How to Coach Yourself and Others How to Influence, Persuade and Motivate | Page 136

Interpreting Your Self-Assessment Score
Obviously, the higher your total score, the more powerful you are in your
company or organization. However, if you are interested in building your
power, the total score is less important than your scores for each element
of power. Note which of your power sources is weakest, and which items
had the lowest scores. You may identify some developmental
opportunities. Of course, some capabilities may not be easy to build in the
short term. Regarding item 28, for instance, most people cannot easily
build or gain control of significant financial resources except over a
longer period. Nonetheless, as a starting point, identify the power sources
you would most like to build, and then return to that section of this
chapter and identify the suggestions you could act upon. Make them part
of your development plan.
An important caveat about this self-assessment is that the weights
assigned to each element of power reflect the relative importance of each
power source based on our research. However, in real life, these weights
would depend to some degree on the context. If you work as a scientist in
a biomedical research firm, then knowledge and reputation power would
probably be weighted more heavily. If you are a senior loan officer in a
bank or mortgage company, then resource power would have higher
weight. If you work for a public relations firm, network power would be
considerably more important, and so on. Remember that power is
relational and depends on the context in which you are working, so view
your results accordingly. The key questions are these:
1.
Which sources of power are most important for your role in your
company and industry? You might want to rank them and apply your own
weighting scheme.
2.
Are you weaker than you should be in any of the more important
power sources you identified? These are the areas you should focus on in
your development plan.
3.
If you aspire toward positions of greater responsibility, look
ahead. Which power sources would be most important for you to be
promoted to those positions? And which of your sources of power would
need to be stronger for you to succeed in those positions? Building those
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