A520.9.5.RB_LloydPayneDamien

A520.9.5.RB - Power

Chapter 5 of your text defines power as the "potential to influence behavior" (Whetton and Cameron, 2011, p. 286). Given this definition, develop your Blog entry using the following questions as your guide:

• Are you comfortable developing sources of personal influence to gain power?
• Do you embody the characteristics of likeable people depicted in Table 5.4 (p. 290)?
• Are you able to use influence both up and down your organization considering the information in Table 5.5 (p. 293)

I am so comfortable using the sources of personal influence to gain power it is not even a question.  As Whetton and Cameron describe in this chapter, personal power is often seen as derisory or that power is a "four letter word".  The four letter word I would use is "good".  Unfortunately in today's ever changing and fast paced society (where wages have remained stagnant for decades and benefits are slowly on the decline), the only way to get a pay increase or to get a leg up on your career ladder is by promotion. And because "only the naive believe the best recommendation always gets selected" (Whetten & Cameron, 2011);  promotions are going to come only through influence (and in particular upward influence) on the person with the power to promote you.  Of course, to remain successful in that new found managerial position , you are going to have to convince a large number of new 'underlings' too - and that is also going to mean adopting some sources of influence.

Interesting in this chapter is that they discuss culture.  "Different cultures...will probably believe some of these strategies are ineffective and/or inappropriate."(Whetten & Cameron, 2011)   Being from the UK, and therefore much more European than American, I can see the point.  But as Winston Churchill once said "We [America and England] are two great nations separated by a common language." I can see some of my fellow Brits reading this chapter and wincing slightly as they do so, maybe even mumbling something along the lines of the "just not being cricket", but essentially, I feel that at least the British Nation, for all their reservedness would go along with these techniques.  The Japanese, or a totally different culture may well not.

As for embodying the characteristics of table 5.4, I think that I do - to a point.  I think that I have all of those characteristics, at least to some level, but I have not yet been totally successful in using those characteristics to progress in one place of work.  Rather, as we have discussed in a previous blog, I have been successful in using the level of those characteristics that I do have to gain a better position at a new company.  It seems to me that it is much easier to convince a stranger of your prowess in several interviews than it is to sustain those attributes in table 5.4 over the long term.  In particular this becomes a problem when there are more than one person competing with you for the next promotion.  This muddying of the waters requires an expert level of personal influence wielding. Of the six characteristics listed the one that gives the most angst is probably "provide unconditional, positive regard and acceptance".  This is a tough one for someone who has been preconditioned in a house of 6 boys all growing up together, and tougher still for someone with acknowledged lower levels of empathy.  I also work in an industry where other strongly believe in "paying your dues" before any of the good stuff should come your way.

Instead of categorizing myself by six attributes, I have tended to fall into the role of likable 'foreigner'. If I had a nickel for every joke at work made at the expense of anyone on the loosing side of the revolutionary war - I wouldn't need to work! Also, if by chance my side of the argument turns into the more reasoned and preferred option, some antagonists may well fall back on this old adage "Well of course if you don't like the American way of doing things, no one is twisting your arm to stay in America". However, my more agreeable personality will win over more people than those with the disagreeable ones.

Finally, I wanted to talk about managing the relationship with my boss.  I think I have a good relationship currently with my boss.  Firstly she is a woman - and that always helps, because I have always worked better for women bosses than I have for men.  In fact in my last position in the UK I worked in a company who employed a total of 4 men nationwide - of which I was one. What is hard is my boss in not the open book we would all like to have and to be able to manipulate (sorry, influence) successfully. There are things that are fathomable: her goals and objectives, her work style and the pressures she faces.  What cannot be dug up is my bosses strengths weaknesses and blind spots.  That door is fixed shut, and was I imagine a long time ago, as a necessity of working in a male orientated industry in a male dominated workplace, with type A personality males.  She effectively for many years would have been the harassed novelty.  So with my boss i continue to play the likable foreigner, but I am attempting to develop the relationship that keeps her informed, is based on honesty and dependability and is characterized by mutual expectations.  I cannot so far do better than that.  She is not the type of person to open up to anyone, or reveal any weakness at all, so developing those characteristics of our business relationship will have to do.  Essentially what I am working on is the informal personal power - and hoping it will pay off in the form of  some of that formal organizational power from it at a later date.

A520.7.3.RB_LloydPayneDamien

Write a blog entry on the significance, importance, and/or impact of having a coach and/or a mentor to help you in your professional journey.


My professional journey started right out of University where I started in Sales and Marketing for a leading drug company Hoechst Roussel Vet.  I was given a territory in the Northwest of England and sent out after training to sell drugs to veterinary surgeons.


