Air University Review, September-October 1983

Power and the Anatomy of Leadership

Good commanders, those who get the best out of their subordinates and thereby produce positive results for their units, are the keys to organizational success. Therefore, it is not surprising that much research has gone into trying to define just what motivates good commanders and how to describe them so that their characteristics can be objectively measured and identified.

Successful commanders are not motivated by a need for personal aggrandizement, or by a need to get along with subordinates, but rather by a need to influence others’ behavior for the good of the whole organization. In other words, good commanders want power. They also know that power must be tempered by maturity and a high degree of self-control. Power, too, must be disciplined and controlled so that it is directed toward the benefit of the organization as a whole.

Affiliative commanders are those who make so many ad hominem and ad hoc decisions that they almost abandon orderly procedures. Their disregard for procedure often leaves their subordinates with a sense of uncertainty.

Commanders who are motivated by a need for personal power are somewhat more effective. They are able to create a greater sense of responsibility in their units and, above all, a greater team spirit. They can be thought of as managerial equivalents of tank commanders such as General George Patton, whose own daring inspired admiration in his troops. However, according to empirical research at Harvard University, these commanders rate rather low in the amount of organizational clarity they create.

Persons motivated by personal power are not disciplined enough to be good institution (or unit) builders, and often their subordinates are loyal to them as individuals rather than to the unit they both serve. When a personal power commander leaves, disorganization often follows. His or her subordinates’ strong group spirit, which the commander has personally inspired, often deflates.

Of the managerial types, the "institutional" commanders (e.g., those high in power motivation, low in affiliation motivation, and high in inhibition) are the most successful in creating an effective work climate. Their subordinates feel that they have more responsibility. Also, these commanders create high morale because they produce the greatest sense of organizational clarity and team spirit. If such a commander leaves, he or she can be more readily replaced by another commander because subordinates have been encouraged to be loyal to the unit.

Successful and effective commanders have two characteristics that are part of the profile of the very best commanders: a great emotional maturity, where there is little egotism, and a coaching managerial style. Effective commanders also know that individual growth through job enrichment is the key to organizational health and higher productivity.

When Zorba the Greek was asked if he had a wife, he purportedly replied, "A wife, children, a house, an army, the whole catastrophe." Unfortunately, some commanders today feel that they, too, have "the whole catastrophe." A great deal of this frustration lies in the use of power. It is easier to talk about money than it is to talk about power.

Access to resources and information and the ability to act quickly make it possible to accomplish more and to pass on more resources and information to subordinates. For this reason, people tend to prefer bosses or commanders with clout. When subordinates perceive their commander as influential, upward and outward, their status is enhanced by association, and they generally have high morale and feel less critical of or resistant to their commander. More powerful leaders are also more likely to delegate, to reward talent, and to build a team that places subordinates in significant positions.

Powerlessness, or the inability to develop and use power, in contrast, tends to breed bossiness rather than true leadership. In a large military (or civilian) organization, it is powerlessness that often creates ineffective, desultory management and petty, rules-minded managerial styles.

Accountability without power—responsibility for results without the resources to get them— creates frustration and failure. People who see themselves as weak and powerless and find their subordinates resisting or discounting them tend to use more punishing forms of influence.

The effectiveness that power brings evolves from two kinds of capacities: first, access to the resources, information, and support necessary to carry out a task; and, second, ability to get cooperation in doing what is necessary.

In an effort to gain more information on power, we could consult the "wise old Turk," Zorba’s reputed source of all practical wisdom. First, however, let us take a look at some approaches to the subject of power to see the advantages and disadvantages of each and how they relate to organizational development.

The installation of motivating factors into an individual’s job was the original intent of job enrichment. The basis of the idea is that motivators are the factors that meet a person’s need for psychological growth, especially achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement, and opportunity. These factors are concerned with the job content, the work itself. The hygiene factors are concerned with the job environment—conditions and treatment surrounding the work, specifically policy and administration, supervision, relationships with others, salary, personal life, status, and security.

Motivators are concerned with using people well and, when combined with a good hygiene program, with treating people well. The result will be motivated performance.

