In this edition of Finish Strong Friday, we will begin a new series exploring various facets of leadership and how to harness their powers effectively. Our initial focus will be on coercive power, examining its persuasive qualities and providing valuable insights on utilizing it positively. Keep tuning in for more!
Key Takeaways To Listen For
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Connect With Us
Master your context with real results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate on His Social Media
In this edition of Finish Strong Friday, we will begin a new series exploring various facets of leadership and how to harness their powers effectively. Our initial focus will be on coercive power, examining its persuasive qualities and providing valuable insights on utilizing it positively. Keep tuning in for more!
Key Takeaways To Listen For
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Connect With Us
Master your context with real results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate on His Social Media
[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
We can still be transformative and use coercive power effectively and judiciously because we can foster respect, values, incentives, all of those, building the relationships based on trust, dialogue, and collaboration rather than authoritarian leadership. Hello my friend, and welcome to this Friday episode of A Call to Leadership. I'm Dr. Nate Salah host, and I am so glad you are here. Every Friday we work on one. Tool for your leadership tool belt, and it's just you and I in the trenches. No co-hosts, no special expert guests. Now that's on Mondays and Wednesdays, but Fridays it's just the two of us. So it's a very special time because we get to talk about some important aspects and how you develop as a leader, how you can aim for greatness in serving others.
[00:00:52]
And I believe that's the high call of leadership to aim for greatness. Don't settle for mediocre. Aim for your very best because when we aim for our very best, when we set the standard, the bar as high as possible, we get everything along the way. So if we set the bar low, that's all we get. But if we set the bar high, what can be? Then we will work and strive to achieve everything we can while we're still here, while we still have breath in our lungs so that we can breathe. And embark on a journey every day because the world needs effective leaders. The world needs to eliminate the leadership crisis, the toxicity and the cancerous, narcissistic leadership that exists among us.
[00:01:44]
You're not that leader. I'm not that leader. We seek to serve first. To serve well. That is the high call I believe of leadership and humankind for that matter. So it's an honor, it's a privilege to be with you. If you're listening today for the first time, I encourage you to, after you listen to this episode, go back, listen to the first six episodes because it's a course on leadership. And if you've been with me through the trenches, hundred episodes plus, thank you. I am truly blessed to have you along with me this day. We embark on a new journey, and it's an interesting journey as we uncover some aspects of leadership that can be considered as difficult to implement sometimes, or considered to be taboo.
[00:02:43]
Sometimes they actually can devastate if they're not used the right way, but we're talking on this new series about power. Now power can be used. It's, the word itself can be even contentious because power can be used to hurt people. It can be used to negatively impact people. It can be used to destroy lives. And of course, that's not the high call of leadership. The high call of leadership is to build, to not self preserve, but to self-sacrifice so that we can help others achieve collective goals. So we're gonna talk about some different, we call bases, social bases of power in this series, and we're gonna look at some different studies dating all the way back to the 1950s by a couple of scholars named French and Raven and so on.
[00:03:36]
We're gonna talk about studies by Cartwright and by Bass and and others, and lots and lots of research. Lots and lots of data on power. We're gonna talk about some real world examples. It's good stuff. So power isn't necessarily a bad thing. Let's start with understanding how power relates to influence, how it relates to leadership, and one of the most effective definitions that I heard actually before I even started my PhD program. I was talking with one of the professors at the university where I was going to attend, and he and I were talking about this idea of power. And he said something very profound about Powery and he connected it with leadership and with influence. He said this, he said, power produces influence and leadership is the capacity to leverage that influence into action.
[00:04:32]
That was Dr. Justin Gandy at Dallas Baptist University. Power produces influence and leadership is the capacity to leverage that influence into action. So you see there's three main parts to this conversation. The one part is power, right? And power in itself is inert unless it has inertia unless we put it into motion. And then once we put into motion, then it becomes influence and leadership. Is the capacity to leverage that. Influence what into action? Because leaders are action-takers. If you haven't heard me say this before, I'll say it again. Leadership is the discovery of influence toward an achievement of shared purpose.
