There are many different power bases that a leader can use and exploit.

These include problematic ones such as the power of position, the power to give rewards, the power to punish and the power to control information. While these types of power do have some strength, they put the person being lead in an unhealthy position of weakness, and can leave leaders using these power bases looking autocratic and out of touch.

More than this, society has changed hugely over the last 50 years. Citizens are individually more powerful, and employees are more able to shift jobs. Few of us enjoy having power exerted over us, and many will do what they can to undermine people who use these sorts of power.

However there are three types of positive power that effective leaders use: charismatic power, expert power and referent power.

This article teaches the technique of building expert power.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_04.htm?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10Mar16#np

French and Raven’s Five Forms of Power

Think of a leader you’ve known who relied on his or her ability to discipline or reward people to get things done. Then, remind yourself of a leader who was a renowned expert in his field, or who you really admired for his integrity.

How did it feel to work for these leaders, and which one got the best from you? The way a leader behaves toward you and how effectively you work as a result can both depend on the source of her power and her power need not come from her official status or title.

Social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven studied this phenomenon more than half a century ago. Despite its age, their research can still help us to understand why some leaders influence us, how prepared we are to accept their power, and – if you are a leader – how you can develop new power bases to get the best from your people.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htm?utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10Mar16#np

Imagine being forever immune to heart attacks and strokes because you take a daily dose of medication. Great! But there’s a little hitch. The medication can be very sour and it takes 10 minutes to prepare. Would you take the medication or just hope that your heart is strong enough without it?

This question is a metaphor for what faces a manager. The medication – called giving feedback – does indeed takes some time. When your feedback is negative, the tone of the conversation can be sour. When it is infrequent, the metaphor’s heart ailments are poor workplace performance, unmotivated disengagement, and your best employees walking out the door to find it somewhere else…

https://www.mindtools.com/blog/2016/04/25/how-to-give-feedback/

When you talk to an audience, you need to know how to hold its attention and to make sure that the message you are trying to communicate is understood clearly. To do this, you need to balance the abstract and the details. For example, if you are a leader trying to inspire your people to buy into your vision, you shouldn’t focus solely on the concepts and “big picture” ideas. You need to give people facts and details, and concrete plans for achieving that vision.

At the same time, you shouldn’t get bogged down in detail and minutiae, or you risk losing your audience’s attention once again. People will want to know why the facts and details you are presenting are relevant and important – you need to give them context.

Effective communication requires moving regularly between the abstract and the “real,” as the situation dictates. You can learn more about how to do this in our article, The Ladder of Abstraction. If you can master the skill of balancing “highbrow” concepts with the “nuts and bolts” of your big ideas, you’ll never send your audience to sleep, or catch people playing Buzzword Bingo during your presentations, again!

https://www.mindtools.com/blog/2016/04/22/dont-be-a-boring-speaker/

Want some practical advice on how to develop change strategies at system level?

Would a toolkit with ideas and case studies help?

Well look no further ……. improvement.nhs.uk has produced ‘In it together ‘ which is a strategy toolkit and   set of case studies people wanted to share to help others with  links to resources that you might find useful.

You can find the toolkit here and some really useful case studies here

http://www.fabnhsstuff.net/2016/05/03/in-it-together/

Do you have any habits that could harm your work or career? Maybe you check your email when you’re in meetings, turn up late to client visits, or take personal phone calls when you’re supposed to be focusing on your work. You might even let habits like watching too much television or excessive Internet surfing stop you working on learning goals in the evenings and at weekends.

Bad habits like these can damage reputations and limit what’s possible in our lives and careers, so it’s important that we learn how to deal with them.

In this article, we’ll look at bad habits in more detail: we’ll explore why certain behaviors become habits in the first place, and we’ll show you how you can overcome them.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/bad-habits.htm

The saying “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” has always struck me as supremely sensible advice.

In business, however, with livelihoods at stake and reputations at risk, having a crisis management plan ought to be high up on a leader or manager’s list of priorities. But, as we show in our article, Planning for a Crisis, almost a third of companies who responded to a survey waited until disaster struck before they drew one up…

https://www.mindtools.com/blog/2016/04/29/crisis-catastrophe/

“Managers who pressurise their staff to go that extra mile risk harming their employees’ health,” the Daily Mail reports.

New research suggests “transformational managers” – charismatic high achievers – may increase levels of sickness in the workforce.

Supporters of transformational management would say it combines individual charisma and the ability to motivate staff and stimulate employees with being able to gauge the strength and weaknesses of staff members on an individual basis.

A poster boy for transformational management would be the late Steve Jobs of Apple fame.

But playing devil’s advocate, you could argue that some managers who try to adopt this style fail to get their approach right, and it’s more intimidation than motivation.

Think of the fictional boss from hell, Miranda Priestly, as played by Meryl Streep in the film The Devil Wears Prada. 

Researchers followed Danish postal workers for three years. Those with line managers displaying a transformational leadership style had more sick days off work a year later – about four days more a year. The link was not seen in the subsequent year.

They report some staff members were coming into work even though they were ill – what’s known as presenteeism. This could exacerbate health problems and lead to long-term problems with productivity.

So overall, this study shows that transformational leadership may have a dark side, but needs more investigation so we can better understand the link. A longer-term assessment of the effects of presenteeism would also be useful.  

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/04April/Pages/Transformational-managers-may-be-bad-for-workplace-health.aspx