However, my career mentoring journey started with my parents many years before.  It was in fact quite structured, many of the facts are a little fuzzy, but there are two things that I remember distinctly.  The first is that my father was a motor engineer who ran his own auto repair, bodywork and maintenance facility. He was good at it.  He was successful, and his business over the years grew in revenue and reputation.  There wasn't anything my father didn't know about combustion engines, electronics and a whole host of other skills like welding, fabrication, spraying and mechanics. But there was one other thing he knew.  He knew that he didn't want any of his sons following in his career choice, and so he structured his mentoring program around making sure we did not get involved in engineering of any kind.  Not only did he actively discourage us from showing an interest in all things automobile, my parents never actually suggested an alternative.  I remember coming to the point at school when choices in subjects between the sciences or arts had to be made. No advice or mentoring was given at this stage - the explanation being that "I would find the thing I liked"; it would come to me, just pick the subjects I liked, not necessarily the ones that would hold a career in the future.  They firmly believed that the school would sort out a career path for me.


And this brings me to the second memory - that of the career path provided by the school.  It was the mid 80's, so we shouldn't expect too much, but the school had a full time career Councillor and had employed a super new career choice program that would, after deciphering your answers to over 100 questions, not only produce a list of jobs that I was most suited to but also have the audacity to 'suggest' my best career path.  We all took the test and waited for the results.  Mine came back - my most suited career choice would be...."assistant prison warden".  Not the fully fledged prison warden; but his assistant.  Clearly, I thought, the computer program was not much of a mentor.  And so my desperate search for career mentoring continued right through University to my job at HR Vet.

HR Vet actually had good career progression pathways - especially for someone with little experience, but they lacked the more formal career training to get there.  All mentoring was done purely though watching and learning - mostly without the unsuspecting mentor knowing you were his mentee!  I picked out the things that each individual had, and added them to my repertoire, fostering one guys approach to selling, another persons delivery of speeches, another's sales patter and yet another's awesome way of team building. This made me a valuable commodity, but before any grandiose plans came to fruition HRVet merged into a company called Intervet and after a year of mentoring their own reps in the field, the whole of the ex-HRVet field force was summarily laid off.

Interestingly, it was at this point that the company, (as part of the separation package) paid for and led me to a professional coach.  This guy not only helped rewrite my resume, but helped in interview techniques, how to dress, speak and provide good answers at interviews, but also encouraged me to apply for positions I believed far outranked my beliefs of where I should be on the career ladder. This guy was a genius.  He believed in me, and I started believing in myself. His mentor-ship and coaching provided me with the only positive outcomes in my career. The guy was successful.  I secured a role as Head of Sales and Customer Service in a completely different industry where I was placed in charge of a field force of my own and set loose on the unsuspecting managerial hierarchy above me. Indeed, I still use the same resume format, adjusted of course for each job as he taught me to do, and still remember things that he said like "you can tell the type of person someone is -  by the shoes that he wears".  What is incredible is, that it showed me how powerful a good mentor and coach can be.

Anyway, cutting a long story short, it was a great firm, but they provided no training, no managerial coaching or mentoring, and firmly believed that the business model they had used since the early 60's had made them into the corporate giant they were now, and was likely to carry them forward for the next 40 years too, without changing anything. Actually the only mentor I could have used was the fulfillment of this mantra.  Consequently, I took my only mentor's advice and after two years decided to apply for another job - one again that boosted me up the career ladder further than I thought I should be, but one that I applied all the previously given advice to. 

 I was given the position as National Sales manger for a worldwide company and household name.  These guys loved their employee's.  They instilled so much confidence in everyone from the top down I know that I would have loved just turning up to work there every day; they had coaching programs out the wazoo, everyone was quite literally a mentor to someone else - on a daily basis. They were structured, organized and efficient;  but at this point I had decided I wanted to be a helicopter pilot.  Finally I had found something that I loved so much I really wanted to do it for the rest of my life, so the career path they had set out for me was not going to take hold - in fact the very thought of knowing exactly when and how I would progress to retirement struck me as the most horrible thing in the world.  To me, once I knew where I would be in 20 years, it was like waiting for death, and furthermore, it frustrated me that I couldn't get there sooner and that there was a known ending. I think the possibilities that there was always more excited me in a career, and knowing the endgame did not. No amount of mentoring was going to dissuade me from becoming a pilot.

And now I am a corporate helicopter pilot, flying for the same drug company (via many mergers) that laid me off in the early 1990's, albeit in another country.  I actually love my job, and have recently decided to combine both the things that I know well - management and helicopters.  I am starting to look for a mentor, and a structured coaching program to accelerate me through the aviation department. Hence the reason for this course.  Although the initial signs of receiving the kind of coaching and mentoring described in this weeks readings are faint - I do believe the company is malleable enough to provide these things to someone who knows what they are looking for, and I have every intention of helping them to make the right choices! The one positive mentor I had in my career, enlightened me so powerfully, that it has shaped my career choices, my behavior in the workplace and also my belief in myself.  He (and my parents in a opposite manner) shaped these things so decisively that I know and value the importance of the coach and mentor in ones career and at this stage I desperately need another one.