Power Players

From new hires to seasoned managers, all employees benefit from understanding how
their power style.
Maggie Craddock
May 15, 2011
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Understanding the link between an employees personal history and his or her professional
performance can make or break an individuals career. Whats more, cracking this code at the
group level can contribute to the rise or fall of an entire corporate culture. It is possible to foster a
more innovative and self-aware organizational culture while simultaneously giving employees at
all levels the tools they need to execute their responsibilities effectively while reconditioning
how they handle conflict at work.
Diversity executives can use the Power Grid methodology to identify an individual employees
capabilities. From new hires to seasoned managers, all employees can benefit from
understanding how their power style impacts their organizational effectiveness.
Since culture often trickles down from the top, it can be beneficial to work with a senior
management team that grasps how their habits of giving and taking power create implicit
organizational norms and foster accountable leadership. From a recruitment perspective, training
programs that encourage agility in the way employees respond to each others power style
promote a collaborative culture. Perhaps most important, middle managers who must constantly
juggle responsibilities up, down and across an organization can benefit from learning how their
power styles may enhance their productivity, and how their less constructive power reflexes can
undermine their effectiveness and lead to career disruptions.

The Power Grid

Whether they are gaining it or losing it, peoples responses to power on the job arent always
logical. The Health and Safety Laboratory in the U.K., which was founded to protect people from
hazards at work, released a 2006 study, Bullying at Work: A Review of the Literature. This
study, which highlighted exposure to irrational behavior on the job as a safety risk to employees,
spawned a new interest in the link between human emotion and workplace behavior. Dan Ariely,
professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, added to this discussion with his book,
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.
Power plays on the job, such as turf wars and takeovers, can cause such strong emotional
reactions that even highly intelligent people report days when they can barely think at all. So, if
logic isnt running the show, whats driving employees behavior on the job? Peoples
professional reactions often stem from their automatic instincts toward power. These instincts,
which can kick in faster than the speed of thought, are often rooted in behaviors internalized in
childhood prior to the capacity for individual discernment.
Both the emotional and behavioral responses many professionals have to the give and take of
power in organizations are frequently rooted in the ways they were conditioned to deal with their
first authority figures family caregivers. Having employees reflect on early experiences in
their family systems can help clarify their signature power styles at work. When employees are
grappling with power plays on the job, their internal emotional reactions and external behavioral
responses can be the building blocks that shape the foundation of their professional power styles.
An individuals relationship with power often falls into one of four categories: pleaser, charmer,
commander or inspirer.
In the Power Grid, internal emotional drives are measured on the y-axis. These emotional
reflexes can range from seeking trust at one end of the spectrum to reacting out of fear at the
other. People who operate near the trust end tend to comply with others when they feel included
and appreciated a high percentage of the time. In contrast, people who operate closer to the fear
end avoid full disclosure and frequently attempt to foster a sense of urgency in others to get their
needs met.
The x-axis characterizes the behavioral style an individual gravitates toward in order to influence
others. People who operate near the informal end of the x-axis prefer one-on-one interactions
with others. In contrast, people who operate closer to the formal end tend to work with systems
to further their ambitions.