[00:05:24]
That's my definition of leadership. So the third part of that achievement of leaders are achievers. In other words, they go places. They are not stagnant. They are not stationary. You are not stationary. As leader, you must move forward. You must progress. If we don't need change, which progress is change, action is change, then we don't need leaders. But when we do need change and we need change constantly, we need change to continue. To push the envelope forward, to grow, to make new things happen, to achieve far greater than we ever thought possible in our businesses, with our families, in our communities. All of these pieces are moving us into a position not only of forward motion, but of relevance, because if I can't help you solve the problems that are mutual to you, and I.
[00:06:27]
And we have to define those. We have to create those. We have to invent those. We have to discover those. We have to explore and plan and execute those. If I can't do that, then I'm not an effective leader. So on the flip side, when I can, I am. And so you are worthy to lead. When you can discover a better future state, when you can influence others to join alongside of you and create that state, and when you actually achieve your desired goals, which revolve around a shared mutual purpose, it applies universally, and you can find that the very base of that leadership. Is going to be in this area and realm of power. So we're gonna break all this down. We're gonna talk about all these different types of power and how can you can utilize them. Now keep in mind there will be some that are considered very contentious. And actually we're gonna start with that right now.
[00:07:29]
One of these social bases of power that we're gonna start with is this power called Coercive power. It's the power of punishment. It is most likely the most widely used forms of power to exact influence, which then creates motion. And sometimes it's considered leadership, sometimes it's not. And the power of coercion can be a very dangerous power. It can be an effective power. It all depends on how you use it, and so it's very dangerous because it can destroy when it's used in a way that doesn't lead to progress. Now, this is gonna be a very difficult conversation because there's a lot of different factors to this, but we have to talk about it first.
[00:08:22]
Because power seems to be an important topic, but many people don't even really think about like, okay, how do I get my mind around this in leadership so I can be an effective, worthy, serving, transformative leader? We're gonna talk about some ways you can avoid roadblocks and pitfalls because when we start with this power base, which is the punishment power, the coercion power, the reason why it's so easy is because it doesn't require a whole lot of effort to exact. Punishment. It requires effort to exact different kinds of power, and sometimes you wonder what is the most effective means of power. In fact, you can go all the way back to Machiavelli. And if you haven't heard of Machiavelli, Niccolò Machiavelli is a 15th and 16th century philosopher and he wrote a book called The Prince, and it talks about government, and it's a fascinating read.
[00:09:15]
If you haven't read it, I suggest you read it. He breaks down different aspects of power, and he talks a lot about coercive power. He makes the argument, and this is regarding governments and princes, and of course it is related to 15th and 16th century politics in Europe, but it still is resonant today. People still quote Machiavelli today. And people think Machiavelli was some kind of a dystopian criminal. He was simply a philosopher who was explaining the role of government, the role of kings, the role of princes, the role of the government. And he made the argument that it is better to be feared than loved.
[00:09:57]
And the reason he made that argument was, is it was more effective. Fear was more effective, especially in those environments, in leadership, in those kind of areas. Now, why would he say that? Well, he would say that because fear, he believed was a motivator. That if a king or a government entity was soft, if you will, was not enforcing discipline, then chaos would ensue. And there may be some truth to that. We're gonna dig into that. However, it's not the only tool, and sometimes that tool can be used to devastate. In fact, you think about a leader named Joseph Stalin. In Russia and Joseph Stalin used coercive power in, in a heinous way. In fact, he was responsible for, uh, murdering millions of people.
[00:10:50]
And of course, there's others too. Adolf Hitler. In fact, James MacGregor Burns, who I've quoted before, he's a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar from the seventies and eighties. He would not even classify Adolf Hitler as a leader. He classified Adolf Hitler as what he called a power wielder, which is accurate. In fact, according to my definition of leadership, Adolf Hitler would not qualify either because he did not achieve shared purpose. And shared purpose was that Germany would live in security and peace. In fact, during and after World War ii, Germany was in shambles. Germany was a wreck. Germany, to this day, Is not a nation that ever amounted or equated to what the people had hoped of its leader.
