Personal Power: Expert Power or Referent power?
Expert Power:
Expert Power is an individual’s supremacy arising from the expertise or skills of the person and the organization’s wants for those skills and expertise. Not like the others, this type of power is usually highly particular and inadequate to the particular area in which the expert is skilled and trained. Your control in the workstation doesn’t just happen because of the job designation you embrace.
Power can be present without a recognized or formal title and can happen separate of any formal chain of command that is in place. For example, if I am he manager of my company and for uncertain circumstances there is a computer data crash that happened in the business and nobody is able to work for the day, in these condition, a junior employee who is new to the organization can help solve this issue in two hours. All of the sudden this relatively junior engineer holds all the power, at least for the next two hours. In fact, the power dynamic has been changed completely and manager is now under control of the junior employee.
Therefore, in result to this example, expert power isn’t a formal type of power, but rather a personal power based on expert knowledge.
Advantages of Expert Power:
A person who holds expert power easy to get promoted to senior management.
People with this power can build up self confidence in the workplace.
By holding this type of power you can win the trust and respect of others within the organization.
Disadvantages of Expert power:
A person’s expertise will decrease and respects of superiority diminish as they share their knowledge and skills.
High level of experience, knowledge and skills required and they need to improve from day to day.
Too bossy or Overconfidence.
Examples of Expert power in Workplace and Managers:
For example, the marketing director of Axact, a department of Bol company have risen to their position because of their information or knowledge in the field of marketing. They apprehend content creation and social media. They get publicity and advertising. Because of their extensive marketing knowledge, they’re supposed within the company as an expert in the marketing field and given the power to manage and lead an entire department of Axact.
Another example of expert power is of Quaid e Azam who was expert and confident in making the country independent however, there are many other senior politicians out there but they supported Muhammad Ali Jinnah and believed in him as they know Quaid e Azam is the only one who helped them in these difficult times.
It is based on the skills and knowledge of the leader. Experts make others dependent on the leader. People often respect experts, and the fewer people who have expertise, the more power an individual has. Bill Gates is a master of his knowledge and discipline. His expertise has never been questioned. He has expert abilities.
Another example is of Steve jobs CEO of Apple, his success established a huge expert force. Jobs is known for markets and products that can think about needs that people don’t even know.
Conclusion:
Expert power is a kind of personal power based on an individual’s expertise in a specific subject or field. The power of experts means that people will naturally ask you for guidance in areas related to your field of expertise and can lay a solid foundation for your career as above examples also elaborate this. Specialists need to be watchful that their abilities may not last endlessly and they need open to the bigger picture and the thoughts of those around them.
Referent Power:
Referential power refers to the ability of an individual to attract others and build loyalty. It is based on the charm and interpersonal skills of those in power. A person may be admired for specific personal qualities, and this admiration creates opportunities for interpersonal interaction. Reference power is defined by trust. Agents who use referent power are often individualistic and are greatly respected by the target, In its essence, this is not something that the leader can command others, but something that the leader earns case by case over time. For example, soldiers fight in war to defend national honor. This is the obvious power, but the most effective power. For example, advertisers have long been aware of the power of reference when using sports figures for product endorsements. The charm of sports stars attracts people’s recognition, although outside the sports field, individuals may not have any real credibility.
Advantages of Referent Power:
A great referent leader can inspire workers to be committed to their job.
Consistently modeling the desired behavior can lead to decreased counterproductive behavior
Disadvantages of Referent Power:
It takes time to develop trust, so referent power doesn’t work well where there is high employee turnover.
Referent power is also not appropriate for crisis situations, for example, a failing business unit that must be turned around as soon as possible, and there isn’t the time needed to build the trust that referent power needs.
Examples of Referent Power in workplace or managers:
In the entertainment world we have an example of lady gaga with referent power who have more than 67 million Twitter followers and The people following her actually respect her and want to know what she is up to. Some of them even desire to be like her and working on it. In this respect, she has referent power over her followers.
Another example of referent power from the corporate world is of Elon Musk a multi-talented, Innovator and experienced followed by lots of young entrepreneurs and engineers has referent power. The followers that work for him are satisfied to do so, and share his essential value of using technology for the betterment of the world.
Conclusion:
In addition to conclude both the powers, these both powers have their different features and uniqueness, however, referent power refers that it is the ability of leaders to influence their followers because of the importance their followers place on them. You can gradually build this power by modeling the behavior you expect to see in others and giving employees greater autonomy to complete your work as he above mentioned examples are doing so.