One basic principle of the psychology of learning and performance is that knowing the results of one’s behavior is essential to efficient learning and performance. This is usually referred to as feedback. Two of the most important ingredients of a good job are that the results of a person’s performance be given directly to him or her rather than through any supervisor, performance review, or bureaucratic administrative innuendo and that this feedback be nonevaluative and timely.

When the commander tells them how they are doing on a job, most people tend to interpret the message as a characterization of themselves, not of their performance. Thus, nonevaluative behavior on the part of the commander can increase the learning impact of feedback by reducing the personal threat to the subordinate. Also, the more timely the feedback on performance, the more potent and accurate is the content of the message.

A very simple example of the proper use of feedback in job enrichment comes from the small arms qualification range. Targets consist of electronically controlled silhouettes scattered at varying distances which fall instantly when struck by a bullet. If the target is missed, there is no ridiculing by target spotters—the target just stands there until it gets hit. Feedback here is direct, instantaneous, and nonevaluative. Success with this method has been dramatic in terms of savings in both money and time needed to train effective marksmen.

Good commanders—those who rate extremely high in total effectiveness—care about institutional power and its use to stimulate production. This feeling or need for power, however, is at variance with most Americans. As a rule, Americans are not very comfortable with power or with its dynamics. We often distrust and question the motives of people who we think actively seek power. We have a certain fear of being manipulated. Even those people who think the dynamics of power are inevitable and needed often feel somewhat guilty when they themselves mobilize and use power. Simply put, the overall attitude and feeling toward power, which can easily be traced to our nation’s birth, is negative. In his popular book Greening of America, Charles Reich reflects the views of many when he writes, "It is not the misuse of power that is evil; the very existence of power is evil." Power, it seems, is America’s latest dirty word.

One of the many consequences of this attitude is that power as a topic for rational study and dialogue has not received much attention, even at command and staff colleges or war colleges. If the reader doubts this, all he or she need do is flip through some textbooks, journals, or advanced command/management course descriptions. The word power rarely, if ever, appears.

This lack of attention to the subject of power merely ads to the already enormous confusion and misunderstanding surrounding the topic of power and management, both in the military and in the business world. This misunderstanding is becoming increasingly burdensome because in today’s large and complex military structure the effective performance of most command positions requires one to be skilled in the use of power.

Throughout the military, including the Air and Army National Guard, a large number of commanders perform significantly below their potential because they do not understand the dynamics of power and because they have not nurtured and developed the instincts to acquire and use power effectively.

Why are the dynamics of power necessarily an important part of command?

How do effective commanders acquire power?

How and for what purposes do effective commanders use power?

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a typical commander is how dependent he or she is on the activities of a variety of other people to perform his or her job effectively. A commander can be dependent in varying degrees on superiors, subordinates, peers in other parts of the organization, the subordinates of peers, unions, regulating agencies, and many others. Dealing with these dependencies and the commander’s subsequent vulnerability is an important and difficult part of a commander’s job because, while it is theoretically possible that all of these people and organizations would automatically act in just the manner that a commander wants and needs, such is almost never the case in reality. All the people on whom a commander is dependent have limited time, energy, and talent, for which there are competing demands.

A great paradox of command is that as a person gains more formal authority in an organization, the areas in which he or she is vulnerable increase and become more complex rather than the reverse. To be able to plan, organize, budget, staff, control, and evaluate, commanders need some control over the many people on whom they are dependent. Trying to control others solely by directing them and on the basis of the power associated with one’s position frequently will not work—first, because commanders are always dependent on some people over whom they have little if any formal authority and, second, because virtually no one in any of today’s modern organizations will passively accept and completely obey a stream of orders from someone just because he or she is the "boss."

Trying to influence others by means of persuasion alone will not always work either. Although it is very powerful and possibly the single most important method of influence, persuasion has some serious drawbacks, too. To make it work often requires much time, skill, and information on the part of the persuader. Persuasion can also fail simply because the other person chooses not to listen or does not listen carefully.

This is not to say that directing people on the basis of the formal power of one’s position and persuasion are not important means by which successful commanders cope. They obviously are. But, even taken together, they are usually not enough.