[00:11:45]
And so Adolf Hitler, in my definition, was not an effective leader, at least, and McGregor's version, he's not even a leader at all. And so power wielding and especially the coercive power wielding, can be very dangerous, however, It's not only dangerous, it's dangerous when sometimes we effectively utilize it. I'm gonna talk about how it's dangerous and how it can be utilized in, in a positive way. Of course, we think about how it could be effective in a positive way when we are looking at perhaps rules and regulations in a governmental institution. With law enforcement, right? The power of a law enforcement official to incarcerate someone, to put someone in prison to detain them, right?
[00:12:32]
That's the power of punishment. Perhaps you are a victim where you have an issue where somehow, some way you are in trouble and the police came and they put someone else in handcuffs because maybe you were being assaulted, right? I dunno if that's ever happened to you, but it's never happened to me. But if it has, you know that you're thankful for the power of coercion, of punishment because you maybe have been in a brave, dangerous situation, right? The power of coercion works well in that situation. It works well when you are threatened and you need someone to protect you. This is important. Another uh, example is perhaps military. Think about the military action is considered an ethical use, what we call it, of coercive power. Now, of course you can debate the idea, but if it's taken as a last resort to protect national interest, right, and it follows international laws of engagement, this is the idea of when coercive power is best use, at least from a governmental perspective.
[00:13:35]
We're gonna move into business and family. So it has to be applied, what I would say in accordance with just a dually established legal system, right? It has to be systematized and it has to be not arbitrary, but rather it follows a set of system of processes that ensures that all citizens, all people are treated fairly under the law, and even non-citizens for that matter. So this is how it's used effectively, right? With diplomacy, even negotiation. It shouldn't always lead straight to punishment. Uh, it should, in fact, I think in some ways, The course of power should be the last resort because it has negative consequences. But it happens, right? I mean, think about internationally sanctioned when a country perhaps is violating international law, right?
[00:14:28]
That's coercive power. We're trying to end conflict. We're trying to promote peace. I mean, on the other hand, it has negative implications, right? When leaders overuse it, when they abuse their coercive power, not only leads to suffering. It can also undermine trust. You think about that in leadership, coercion can erode trust, it can destroy respect. It can even lead to resentment. The easiest and the most common way. Is threaten of firing someone. Right? And I haven't researched this. I need to research this. I heard it's been said that the firing someone comes from the French firing squad. So it's very violent because what happens in a firing squad, right?
[00:15:13]
People line up to shoot and kill one person. So it's very devastating, even a terminology. And that threat, which leads to possible fear is real. And I've had to learn over the years that when you terminate someone's employment to be very sensitive and to do it in a way that is judicious and that has given as many opportunities as possible within the mission, the vision, and the values of the organization within the set of principles and standards. That's why it's so important to start with a set of standards that are not arbitrary. But are that are objective. Because when we start with objective standards, that helps us to determine at what level we must use the power of punishment. And so when I look at letting someone go, I look at it as if I am freeing your future.
[00:16:15]
So I've turned it from a punishment perspective to a freedom perspective. And you say, Nate, that's just a fancy way to say something that's still hard. Absolutely. But it's not just a fancy way because I know that in my organization as a leader, I have to set you up for success. And if I can't set you up for success in that role or in this organization as a whole, I have to free your future because your future is not going anywhere. Here. In fact, it's more of punishment to keep you in that position than it is to release you from it. And it's difficult. I don't take it lightly and I don't know that anyone should. However, that's how I believe that we go down that road, at least the way I go down that road when I'm letting someone go.
[00:17:05]
Sometimes you don't have the option to slowly and judiciously remove someone. Sometimes there's a threat within the organization. Perhaps there's a harassment issue, right? And you've gotta deal with that right away. You've gotta protect those individuals who are threatened in your organization, whether it's your business, whether it's your community, whether it's your home. I've had situations in the past where I've had to take action, take coercive power into the usage as a leader to create influence in my own family environment. When there's been a threat I've had to do with friendships, I've had to break up a fight with friends. I've had to get involved to enact some level of coercive power so that I could eliminate.
