Cohen-Bradford Influence

Influence, negotiation, persuasion, power and motivation. When lining up these themes it creates a spectrum on which leadership is build. Having the ability to excel only in one of these characteristics such as persuasion might make you a good salesman or when you only have the ability to motivate people you might be a good football captain but you need the ability to tap into all the different concepts of the first sentence to be an efficient long-term leader.
The article by Robert Ciadini discusses the science of persuasion. Out of all the six tendencies which include: reciprocation (gifts), consistency (commitment), social validation (power of the masses), liking (personal connection), authority (knowledge), and scarcity (less at hand), consistency would be the most influential for me. The use of consistency seems to me the more ethical and valid reason to convince someone. A good leader would not want to force anybody into believing what is instructed but would want them to understand and trust his guidance.
In an organization, you can’t always get or achieve what you want, especially from people over whom you have no authority.
The Cohen-Bradford Influence model offers a practical approach of reciprocity and exchange; trading what you have that the other person desires in exchange for what you need to accomplish workplace and personal goals. Personally, most of my authority comes from this type of angle. Seldom, I use my position as a tool for authority. The reason and communication of the task is most of the time enough for people to understand its importance for execution. Cooperation is shaped by mutual trust in following guidelines that is not always understood by everybody but is trusted to provide a good
outcome.
The comfort or happiness of employees in their positions can be as diverse as the happiness of people outside the workplace. I always look upon the workplace as a different family group. A family group can be happy or unhappy depending on their functionality and on how they determine how to solve problems. Trust and belonging and balance of power are all parts of a healthy family. Whereas the nurturing of this happiness might come more natural in family settings, companies can also respond in the same way.
An article published by Harvard Business School called Power Dynamics in Organizations (1994), provides a diagram of Political Conflict in Organizations. This diagram shows the different factors that initiate, accommodate and prevent power conflict in organizations. The precipitating factors such as: a crisis, lack of authority and competing coalitions can be seen in organizations as well as in families. The preventing factors such as: shared values, leadership and capacity to solve conflict are also seen in organization as well as in families. We do not need complex theories to make people more comfortable in the workplace; we just need to use basic leadership guidelines, also used in families, to make organizations more efficient, productive and happy places of employment.
The Harvard Business Review article Power is the Great Motivator provided me with an evaluation of the three types of managers, the institutional manager, the affiliative manager, and the personal-power manager. The institutional manager showed the highest scores among subordinates in sense of responsibility, organizational clarity, and team spirit. This is a confirmation that the use of communication should be driven by personal commitment to the future of the company and to the subordinates. This conclusion ties into my observation of the article of Robert Ciadini where I considered commitment (consistency) the most efficient and long-term effective persuasion tactic.