This paper examines the fundamental challenge leaders face in directing organizational members toward shared goals. It analyzes influence as a bidirectional process requiring mutual interaction, distinguishes between formal and informal influence types, and introduces the concepts of legitimate and illegitimate authority. The paper then explores three primary mechanisms through which influence operates: compliance, identification, and internalization. The analysis concludes that sustainable leadership effectiveness depends most heavily on building credibility and internalization rather than relying solely on formal authority or compliance-based tactics.
The central problem facing leaders in organizations is getting others to do what is needed to complete the organization's goals. This is an intricate process, since the objectives as well as the funds for accomplishing them are often unclear, subject to negotiation, and can change over time. A leader's boss (or bosses), peers, and subordinates will have ideas about what should be done and how to do it and are likely to try to have their ideas heard. Leaders are only human and do not know everything, so they need to be able to adjust their views when others make good points.
Once goals are determined, leaders or managers must find a way to create the conditions that will cause (or allow) subordinates to work hard and direct that work toward organizational ends. This may call for many different kinds of influence behavior aimed in many directions: negotiating a larger budget, getting other departments to deliver accurate and timely information, providing vision, direction, or training to subordinates, simplifying or complicating work, obtaining a deserved salary increase for someone, and so forth. All these activities—up, sideways, and down—ultimately are aimed at getting others, especially subordinates, to do what is necessary to accomplish successfully the work of the system being led.
As countless leaders have discovered countless times, this is all much easier said than done. Subordinates don't always know how to work well, don't always work as hard as necessary, and don't automatically care about the unit's or organization's success. The fact is that leaders are interdependent with many others, especially their followers. They have impact on and in turn are affected by those with whom they must work. The key element in all this is the influence the leader has on others and the influence they have in return. For this reason, we can think of leadership as a process in which the involved parties influence one another in particular ways. Influence is any act or potential act that affects the behavior of another person or persons.
To understand influence properly, we must recognize several critical implications of this concept. First of all, influence cannot happen in isolation from others; it takes at least two to "tangle," just as with interpersonal relationships. The person who wants to influence must find someone to influence. Secondly, if you think about it carefully, you will see that only in the most extreme situations could one person in an influence transaction have all the influence—that is, affect the other's behavior without being affected in turn by the other's reaction. The worker who leaps to attention when the boss gives an order, the secretary who becomes upset when feeling that a request to work late is unreasonable—these individuals exert influence on the person trying to influence them.
Cooperating humbly, for example, affects the person who is asking for cooperation and "pulls" more of the same from them. As Gandhi showed so well in India, humble, passive noncooperation can have a profound influence on the behavior of the tyrant, allowing further exploitation and mistakes since the directors were not resisted.
We must be careful, then, to remember that influence only succeeds in moving others in desired directions when the net influence—the amount of A's influence on B compared with B's influence on A—is greater. In the classroom or on the job, students and workers can be less or more influential than teachers and supervisors. Leadership is net influence in a direction desired by the person possessing it.
To understand the process of influence better, we need to look at various types of influence. One important aspect of influence is whether or not it is formal or informal, part of a job's definition or acquired in some other way. Formal influence is influence prescribed for the holder of an "office" or position. The coach of a team has formal influence in initiating practice sessions, selecting starting players and substitutes, and so forth. Informal influence is influence not prescribed for the office holder but nonetheless affecting other members of the social system. On the same team, for example, there may be several players who advise other players and even the coach on such matters as techniques and strategy against opponents. Though by position the players have no special influence allotted or assigned to them, their knowledge and/or personal attractiveness and magnetism give them influence anyway. Influence based on special knowledge is called expert influence; influence based on personal charm is called charisma.
In addition to the distinction between formal and informal influence (that is, assigned or unassigned), we need to add the concepts of legitimacy and illegitimacy. Legitimate influence is influence exerted by a person who is seen as having the right to do so by those influenced. In other words, legitimate influence is accepted as power by the person being influenced. Conversely, illegitimate influence is influence exerted by a person not seen as having the right to do so by the person being influenced. The basis for considering an influencer as legitimate may be (1) a positive assessment of his or her personal qualities such as competence, experience, and age and/or (2) the acceptance of the process (such as election, appointment, or automatic succession) by which the person acquired a role calling for the exercise of influence. Legitimacy will usually be seen to be limited to areas within the scope of the system and its goals. For example, most people will believe that the boss may legitimately give orders about how to sell a machine but not about where to go on vacation. But within the scope of the organization, orders, requests, and directions will be seen as proper when they come from someone who has acquired an office by an approved process or has personal qualities considered appropriate.
On the other hand, even in the army—where soldiers are taught to "salute the uniform, not the man," suggesting that mere appointment to rank guarantees legitimacy—a soldier may refuse to follow direct orders under a variety of circumstances. For example, if the commanding officer has disruptive personality characteristics or has acquired his office in objectionable ways such as perceived favoritism, there may be rebellion. Furthermore, when influence is not even seen as acquired legitimately, soldiers and other subordinates have many ways of subverting any order from a person whose influence they do not accept, such as dragging their heels or by following literally all rules in the books. Going passive is a common way of resisting what is seen as illegitimate influence.
Since having influence does not insure legitimacy nor does having informal influence insure illegitimacy, it is useful to combine the two categories into four possible combinations. By looking at the combinations, we can see the ways in which influence is exercised. Formal-legitimate influence is what is usually meant when people say "the boss has the authority" to enforce particular behaviors. It is the influence which is both prescribed for the holders of an office in a social system and seen as his or her right to exert by other members of it. Many leadership activities in organizations involve formal-legitimate influence by someone who has been assigned a role with supervisory responsibilities and who can use organizational means to reward or punish subordinates. The right to hire, fire, promote, and adjust pay reinforces this kind of influence.
There are three processes by which people are influenced: compliance, identification, and internalization. The very same behavior can stem from any one or more of these processes. Compliance amounts to doing something because of the costs of not doing it. You go along with the "order" on the outside, but inside you may feel resentment or resignation. Any leader's impact can rest on compliance, especially where there is fear of punishment or aspiration to reap some prize; this may be the only way in which an informal-illegitimate manager can employ influence. Where compliance is operating, leaders will be successful only as long as they have control over whatever it is followers need or want.
Identification happens when you are influenced by someone because of the appeal of that person, because he or she is either likable and has charisma or embodies something to which you aspire. Formal, designated leaders or managers often exert influence because subordinates identify with them. They may also be legitimized by their subordinates through the same process.
Identification with a charismatic manager can dramatically affect performance for people who want to trust in lofty goals which will somehow be ennobling. When such people see a leader as having a grand vision of what is possible and offering specific means for achieving their dreams, they identify with the leader and dedicate themselves to the cause. This can lead to extraordinary efforts by followers on behalf of the leader and thus unusually high organizational performance. That is why effective high-level executives spend so much time creating a vision about where they see their organization going and then telling and retelling it to colleagues, subordinates, and outsiders.
Internalization, the third kind of influence, happens when leaders have the necessary expertise and values to be credible to their followers. The leader's opinions are seen as valid, to be trusted. The effect is that followers internalize the leader's opinions, thus giving full legitimization to the leader. Ultimately, the most successful managers are those whose influence is based on credibility.
"Maximizing effectiveness by building trust and internalized commitment"
You’re 94% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 1 section.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.