Power PlayersFrom new hires to seasoned managers, all employees benefit from understanding how their power style.

Maggie Craddock

May 15, 2011

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Understanding the link between an employee’s personal history and his or her professional

performance can make or break an individual’s career. What’s more, cracking this code at the

group level can contribute to the rise or fall of an entire corporate culture. It is possible to foster a

more innovative and self-aware organizational culture while simultaneously giving employees at

all levels the tools they need to execute their responsibilities effectively while reconditioning

how they handle conflict at work.

Diversity executives can use the Power Grid methodology to identify an individual employee’s

capabilities. From new hires to seasoned managers, all employees can benefit from

understanding how their power style impacts their organizational effectiveness.

Since culture often trickles down from the top, it can be beneficial to work with a senior

management team that grasps how their habits of giving and taking power create implicit

organizational norms and foster accountable leadership. From a recruitment perspective, training

programs that encourage agility in the way employees respond to each other’s power style

promote a collaborative culture. Perhaps most important, middle managers who must constantly

juggle responsibilities up, down and across an organization can benefit from learning how their

power styles may enhance their productivity, and how their less constructive power reflexes can

undermine their effectiveness and lead to career disruptions.

The Power Grid

Whether they are gaining it or losing it, people’s responses to power on the job aren’t always

logical. The Health and Safety Laboratory in the U.K., which was founded to protect people

from hazards at work, released a 2006 study, “Bullying at Work: A Review of the Literature.”

This study, which highlighted exposure to irrational behavior on the job as a safety risk to

employees, spawned a new interest in the link between human emotion and workplace behavior.

Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, added to this discussion with

his book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

Power plays on the job, such as turf wars and takeovers, can cause such strong emotional

reactions that even highly intelligent people report days when they can barely think at all. So, if

logic isn’t running the show, what’s driving employees’ behavior on the job? People’s

professional reactions often stem from their automatic instincts toward power. These instincts,

which can kick in faster than the speed of thought, are often rooted in behaviors internalized in

childhood prior to the capacity for individual discernment.

Both the emotional and behavioral responses many professionals have to the give and take of

power in organizations are frequently rooted in the ways they were conditioned to deal with their

first authority figures — family caregivers. Having employees reflect on early experiences in

their family systems can help clarify their signature power styles at work. When employees are

grappling with power plays on the job, their internal emotional reactions and external behavioral

responses can be the building blocks that shape the foundation of their professional power styles.

An individual’s relationship with power often falls into one of four categories: pleaser, charmer,

commander or inspirer.

In the Power Grid, internal emotional drives are measured on the y-axis. These emotional

reflexes can range from seeking trust at one end of the spectrum to reacting out of fear at the

other. People who operate near the trust end tend to comply with others when they feel included

and appreciated a high percentage of the time. In contrast, people who operate closer to the fear

end avoid full disclosure and frequently attempt to foster a sense of urgency in others to get their

needs met.

The x-axis characterizes the behavioral style an individual gravitates toward in order to influence

others. People who operate near the informal end of the x-axis prefer one-on-one interactions

with others. In contrast, people who operate closer to the formal end tend to work with systems

to further their ambitions.

The Power Grid provides a framework to help leaders understand the interplay of internal

emotional reactions and external behavioral responses that people may have been conditioned to

default to as power ebbs and flows on the job.

Each quadrant can be a teaching device to identify how the building blocks of emotional and

behavioral forces come together to exemplify different power styles. However, beware of

categorizing one’s own power style or that of a colleague or direct report too starkly. Many

working with the Power Grid realize the strengths that have taken them to the top exemplify the

most effective traits associated with more than one power style. In contrast, the blind spots that

can sabotage careers may represent the more rigid and reactive aspects of another power style

altogether. A deeper insight into the potential combinations of these power styles will enable a

diversity leader to operate and make decisions with more agility and to draw from a wider range

of strategic responses.

