How do leaders influence others? What are their sources of power?

The influence of the leaders comes from their personalities. The charisma factor of the leadership includes the influence outcomes. The leaders who have positive personality that derives others to copy them and their traits have a more influence on their workplace environment and followers.

There are many occurs of power that add into the influence of the leadership in an organization. These sources of power include the expert, positional, reward related, coercive, personal and informational powers.

The expert power is the leader ability to insert his significant domain knowledge in a certain areas. For instance, the leaders of accounts with fine knowledge and experience of the accountancy and financial matters will have influence. The positional power of the leader is understood in terms of the position of authority held by the leader. For instance, the position of CEO and VP hold influence and power. The reward power suggests that a leader is able to give and take away rewards from the followers. For instance, the leaders’ ability influences the follower’s behavior by awarding them with bonuses, high compensation and perks.

The coercive power means that the leader have the perception of the threat created in the environment that plays as influence tool. The followers in this case fear the punishments prominently and may not lead to a positive behavioral outcome. Fear is not something that leads to positive performance in all cases. The personal power is understood in terms that the person who is leader comes from an influential background. The influence in this case is also gain by persuasion where the leader only has to show his expectations with the followers and they would follow it (Traversi, 2007). The informational power holds a great deal of influence since the leadership known more than the followers and has the control of decision in the better direction, the followers are somewhat dependent on the r leadership to direct them and lead them to the targets.