How to Best Use These 3 Types of Power

Written by Howie Gitlow 2 Comments

Jan 2019

This week’s video is about 3 different types of power and how to use them.

There are 3 types of power:

Knowledge: Do it because I know more about it than you do, and you recognize it (Professor or Expert).

Charisma: Do it because you want to do it for me because I have charm, presence or personality.

Formal: Do it because I am the parent or the boss.

Knowledge Power:

You listen and act because I know more about a subject than you, and you recognize it is in your best interest to listen to me.

For example, you want to stop your 11-year-old child from waking you up every hour because she or he is scared that you are going to die and they need to check on you.

A child psychologist tells you to lock your bedroom door and explain to your child what you are doing.

I did it and it worked in one painful night!

Charisma Power:

You listen to me because I have charm, presence or personality.

For example, Steve Jobs had such a presence at Apple that people worked long and hard hours to please him because they knew they were part of something that would change the world.

Formal Power:

You listen to me because I have power over you and there will be negative consequences if you do not listen.

For example, your boss tells you to do something, or else you will get a bad performance review, or even get fired.

Use It or Lose It:

Whenever you are about to use power to get a person or a group of people to act, consider each of the 3 types of power to decide which is most appropriate for the situation.

Train yourself to be able to use charisma or knowledge; it will be very hard work!!!

Charisma may be very difficult for you to learn, but knowledge is just about hard work.

When to Use It:

It is almost always appropriate to use the power of knowledge and charisma.

However, to the extent you rely on formal authority you have generally failed in your use of power.

However, I am excluding situations such as combat, life-threatening behaviors, many interactions with your children, but not nearly as many as you think, to name a few situations.

What Do You Think?

When was the last time you used formal power and you could have used charisma or knowledge?

Please share your thoughts on the 3 types of power we discussed in the comments below!

Until next time, behave and as always…Prime Your Pump!
–Howie

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2 Replies to “How to Best Use These 3 Types of Power”

Eileen Melnyck says:

January 9, 2019 at 5:55 pm

I did experience someone who had power because of his knowledge combined with amazing charisma. It was a professor who was extremely talented in being able to captivate his lìsteners to the point that students never wanted to skip his classes. Thanks for sharing!

Dave Savadge says:

January 4, 2019 at 3:20 pm

Good afternoon Howie. This video validates the old saying “knowledge is power”. A person listens to professors, lecturers, clergy because they possess the knowledge. Whether these people obtained the knowledge via study, experience, or both becomes irrelevant. You want to read books written by knowledgeable authors, and attend lectures given by known experts in the field.

Charisma can be tough to define. You know it when you see or hear someone. Neither Clinton nor Trump possesses charisma; they think that they do, but in reality what they believe is charisma is instead perceived as obnoxiousness. To me, the only two presidents in my life span that possessed charisma were Kennedy and Reagan. In my opinion, charisma cannot be taught, someone either has it or does not. (And to let you in on a secret, I do not.)

Formal power can best be described as chain of command, as in the military. Formal power by someone who is knowledgeable leads to victory in battle (MacArthur, Nimitz); formal power exercised by someone egotistic or ignorant leads to destruction and defeat (Custer, the Charge of the Light Brigade). Formal power also occurs within industry in the form of corporate organizational charts.

That must have been a tense situation with your daughter. You obviously did the right thing by consulting an expert. I cannot say how we would have acted in a similar situation when our daughter was that age, but today (and I mean this in all seriousness), we would look to google for possible answers.

Unrelated to anything, but my primary email has been fixed.