Further, the Power Grid can be incorporated with other instruments, such as Myers-Briggs or

FIRO-B. For example, while the Myers-Briggs assessment can give people a valuable snapshot

of their most predominant operating style, it provides little insight into how an individual’s

personal history has shaped his or her habitual responses. By using the Power Grid in

conjunction with other tools, employees can develop deeper insight on how to incorporate the

results into an action plan for developing more agile and effective responses on the job.

The Four Power Quadrants

The Pleaser: The pleaser power style is exemplified by individuals who wield power by

anticipating other people’s needs and connecting with them at a personal level. Pleasers often

rise to positions of power in nonhierarchical cultures due to their ability to manage a large

workload without sacrificing their empathy for others. Scarcity issues within the family system

often result in people who grow up conditioned to be pleasers. Whether their caregivers were

preoccupied trying to make ends meet financially or for other reasons, they inadvertently

conveyed there was something more important than spending time with this child. Thus, while

pleasers often achieve success by nurturing others, they have a blind spot due to their excessive

need for validation. Many managers self-identify with this quadrant under pressure. These

individuals frequently cluster in service roles.

The Charmer: People who exemplify the charmer power style have an uncanny ability to

redefine the rules of the game while exuding an emotional intensity that compels others to

comply with them. The family system that fosters a charmer is often one in which a child was

forced to parent a parent due to divorce, parental illness or simply the kind of emotional

estrangement that weakens a marital bond rather than breaking it. This role reversal fosters a

distrust of formal authority and a sense of entitlement. As a result, later in life charmers may

develop a blind spot that can tempt them to manipulate others for their personal advantage.

People who self-identify with this quadrant are often highly successful rainmakers and tend to

cluster in sales functions. While they are frequently topflight strategists, charmers often report

being passed over for management positions when feedback from their peers reveals they can be

difficult to trust.

The Commander: The commander power style is exemplified by people who get results by

exuding confidence and fostering a sense of urgency in others. While they are often widely

respected for their drive to win, commanders frequently struggle with being impatient and even

rigid with others. The family system of the commander is hierarchical, with one parent firmly in

charge; the other parent, along with the children, ends up vying for the support and approval of

the parent running the show. This type of family system teaches kids early in life that power is

about rank, and that it’s vital to come out on top. Individuals who self-identify with this quadrant

represent a high percentage of CEOs and people at the executive committee level in today’s

organizations.

The Inspirer: The inspirer power style is exemplified by people who exude a palpable sense of

purpose. While inspirational figures can come from any quadrant on the Power Grid, inspirers

are characterized by their ability to do what benefits the greater good before calculating what’s in

it for them. The family dynamic that fosters the inspirer is one in which the caregivers were

passionately devoted to a cause they considered a life’s calling. The main blind spot for inspirers

is they tend to be dismissive of office politics and exhibit a tendency to leave a professional

system when they start to question senior management values rather than sticking around to seek

a compromise.

The Power Grid and Diversity

While it’s important to ensure that an organization’s formal employment policies support all

employees fairly, diversity leaders today realize that maximizing a culture’s productivity

involves more than the right demographic mix.

The Power Grid can help managers clarify dominant trends and respond to the power

demonstrations that are tacitly rewarded within a corporate culture. Regardless of an employee’s

gender, racial or other orientation, understanding of the power styles senior leaders reward

within an organization can be the ultimate key to who gets ahead and why.

Diversity and talent leaders are constantly reevaluating their programs to ensure they invest in

initiatives that will foster enhanced productivity. Providing tools to help key players develop a

more balanced and agile power style under pressure will pay off at the individual and cultural

level. This profit is realized through increased employee retention, the ability to attract top talent,

and team creation where employees become more deeply involved with the people and situations

around them.

Maggie Craddock is the president and founder of Workplace Relationships and the author of the

upcoming book,Power Genes: Understanding Your Power Persona — and How to Wield It at

Work. She can be reached ateditor@diversity-executive.com.

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