This week's topic of personal power at work applies both to us, as we need to develop our own personal power, and to them, the folks we manage, as they need power themselves in order to engage their work and the organization effectively. When it comes to us, if you think about your own professional experience, you likely recall examples of the challenges managers face in doing their work. And in class we've reviewed Schroeder's personal power research which identifies the bases of personal power that we need to cultivate for ourselves and others. This discussion asks you to connect those two areas.
1) Identify a challenge for managers in having sufficient personal power at work that you relate to from your own experience (either in your own management work or observing someone else) that connects with the Power chapter by Culbert & McDonough.
2) Using Schroeder's personal power model, or elements from the model, indicate whether the management challenge is chiefly an issue of instrumental or self-authorizing power, and offer an idea or two concerning the power building that could be done to help a manager address the challenge you've identified (hint: look at particular bases of power for this last part).