The PowerDial: The Power to Change…
to Get the Power You Need
One of the main reasons we often hesitate, procrastinate, or fail to take action is because we feel as if we lack power. When out of work or stuck in a dead-end job, or struggling to get others to buy in to our ideas, or feeling ignored or overlooked, it can seem as if we have no leverage at all.
But guess what: You have a lot more power than you think!
Getting anything done, especially in the business world—whether convincing someone to hire you, to fund your project, or to fund your proposal—requires the ability to influence others.
As Gregory Berns, the author of Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently, wrote: “A person can have the greatest idea in the world…but if that person can’t convince enough other people, it doesn’t matter.” And to convince other people of something—to influence them—requires confidence and power.
But what is “power” anyway? One way to describe it is as the ability or potential to allocate resources, make and enforce decisions, and/or to impact and influence others.
If you think about electricity, for example, the wall socket represents only “potential” power. It is only after plugging something in that we see that potential come to life to produce results. So the big question is: How do you turn your potential power into performance to maximize your productivity and to produce results?
To see how, let’s take a deep dive into the BigBlueGumball PowerDial model:
As you can see, your power comes from three different sources: Personal power; Relational power; and Positional power.
So right off the bat, the point to be made is that we’re not dealing with an “either-or” situation. It’s not a question of either having power or not, but a matter of how much power you have, and how you might reap the power potential from each of these three distinct sources:
1. Your Personal power refers to who you are, what you know, and what you can do.
2. Your Relational power relates not to what you know, but who you know and, in some ways the even more important question of who knows you.
3. And the third area, Positional power, is about just that—your role or status or position. It relates to what you do, what you have, and what you have control over.
So, although people tend to speak about “power” as if it’s a single entity or quality that you either have or you don’t, you can now see that power comes from a variety of sources, each of which can be leveraged, developed, and grown.
The next important thing to notice is that Personal power is internal—it comes solely from within you. The other two, Relational and Positional power, are external, as they are related to, or dependent upon, other people or other factors outside of yourself. So while enhancing your Positional power will have a longer-term time horizon, and the Relational power area will also take some time to develop as it involves building and strengthening your relationships with other people, the Personal power areas are entirely within your control.
Let’s, now, take a deeper dive into this model to show how you can use it to boost your confidence and increase your influence.
1. Your Personal power is derived from three areas: the Intellectual/Physical (your knowledge, intelligence, talents, skills, and strengths); the Emotional (self-awareness, emotional intelligence, attitude, passion, and confidence); and the Interpersonal (your personality and people skills).
2. Your Relational power comes from your Networks (connections and access); Affiliations (memberships, associations, and friendships); and Coalitions (teams and partnerships). In other words, who you are personally connected to, have access to, can receive support from, and partner with.
3. Your Positional power comes from your Role (title, rank, level of seniority); Authority (degree of empowerment); and Control (of resources, as well as degree of dominance, and veto ability).
To gauge where you currently have the most power (and the least), and to measure your progress as you set out to develop and leverage your strengths in all or some of these areas, you might want to make a list of how you rank in each of these areas (using specific examples to make it real), and then score yourself in each area on a scale of 1–10. This will enable you to track your progress as you enhance your strengths in each area.
Towards that end, thinking about your Personal, Relational, and Positional power self-assessment—and reflecting on your core strengths and key areas of development—ask yourself: what is one action you can take within the next week to increase your power? And then think about how you might enhance your power over the next three to six months.
To help you to kick-start your confidence, take a look at the sample PowerDial Action Plan below for some sample action items.
As the novelist Alice Walker once said, “The most common way that people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” But the good news is that, with the help of the PowerDial, the power to increase your power is entirely within your hands.
In Review
The Big Lesson: Rather than thinking you either have power or you don’t, reframing what it means to have power—by breaking it down into these nine categories—can help you to increase your power and, thereby, enhance your ability to impact and influence others.
The Big Question: Looking at the PowerDial Action Plan, what are some steps you can take—both short term and long term—to incrementally increase the amount of power you have?
Your Big Insight:
Your Big Action: