Northouse (2016) defines leadership as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (p. 6). I really appreciate that this text refers to leadership as a\u00a0process rather than as an individual’s traits or characteristics (Northouse, 2016, p. 6). My experience as being a leader in situations have generally been a natural process where I emerged as a leader because of the applicable strengths and skill set I brought to the task at hand. The power given to me in these situations would have been what is described by Northouse \u00a0(2016) as “personal power” (p. 10) and more specifically, “expert power” (p. 10). While I find that I often associate the term\u00a0power with a negative connotations, I appreciate being given expert power because it shows a sense of trust and respect from my peers, or in this case, followers. In my experience, influence comes naturally when your followers have agreed that you are the best fit leader for the group.<\/p>\n
A recent experience for me where I became the leader of a group was when we were planning my good friend’s bridal shower. I was one of the bridesmaids in a group of five and during the planning process, I naturally emerged as the leader because of my past experience with planning other bridal and baby showers. We were a small task group with the common goal of planning a shower for our good friend. The process was very interactive in the sense that while the other girls came to me for advice or instruction on how tasks should be carried out, it was also important for me to learn what their expectations were for the shower and to incorporate them into the vision that I had. Even when we faced obstacles or differences, it was easy for the group to work out the issues because we could look to the ultimate goal of planning a beautiful bridal shower and realign our priorities accordingly. From this experience, I believe that a clear common goal is vital to a group’s success and for a leader to be able to lead effectively. Goal attainment is the main motivation for members to continue to remain active in a group and to be influenced by the leader.<\/p>\n
My question is: What are the differences between a leader’s power and influence in a group? Are they dependent on each other or can they be mutually exclusive?<\/em><\/p>\n References:<\/strong><\/p>\n Northouse, P. G. (2016).\u00a0Leadership: Theory and Practice<\/em>. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Northouse (2016) defines leadership as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (p. 6). I really appreciate that this text refers to leadership as a\u00a0process rather than as an individual’s traits or characteristics (Northouse, 2016, p. 6). My experience as being a leader in situations have generally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-unit-1","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/ruthleong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}