Politics and Power and Getting Things Done
In a project manager role you will experience politics and power, and you’ll need to understand both of those things in order to get things done in an organization.
“Leadership” and “management” involve getting things done, but to do that a project manager needs to understand how an organization works. What is the culture? And what are the unwritten laws of getting things done? That will give you a higher chance of success, and that’s where you need to have a hefty serve of emotional intelligence to understand the politics and the power sources, and how to use those to your advantage. You’ll need to influence and guide and help deliver that business value as a project manager.
There’s a great list from the PMBOK guide on the types of power that you will come across.
- You’ve got positional power, where you’re directly in the position of power as a manager or a leader.
- Informational power, where you have information and you don’t need to share that with everyone – they need to come to you for that information.
- Referent power, where you’re saying “The CEO asked me to do this, so everyone gather round and let’s get this done.” – we’re referring to someone else’s credibility.
- Situational power, where maybe there’s a crisis involved and now all of a sudden we have more power because we need to really urgently get something done.
- Personal power, using charm and attraction.
- Relational power, where you are using your network of people
- Expert power, where you have expertise in a certain area.
- Rewards, where you can give rewards for certain things and that makes people want to do things for you.
- Coercive power, where you might say “Something bad will happen if you don’t do this,” you’re coercing people into doing what you need.
- Ingratiating power, where you’re using flattery – “Look how wonderful you’re doing, such a great job, you’re a wonderful person because you’re helping me out.”
All of these are valid, and you’ll find that when you’re aware of them you’ll see them more and more in your own workplace, and even in your day to day life. Within your family, within your friendship groups, it’s really great to be aware of.
And there are more.
- You have pressure based power, limiting that freedom of choice.
- Guilt based power, where maybe you did something for them and now you’re putting a bit of a guilt on them.
- Persuasive power where you’re simply providing the right arguments, and lastly;
- Avoiding power, where you’re simply refusing to participate.
These types of power will be on the PMP exam you’ll usually encounter them in some way shape or form simply because they’re part of everyday life and getting things done.
There are also different personalities that you’ll come across in your life as a project manager, and they are:
- Authentic,
- Courteous,
- Creative,
- Cultural where you’re measuring the sensitivity to other’s cultural values,
- Emotional, being able to perceive other’s emotions quite easily,
- Intellectual, which is just human intelligence and management practice
- Political, understanding the political environment and how to make things happen,
- Service-oriented where we’re serving others, maybe as a servant leader.
- Social,
- Systemic, where we’re understanding the need to build systems around things and ways of work and making it easier for people through processes as opposed to just forcing things through.
Those are the types of power and types of personalities you will find in your career and on the PMP Exam.
– David McLachlan