Power personal

I ve learned that setting boundaries is so important to my health. It s an important part of what keeps me centered and in touch with my personal power. Women are taught to be givers, to put their boundaries out too far. By doing that we betray ourselves and give away our personal power. We re afraid to say no, afraid to protect ourselves for fear that we will be rejected or abandoned. We wind up giving away too much of ourselves and feeling victimized. That throws us out of balance. 

U.S. Senator John Glenn is also an American national hero. He was the first man to orbit the earth way back in 1962. He wasn t a one hit wonder. He went on to hold a seat in the United States Senate and then go BACK into space near his 77th birthday. Do you think he has ambition, confidence and personal power Check out his t-bars and think about his success. We could all learn a thing or two about success from Mr. John Glenn. 

How to influence people to do what you want and get events to go in the direction you want. Here the central dilemma is to know how far you can rely upon your personal power as opposed to formal organizational authority and sanctions. 

A great deal of what you have to do as a manager and as a leader requires you to exert power. This chapter looks at the nature of your personal power and how you can use it to ... 

This chapter considers issues in using this power. Particularly, it looks at how your inner and leadership powers, discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, and your more diffuse organizational powers, discussed in Chapters 6 and 7, coalesce in your overall personal power . 

Elements of personal power that need to be drawn upon for a project journey ... 

The sources of your personal power and its use in directing your projects and... 

The basis of managers and leaders power, authority and influence, on the one hand, and the reasons people have for complying or following on the other, have been extensively explored by writers and researchers on organizational behaviour, and there many books available on the subject. The focus here, by contrast, is on the basis of your personal power eind how you can develop smd use it. 

TTie need to use personal power should not be equated solely with innovation. The innovatory manager cannot operate without it the non-innovatory manager may not be effective without it. 

From the perspective of a manager seeking to achieve an objective, your personal power Is the engine that takes you on your project journeys from A to B. The basis of this power lies very much In the strength of your determination to achieve the goals you set yourself It Is the resultant of the forces that drive you forward and the forces that hold you back. 

A guide to analysing these forces, in the form of a series of questions relevant to any project journey, is presented In ngure 8.1. Your answers will tell you much about how motivated you will be to exert personal power to reach your Intended destination, and thus what personal power you will in fact have. 

Your personal power can be seen as a function of how you manage your psychology for your journey from A, where you are now, to point B, your desired future state. 

Box 1 in the diagram, working through others to achieve your ends is probably what first comes into people s minds when thinking about power, emd is where most discussion of power and authority is focused. It is what Kanter was referring to in mobilizing people . This aspect of personal power has implicitly been covered in the course of the preceding two chapters. 

We come now to the third box in Figure 8.2, preparing yourself to use power. This refers to the mental and psychological preparation that you may need to make in order to exert your personal power. Management consultant and counsellor George W. Watts has described personal power as being a function of singleness of purpose and lack of impediments (1993 107). That succinct summary touches the essence. 

Mapping your intentions along the lines indicated in Figure 8.3 would enable you to rehearse the exercise of your personal power in your mind prior to putting it into force. This awareness in Itself can be a contributor to your personal power. Apart from being a useful bit of action planning, it can give you a sense of your power to influence the events that lie ahead of you. There is power in intention. 

In the absence of impediments, your personal power should come naturally into play. Exerting personal power is what we do whenever we strive to attain a purpose. 

The point about these kinds of blocking patterns is that as long as you remain locked into them your personal power is diminished. 

Your personal power is in practice, as already noted, the result of both push and pull factors. The push factors are the problems that you want to solve, that are making the present state of affairs unsatisfactory and make you want to Improve things. The pull factors are to do with your vision of the future, which you may hold quite independently of any problems that are making the present uncomfortable. 

Writers on personal power, for example Fritz and Covey who were cited in Chapter 2, tend to emphasize the pull factors - having a purpose, vision or mission. The proposition is that commitment to purpose will generate in you the power to realize It. You will find the energy you need and will be prepared to take the necessary risks. Obstacles will draw out your ingenuity and you will recover from setbacks and you will not be diverted by events and your purpose will remain a priority. It will become shared by others. 

Power is notorious for its abuse. Personal power, as opposed to organizational power, leaves little scope for abuse. Collab-... 

The approach to power being put forward here is therefore essenti ly transformational . Transformational leadership was explained in Chapter 3 as gaining compliance by means of getting others to change their viewpoint, attitudes or beliefs. This concept, which has been developed extensively by Noel Tichy and Mary Ann Devanna (1986), is equally applicable to the use of personal power. 

Personal power is not a set of attributes or personal qualities. It is what you do in order to get things done through people. Moreover, personal power and group power are far from incompatible. It was suggested earlier that an... 

As project leaders they can be most effective in securing cooperation and resources. They are usually good negotiators. The risk is that they use their personal power for their own ends rather than the common good - that they play political games. 

For increased personal power, intellectual understanding, sharpened insight into self and culture, improvement of life situation, accelerated learning, professional growth. 

Legitimate, reward, and coercive powers are powers of position, or formal power. Expert and charismatic powers are considered informal or personal powers, derived from personal interactions and not by virtue of position. 

To increase organizational power, successful leaders must develop their own personal power and be effective implementers. Power and influence are the tools required to get things done. The following strategies should be considered in managing with power ... 

Suddenly I walk out to the bag and stamp on it Gasps come forth involuntarily. People jump. Their faces show a rapid procession of emotions. Sometimes they complain about my cruelty. Many people report they felt a physical pain in their body when I smashed the bag. Many are as shocked as iff had physically hit them. But they get the point. It is all too easy to give the sense of identity to anything, and thereby give away some of our personal power. 

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