This is not totally a new topic for me, I have posted some thoughts on use of power in past blogs.   It is a powerful subject  (pun intended) and deserves a lot of air time.

The power I am refering to is the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.

Personal or Earned Power

Exercise of this type of power requires skill, practice and confidence.    This can range from manipulation to influence results and achieve your own ends, or at the other end of the spectrum, using trust , logic, empathy , self awareness and a host of other emotional intelligence skills.

The later techniques are generally more sustainable while the former are often easier to use and depending on your value system you might be more comfortable with the approach ( con men live by it).

Positional or Granted Power

The easiest way to illustrate this type of power is to consider the army.  Your role and title, (e.g., sargent, captain, private, general , etc) dictate your level of authority and your ability to direct or influnce the behavior of others.

There can be serious consequences for ignoring authority within this type of rigidly defined structure.  A court marshall for disobeying instructions of someone in a superior position to you is an extreme example of these consequences.

What type of power do you yield?

As a general rule everyone practices both positional (Luke I am your father) and earned (please, please, for me). power.  The interesting part is the mix.

You cannot control how much granted power you have, it is given to you by others but you are in control of your earned power.

Which is better?

This is the teaser for tommorows post.  Having set the stage around the two types of power I will explore the very critical question of how to balance their use to best effect.