[00:17:55]
A threat that was going to hurt people. Those are the ways that we can use coercive tactics to build rather than destroy, because it can be a short term effective method to eliminating an issue quickly, but it's not the end all be all. In fact, it can destroy us. It can destroy trust. It can destroy teamwork, integrity, productivity can go down right? And the reason why I say this is because, let's kick it back to a business environment. In a business environment, there are situations where coercion may be necessary. Right. What did I just say about ethical violations and things like that? Legal issues. Just a system of consequences, right On just processes.
[00:18:42]
That's essential for a business to have safety boundaries that are healthy, and sometimes it's also. Necessary to apply pressure. We are needed to enforce some kind of compliance with legal obligations, best practices, right? Because we have to protect our stakeholder's interests. That must be protected, but we have to be cautious because there's limits to using coercive power, especially in a business environment, right? Because if we continue to enact coercive power as our primary source of power, We can get all kinds of problems in in an organization, right? You could get fear, you can get defiance. People could feel threatened at all times. Oh, are you gonna get fired, right? Am I gonna get fired? Am I gonna get demoted?
[00:19:28]
Am I not gonna get that raise? Right? When people feel threatened, they don't feel motivated, and so it's so important to focus on shaping a sustainable and inclusive workplace. And we're gonna talk about this as we get into this series on power, because there's all kinds of power that nurtures learning, nurtures innovation, right? Aligning our values with the individuals and the group goals because we are transformative leaders, right? Now we can still be transformative and use coercive power effectively, indu, because we can foster respect, values, incentives, all of those, building the relationships based on trust and dialogue and collaboration rather than authoritarian leadership.
[00:20:13]
Uh, because we can do that and still employ. Uh, coercion, or it's just a nasty word, right? Or punishment. When we learn how to manage performance standards, while we cultivate that healthy culture to really capture all our stakeholders aspirations. So the goal should be create environments where employees thrive by embracing their unique identity. So when we're applying correctly, it's a balanced leadership approach, right? IT approach. We want to guarantee quality, proactivity, sustained satisfaction for all stakeholders, and we wanna develop our institutions long term. So it requires some level of a coercion because people have to know that there are boundaries.
[00:21:02]
And when those boundaries are breached, there are consequences to all of our actions. Say for, I had an employee years ago. Believe it or not, who was an alcoholic and, uh, was drunk on the job. And I called this employee out and I said, I think you're drunk, and this employee denied it. And I said, well, would you be okay if we did a quick test to just confirm I didn't do a breathalyzer or anything like that? I pulled the old. Put your head back and close your eyes and see if you can touch your nose, right? Cops used to do that to me when I was drinking and driving and unfortunately I did drink and drive and, and I should have went to jail for it, which would've been what? Coercive punishment. Why is that important?
[00:21:45]
Why is that good for society? Because I had no right to be behind that wheel with my vision, with my driving impaired. I could hurt somebody. Same thing in my accounting firm. This certified public accountant had an issue where could not perform the duties effectively, and I asked the individual to get help and the individual refused. And so I did not renew the contract and uh, I had to do that. That was coercive punishment to protect the interest, the mission, the vision, the values of all of my stakeholders, because an organization is bigger than one person. It's bigger than any one person. It's bigger than me. It's bigger than you because it revolves around the vision, the mission, and the values.
[00:22:38]
Those are the hallmarks, the centerpieces, those are the cornerstones of the organization. And so when they're breached, sometimes we have to use punishment. Now, what about in a family? Well, when I was a kid, coercive punishment was probably number one. Numero uno on my mama's list. Single mom. Not that all single moms are like this, but my mom is from another country, right? Overseas Mediterranean, and mamas don't play over there. I looked at my mom funny. Disrespectfully. I was getting a shoe across the room and man, she could nail me from 30 feet, like it was a laser-guided missile flip-flop slippers, whatever it was. And she beat me in front of one of my friends once. I was like, mom, please just don't do that.
