Power is a term that can be negative or positive depending how it is referenced, but ultimately is one’s ability to influence behavior. As a leader in my organization, my influence ability is to lead people by helping them understand the importance of completing a tasks on-time and being able to identify the cause and effects related to the task completion.  Majority of the time my behavior is associated with positive power, always looking for ways to help people. I am not a type of person that would abuse personal power to gain anything in the workplace. I strive to lead by helping other people with a positive attitude, and hope they pay that forward as well. I would consider myself as having the social power as I am very experienced in my skill set with a lot of education, and have a very agreeable behavior as I like to review things from not only my lens, but those around me as it provides diversity and inclusion.

I do see an abuse of power quite often in my work place and it tends to be associated with the employee that is somewhat insecure in their own skills or the need to have this control over others. I have one employee that the team has deemed to be the team bully. This person uses angles of going to upper management and outside sources of the team to ensure everyone does what she wants and when she demands for it to be completed. I have tried to talk to this person about respecting people’s time and understanding that no one is a direct report to her. Although it changes for a short time and things get better, the behavior tends to revolt back to where we started. I use this example for the reason that I feel this type of abuse of power is sometimes a learned behavior. This same teammate was on the same team with me in another program, where a good percentage of leadership used the same type of behavior. I do believe behavior can be changed, but not without some coaching and mentoring.

Likeable Person

As a person and as a leader, I would consider myself as a very likeable person. I am very loyal to the company I work, family, and commitments. I always have an open and honest relationship with anyone that I encounter. There are times is refrain from people, but usually it is after some time observing that persons behavior and elected to not partake, but never rude. If asked by my peers or even my husband, they would always say I am a type of person where the glass is always full or half empty, stating examples that can provide insight to counter support a negative to a positive.

Another area is sacrificing if the relationship demands it, especially when working with our customer or even being a parent. Our customer is the forefront of our commitments, and just last week my customer needed help with a software upload as his scheduler was out on maternity leave. My customer is older and does not like the new scheduling software, and called on a Friday at our closing time. The customer kept saying he was sorry and I just let him know our customer is our number one priority, and two hours later he was off and running with what he needed. I even offered to travel and provide him with support if needed. The key is that we have to sacrifice our own time to keep the relationships in sync and positive.

I would make a self-awareness that I am doing much better at influencing others with mentoring and coaching, as I tend to acquire new individuals all the time asking for help, which I would think I am a very likeable person. The one area that I could improve on is the sympathy skills. I can empathize with people when things happen, but may not always give the time to sympathize or console them. I say this as we have to make sure we are sympathizing the right emotional need and at the right time.

Up and down Influence

One statement Whetten makes is that “Influential people have power, but not all power people are influential”. In my organization design, I am aligned to have the opportunity to influence upward and then downward as well. An example of influencing upward and downward at the same time is our weekly organizational manager meetings where the team reviews cost and schedule performance metrics. This meeting, includes the Control Account Managers (CAMs), Cost Integrators (CI) and Schedule Integrators (SI). Being a Subject Matter Expert (SME) as a CAM in a previous role, and a current SI. This review is between the managers and the CAMs. The SI and CI are just there for support. This program CAMs are very new to their role, and I am able to provide support to their managers when they cannot answer questions or able to translate the question to the material being presented. I can offer input to where the managers can understand, at the same time I can retranslate what the manager needs to the CAMs. As a previous aircraft maintenance scheduler and budget analyst for the Air Force, I can provide a level of experience of reviewing our customer demands. Depending on the scenario I state let me take my scheduler hat off and put on my CAM or Air force hat to help mentor through the issue. I never really viewed that as an influence up and down the organization, but I now get asked directly about what our customer may be thinking if a certain changed occurred. I consider that as an honor to have that background.

Conclusion

My personal comfort of using influence to gain power is depending on the event, and I feel I do this naturally. I don’t set out with an agenda but enjoy the return of just helping other people.  I know I am a very likable person in most things I do, and find myself always being told as a person who is always happy. My manager a couple years ago stated in my annual review that I was a person with a visionary personality who works extremely well with others. My vast military and civilian education, along with diverse work experience allows me to naturally be able to influence up and down the organization.