The 3 Types of Power

Leadership is hard, especially when you don’t have the experience. How do you even get people to do what you think is right?

New technical leads tend to struggle on leading without managing. They’ll say something like “how can I get them to listen to me? I’m not their manager, I can’t tell them what to do.” New managers tend to rely a bit too much on their authority, or don’t realise that they have it in the first place.

There are so many articles out there on leadership and “power” that it’s hard to know where to start. Personally I often use the following definition of the 3 types of power that I first heard in the Manager Tools podcast to illustrate the kind of things one can do to get things done in an organisation.

• Expertise Power: You use your knowledge to get people to follow you.
• Relational Power: You leverage your relationship with people to get things done.
• Role Power: You use your position and authority in the organisation to order people to do something.

People who get their leadership from their technical skills (staff engineers, technical leads…) tend to rely more on expertise. Managers will often use their people skills and knowledge of the broader organisation and rely more on relational. Still, all leaders use both expertise and relational as they are great ways to get things done.

Managers are the only one really getting a power based on their role. They are the only ones that can say to their reports: “do this because I am the boss”. I feel that having to frequently rely on authority in the context of a tech company is a kind of failure. Managers should get people on board the best they can, coach, give context… not just tell people what to do or else. There are of course situations where it can make sense, like breaking up ties or dealing with problematic people, but it should be rare.