[00:23:29]
Don't beat me in front of my buddy. But some people have experienced this, and of course, I'm, this is not a conversation around spankings and and whatnot. Did I learn from them? Could there have been another way, perhaps? However, um, I can tell you this, I can tell you that I learned not to look at my mom. Funny again. She taught me that, but she also taught me, you know, there were some areas when I was dis, she taught me respect, most importantly, respect through some level of coercion, fear of punishment. And she also taught me to be disciplined and work hard through that as well. On the other side of it, and I'm gonna talk about it on their episode, when it came to mistakes that were perhaps unintentional, then my mom had generous grace on me.
[00:24:20]
And there were many times where I made mistakes. One time I, we lived on a farm and we lived across the street from a golf course, and so lots of golf balls would come into our yard and I'd pick 'em all up before I mowed the grass, by the way, with a human-powered mower, one of the old kinds with had a round blade and it went in a big circle and you had to push it. Anyway, that's how I got strong when I was nine years old, and so, I had a one golf club. I had a one-wood, and I would stand at the edge of our house and hit golf balls. Well, the problem was I was hitting them the wrong directions, not that I should have hit 'em anyway. Instead of hitting 'em out into the street, back into the golf course, which I, again, I shouldn't have even hit them.
[00:25:05]
I was hitting them toward the house. Well, lo and behold, one of 'em, you guessed it, went right through the front window and I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm toast. Coercion is coming, punishment is coming. I should have never done this, right? She was about to influence me, but she didn't do anything. She said, just don't do it again. And guess what? I never did it again. Why? Because I knew that coercive punishment was on the way and it was too much of a threat for me. On the other side of it, here's the thing about influence Friend. When you are being influenced, You have to perceive that that power is valuable to you because to be influenced, okay, this is important because there has to be the perception for the power to be effectively transformed into influence to be leveraged.
[00:26:00]
Remember what you said about the original definition, power produces influence and leadership is the ability or the capacity to leverage that influence into action. Now, it only produces influence when the power is perceived. As though it's valuable. So if I didn't care about the spanking, if I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna take it. Guess what? That power is ineffective to change my behavior, right? To change my actions. The same thing in t Emmen Square China, right? People are willing to die in that square for what they believe. So that power has no effect. On the change on their behavior, it's so important to understand that the power must be perceived in such a way that it has value, because if something else has value, more than that power, no amount of coercion, no amount of punishment will change my direction, my behavior.
[00:26:54]
That's important. It's important to know as we get into this, right, so family dynamics as we close this episode, coercive power in families can be harmful. They can be good. I'm gonna talk about some other ones just as we close because it's so important for me to get this out. Coercive power in families can be devastating Some forms of coercive power. So the harsh physical disciplining what I consider what my mom doing as harsh physical discipline. Not really. I mean, yeah, I got hit with a flip flop. I mean, did it really hurt? It was more embarrassing than anything, but, but there's abuse. There's real abuse. I mean, I have people who I talk with, people in my own family who have had abuse in their family. And it's traumatizing. It's heartbreaking. I mean, when our son was little, we would have all different kinds of reminders and we attempted to be extremely mindful of exacting, coercive punishment, power, and love. And when I say that in love, we call them reminders. So if our son did something he shouldn't have done, maybe perhaps.
[00:28:06]
Was disrespectful or maybe he, he back talked or he's hit a kid In school, we would do a timeout, so he'd just sit in a chair, each's appropriate a minute for every year, something like that. And then there was one where we had him to stand against the wall. Sometimes we would have him right. What he did wrong. Sometimes it was just as simple as, let's try that again. So he would make a mistake. We called him wise and foolish choices. And so I would ask if he had a foolish choice, and I would say, son, was that a foolish choice or was that a wise choice? And he'd say, of course, four or five years old, that was a foolish choice. Daddy, let's try it again so that you can get a wise choice, right? So his punishment, if you will, was simply doing it again. And so that he could learn better habits, better ways, right? Every so often arson was pretty stubborn. In fact, I bought a book called Setting Limits for Your Strong-Willed Child. I recommend it.
