Power and Leadership

Since my memory on French and Raven’s power bases was a bit foggy, I had to go back and refresh myself on Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2021). That being said, I would classify my boss as having high expert and informational power; medium reward, coercive, and legitimate power, and low referent power.

My boss is incredibly knowledgable about the field of health informatics, which is why I’ve ranked her as having high expert and informational power. No matter what meeting she is in, she always has something insightful to say on the topic; of course, I’m new to this field, so I’m amazed by practically anyone’s knowledge about this subject, but I can tell she definitely knows a lot.

I’ve ranked her as medium on reward, coercive, and legitimate power, given that these are powers she does sort of exercise, albeit not in a conscious sense. Although she commands respect mainly because of just how knowledgable she is, her being my boss does mean that she has the right to control what work I am assigned, as well as reward or “punish” me for the work that I do. In this way, she does exercise these three powers, even if they are not perhaps what is most obvious about her position. Admittedly, I struggled to put coercive in this category (as I’ve never seen her directly punish anyone), but ultimately ended up including it because I felt it was part of her job description/a power that she could exercise if she wanted to do so.

The last and least utilized of my boss’s powers is referent – although our organization is well-recognized, it’s not as if she really relies on social status beyond making connections with other industry leaders and exchanging what she’s learned with them so that everyone can benefit from shared knowledge. Hierarchy within our organization is determined by job title and responsibilities, not by social status, so referent power isn’t really all that relevant in this case.

Overall, I would say my boss exercises the most power in her leadership through the expert and informational power bases. No matter whether you are her employee or not, people listen to her because she very clearly knows what she’s talking about, so I would count those two power bases as being most relevant to her leadership activities at/on behalf of ASTHO.

Wikipedia. 2021. “French and Raven’s Bases of Power.” Last modified April 27, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Raven%27s_bases_of_power#cite_note-Forsyth,_D._R._2010-1