The Power Grid provides a framework to help leaders understand the interplay of internal
emotional reactions and external behavioral responses that people may have been conditioned to
default to as power ebbs and flows on the job.
Each quadrant can be a teaching device to identify how the building blocks of emotional and
behavioral forces come together to exemplify different power styles. However, beware of
categorizing ones own power style or that of a colleague or direct report too starkly. Many
working with the Power Grid realize the strengths that have taken them to the top exemplify the
most effective traits associated with more than one power style. In contrast, the blind spots that
can sabotage careers may represent the more rigid and reactive aspects of another power style
altogether. A deeper insight into the potential combinations of these power styles will enable a
diversity leader to operate and make decisions with more agility and to draw from a wider range
of strategic responses.
Further, the Power Grid can be incorporated with other instruments, such as Myers-Briggs or
FIRO-B. For example, while the Myers-Briggs assessment can give people a valuable snapshot
of their most predominant operating style, it provides little insight into how an individuals
personal history has shaped his or her habitual responses. By using the Power Grid in
conjunction with other tools, employees can develop deeper insight on how to incorporate the
results into an action plan for developing more agile and effective responses on the job.
The Four Power Quadrants
The Pleaser: The pleaser power style is exemplified by individuals who wield power by
anticipating other peoples needs and connecting with them at a personal level. Pleasers often
rise to positions of power in nonhierarchical cultures due to their ability to manage a large
workload without sacrificing their empathy for others. Scarcity issues within the family system
often result in people who grow up conditioned to be pleasers. Whether their caregivers were
preoccupied trying to make ends meet financially or for other reasons, they inadvertently
conveyed there was something more important than spending time with this child. Thus, while
pleasers often achieve success by nurturing others, they have a blind spot due to their excessive
need for validation. Many managers self-identify with this quadrant under pressure. These
individuals frequently cluster in service roles.
The Charmer: People who exemplify the charmer power style have an uncanny ability to
redefine the rules of the game while exuding an emotional intensity that compels others to
comply with them. The family system that fosters a charmer is often one in which a child was

forced to parent a parent due to divorce, parental illness or simply the kind of emotional
estrangement that weakens a marital bond rather than breaking it. This role reversal fosters a
distrust of formal authority and a sense of entitlement. As a result, later in life charmers may
develop a blind spot that can tempt them to manipulate others for their personal advantage.
People who self-identify with this quadrant are often highly successful rainmakers and tend to
cluster in sales functions. While they are frequently topflight strategists, charmers often report
being passed over for management positions when feedback from their peers reveals they can be
difficult to trust.
The Commander: The commander power style is exemplified by people who get results by
exuding confidence and fostering a sense of urgency in others. While they are often widely
respected for their drive to win, commanders frequently struggle with being impatient and even
rigid with others. The family system of the commander is hierarchical, with one parent firmly in
charge; the other parent, along with the children, ends up vying for the support and approval of
the parent running the show. This type of family system teaches kids early in life that power is
about rank, and that its vital to come out on top. Individuals who self-identify with this quadrant
represent a high percentage of CEOs and people at the executive committee level in todays
organizations.
The Inspirer: The inspirer power style is exemplified by people who exude a palpable sense of
purpose. While inspirational figures can come from any quadrant on the Power Grid, inspirers
are characterized by their ability to do what benefits the greater good before calculating whats in
it for them. The family dynamic that fosters the inspirer is one in which the caregivers were
passionately devoted to a cause they considered a lifes calling. The main blind spot for inspirers
is they tend to be dismissive of office politics and exhibit a tendency to leave a professional
system when they start to question senior management values rather than sticking around to seek
a compromise.
The Power Grid and Diversity
While its important to ensure that an organizations formal employment policies support all
employees fairly, diversity leaders today realize that maximizing a cultures productivity
involves more than the right demographic mix.
The Power Grid can help managers clarify dominant trends and respond to the power
demonstrations that are tacitly rewarded within a corporate culture. Regardless of an employees

gender, racial or other orientation, understanding of the power styles senior leaders reward within
an organization can be the ultimate key to who gets ahead and why.
Diversity and talent leaders are constantly reevaluating their programs to ensure they invest in
initiatives that will foster enhanced productivity. Providing tools to help key players develop a
more balanced and agile power style under pressure will pay off at the individual and cultural
level. This profit is realized through increased employee retention, the ability to attract top talent,
and team creation where employees become more deeply involved with the people and situations
around them.
Maggie Craddock is the president and founder of Workplace Relationships and the author of the
upcoming book,Power Genes: Understanding Your Power Persona and How to Wield It at
Work. She can be reached ateditor@diversity-executive.com.

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