Welcome to Manager Tools.

The three types of power and one to rule them.

Part 2.

Here we go.

This cast answers these questions.

What are the three types of power in all organizations? What are the limits

and uses of those powers? Which powers are easier or harder to attain?

If you want answers to those questions and more keep listening.

Last week hopefully convince people that it's worth thinking about power and understanding what power is. We talked about what power is and the three types of power at a fairly high level. So let's just get to the one that people

generally understand right or they think they understand which is role power.

Yeah typically when people say power, what they mean is role power.

And as we said last week, relative amounts of role power.

Oh, she has more power than me.

That means she has a bigger title, she has more power than me. That means she has a bigger title, she has more

responsibility, a bigger budget, whatever the case might be. And that just

shows a misunderstanding about the three types of power. But role power is the one that everyone assumes is the big one when in fact it's not and for a couple of reasons which will detail.

Let's start with the definition. Roll power is the ability to get things done, like all powers are, granted specifically by your

organization that comes in the form of rights and responsibilities that the organization grants you associated with your role.

You'll notice there are a couple of hints in there that it's not all that in that, as we'll get to later, individuals don't control their role power.

You can control the amount of power you have to a small degree by how you behave, but you don't control your rule power, the organization does.

And again, when people talk about getting more power, what they usually mean is getting

promoted.

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