In my organization, it is very important
to develop and use personal sources of influence and power to lead team
members. I believe that my strongest sources of influence stem from my
expertise and personal attraction. I enjoy becoming an expert with the
technical details of my job and the jobs of those who I lead, and I gain this
knowledge to build trust, respect, and credibility from my team. The more I
know about the “business” aspect of my team’s job duties, the more I can lead
them to make good decisions, and the less I have to tell them what to do
because they trust I am using my knowledge of their job to make these decisions.
Personal attraction is also a strength of mine, as this comes from my
relationship building skills. I build relationships with my team so that we
work with one another, not them for me. I know them and connect with them on a
personal level enough so that the majority of our conversations revolve around
personal matters and subjects. By doing this it makes it easy to have a
difficult conversation regarding work, along with building trust and friendship.
I believe that my genuineness and
strong ability to connect and build relationships with others helps me embody
the characteristics of likeable people, the strongest ones being supporting an
open, honest, and loyal relationship, enduring sacrifices if the relationship should
demand them, and engaging in social exchanges necessary to sustain a
relationship. The majority of my day at work is engaging my team and motivating
them to succeed at their job tasks. I do this by building on the relationships
that I have already formed with them, engaging and inspiring, and making them
feel valued. They know their jobs well enough so that I do not have to watch
over them, which comes from the trust that we built with one another.
I think I do a good job of influencing
both my team and my leader. I use the same influence techniques with my boss
through relationship building and technical knowledge. Our strong friendship
and mutual respect for one another allows me to take on projects and make
decisions without having my manager involved because he trusts me to make the
right one. He also gives me the freedom to guide my own development and those
of my team because of his trust in my decision making and ability to help
others. I think my boss and I have much of the same characteristics regarding
work, influence, and power so we connect real well on a personal and
professional level. This makes it fairly easy to be influenced by him and for
me to influence him to work the way I want to. My boss does not have to use his
positional power to influence me because of our relationship and mutual
respect, which also benefits me because of the freedom he allows me in almost
every aspect of decision making and leading my team.