Successful commanders cope with their dependence on others by being sensitive to it, by eliminating or avoiding unnecessary dependence, and by establishing power over those others. Good commanders then use that power to help them plan, organize, staff, budget, evaluate, etc. In other words, it is primarily because of the dependence inherent in command positions that the dynamics of power necessarily form an important part of a commander’s processes. To help cope with the dependency relationships inherent in their jobs, effective commanders create, increase, or maintain four different types of power over others.

One of the ways is to create a sense of obligation. When the commander is successful, the others feel that they should—rightly—allow the commander to influence them. Recognizing that most people believe that friendship carries with it certain obligations ("A friend in need . . ."), successful commanders often try to develop true friendships with those on whom they are dependent.

A second way successful commanders gain power is by building reputations as experts in certain matters. Commanders usually establish this type of power through visible achievement. The larger the achievement and the more visible it is, the more power the commander tends to develop.

A third method by which commanders gain power is by fostering others’ unconscious identification with them or with ideas they "stand for." Sigmund Freud was the first to describe this phenomenon, which is most clearly seen in the way people look up to charismatic leaders. Generally, the more a person finds a commander both consciously and (more important) unconsciously an ideal person, the more he or she will defer to that commander. Commanders develop power based on others’ idealized views of them in a number of ways. They try to look and behave in ways that others respect. They go out of their way to be visible to their subordinates.

The final way that an effective commander often gains power is by feeding others’ belief that they are dependent on the commander either for help or for not being hurt. The more they perceive they are dependent, the more most people will be inclined to cooperate. There are two methods that successful commanders often use to create perceived dependence.

In the first, the commander identifies and secures (if necessary and possible) resources that others require to do their jobs, that is, resources not possessed and not readily available elsewhere. These resources include such things as authority to make certain decisions; control of money, equipment, and office space; access to important people; information and control of information channels; and subordinates. Then the commander takes action so that others correctly perceive that the commander has such resources and is willing and ready to use them.

A second way effective commanders gain these types of power is by influencing other persons’ perceptions of the commander’s resources. In settings where many people are involved and where the manager does not interact continuously with those he or she is dependent on, those people will seldom possess "hard facts" regarding what relevant resources the commander commands directly or indirectly, what resources he or she will command in the future, or how prepared he or she is to use those resources.

Insofar as one can influence the judgment of others, a commander can generate much more power than one would generally ascribe to him or her in light of the reality of available resources.

Of course, commanders always have formal authority—those elements that automatically come with a commander’s job—perhaps a title, an office, a budget, the right to make certain decisions, a group of subordinates, a reporting relationship. Effective commanders use the elements of formal authority as resources to help them develop any or all of these four types of power, just as they use other resources such as their education.

Good commanders—"the wise old Turks"— tend to share a number of common characteristics. (1) They are sensitive to what others consider to be legitimate behavior in acquiring and using power. They recognize that power carries certain obligations. (2) They have good intuitive understanding of the various types of power and methods of influence. They recognize that professionals tend to be more influenced by perceived expertise than by other forms of power. (3) They recognize that any of the methods (types of power) used under the right circumstances can help contribute to unit effectiveness with few dysfunctional consequences. (4) They establish career goals and seek managerial positions that allow them to develop and use power successfully. (5) They use all of their resources, including formal authority, and power to develop still more power. They sometimes actually look for ways to invest their power where they might secure a high positive return. (6) They engage in power-oriented behavior in ways that are tempered by maturity and self-control. They seldom, if ever, develop and use power in impulsive ways or for their own aggrandizement. (7) They also recognize and accept as legitimate that, in using these methods, they clearly influence the behavior and lives of others. Good commanders further recognize, often intuitively, that the establishment and the use of power are necessary for the successful fulfillment of their command roles.

Hq USAF

Colonel Elvin C. Bell, ANG (B.A. and M.P.A., California State University, Fresno; LL.B., La Salle Law School; Ph.D., Coast University) is Air National Guard Advisor for Secretary of the Air Force. He previously served as Commander, 144th Combat Support Squadron, and is on the faculty of the Defense Strategy Seminar, National Defense University, and the Department of Defense School, Personnel Management for Executives. Colonel Bell served fourteen years as Councilman and Mayor Pro Tempore of the City of Fresno. He is a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine and has published numerous books and articles. Colonel Bell is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and Air War College.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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