One day in the motor pool, one of the best military leaders that I ever worked for shared with me some valuable insights into the nature of hard and soft power that stayed with me my entire career and helped me to become more effective as a small unit manager and leader. I think that these insights have a broad practical application to other businesses than just the military. By sharing these ideas with you I hope that you can draw some benefit from them as well.

 He defined hard power as the formal authority a leader derives from his legal position and established place in a strict hierarchy. These are sources of power that he is issued by virtue of the position, tradition and law. It turns out that these are the least persuasive forms of power and influence the leader has at his command. Leaders that immediately resort to their sources of hard power often have great difficulty in building teams across organizational boundaries and being good team players when they are in a complicated situation that requires communication and negotiation.

He then went on to describe soft power as the informal influence that leaders derive from the decisions of others to grant them authority. He explained that these can come from superior knowledge, reputation for integrity and good values, experience, persuasiveness, the willingness to be a good team player and listen to others and from a demonstrated concern for others and the willingness to risk personal reputation on their behalf.

A leader that has sources of soft, indirect power available to him will find that people willingly give him the benefit of the doubt and are more willing to join the team and put the group goals ahead of their own. This trust and confidence takes time to develop and can be lost much more quickly than it is earned.

Effective leaders can increase their soft power consistently over time until the point where their formal sources of authority need not even be considered. This is not to say that formal authority is a bad thing but only that it is less effective in the human dimension than socially constructed sources of power.

The practical implications of this for leaders you ask? Well, a leader who seeks to improve his indirect power pays a lot more attention to the environment and his people and their concerns and establishes strong and redundant communication networks that help to create communal visions and feedback loops to keep everybody on the same sheet of music. You will naturally demonstrate respect for alternative points of view and value openness and dissent as a means of moving closer to our goal than as a direct challenge to his own authority.

This is not a natural attitude for leaders to have inside an organization with a strong hierarchy and formal rank structure, but if the Army can do it then surely businesses can try the same approach and see how it fits.

Good luck to you and your teambuilding!

By: Ken Long