[00:29:09]
It was actually very good because it helped me to understand what, how a strong-willed child, at least in some cases, thinks so that I didn't take offense to it. Because sometimes when we take offense, Personally, our anger wells up and we can't make sound judgment when we are angry, right? I've never made my best choices when I was angry. Ever. We've heard halt, hungry, angry, tired, lonely. I don't try to make decisions when any of those four things are active. At least try not to because that's where aggression comes in. If I can stay objective and say, Okay. What are the steps necessary to have behavior change without having a long-term issues like fear, anxiety in children?
[00:29:56]
Right. I don't wanna set unhealthy precedence of how conflict should be resolved. It can lead to serious problems later in life. There were some swats. But they were like the last resort after so many soft reminders to know, to ask my son, you know, you've gotta see some change. And so they were heartbreaking and a hug and love and it's like, man, you know, in hindsight would I do it differently? Probably I know a lot more today than I know now. Uh, then I did then, and that's just physical. There's also a verbal abuse friend of coercive power in families, family members using threatening language insults as a means of course of control, right? It can cause emotional harm, damage to self-esteem, it can lead to resentment and just a breakdown of trust in a family.
[00:30:48]
We've gotta be careful about that. I've seen that man. I've seen, and I've done my best. Not to use verbal abuse and uh, to not use threatening language or insults. I remember actually when my son was little, I, I gave him an insult, man. I was so quick to change it. I think we were, he did something I said, you know, that wasn't very smart, was it? And I just saw his countenance just drop down. I, I might have mentioned this in another episode. I said, you know what, just as quick as I could, I said, son, I got down on her knee cuz he was a little, you know what wasn't smart? What Daddy just said? What Daddy just said wasn't smart. You're smart. I'm sorry.
[00:31:25]
And he just gave me a big bear hug. He said, daddy, I No, you're sorry. It's okay. So even if we've perhaps misused the power of punishment verbally, there's still time to apologize. There's still time. So we must do that so that we don't have those strain relationships. We don't have the damage of the trust, right? We want a healthy communicating, problem solving family. Wanna encourage positive reinforcement methods. We're gonna talk about that on our next episode. Praise reward, so on, right? Explain why behaviors are unacceptable. Offer alternatives for the child to emulate. We're gonna talk about all that. So open communication, all of that is a way to manage behavior. But when we use it judiciously, when we use it in a very last resort, in a way that is not going to cause. Major issues, then we're okay. And so I'll give you an example. The car, my son's 16 years old, right? We've talked about certain behavioral measures have to be met. Certain heart measures have to be met to have access to the vehicle.
[00:32:35]
Because this is a death machine. It's a three to 4,000 pound death machine. And unless I've seen enough maturity to get behind the wheel of that machine, right, we're not doing it right. And so there's the fear that I may not get to drive unless I exhibit a level of maturity, a level of discipline, a level of discernment, a level of obviously ability and capacity, then that's off the table, right? So in some ways it is important and it's okay to use the punishment. Punishment is you're not gonna get to use that car, right? Because it's a privilege. Because it protects everyone on the road and it protects you too. That's when I think we can use coercive power for good. Now, this was a long episode, right?
[00:33:30]
Because we're warming it up. I am just so thankful for you. I'm so thankful that we've had time together to discuss this very important, kick it off with a foundational base of power called coercion, and I hope you've. Been enlightened to some different ways that coercion is positive and coercion can be negative because it's waiting. Actually, this can be an entire series all in of itself and all. I'm sure we'll go through it again. Well, my friend, we did it again. I'm so glad you joined me on this episode of A Call to Leadership. If you've been with me on the show listening in, you'll know this, but if you're new, you may not know that I created a free course for you that you don't need.
[00:34:15]
To provide an email address. You don't need to go anywhere. But to stay right here in the podcast, I created the very first six episodes of the podcast because I wanted you to have the kind of value that you need to take advantage of to thrive as a leader. So we haven't done that yet. Listen to episodes one through six and I'll see you on the next episode. I'm Dr. Nate Salah and this is A Call to Leadership.