Ho Ching's Major Sources Of Power

Q3 - Ho Ching has been named as one of the most powerful leaders in Asia. What are her major sources of power?

Basically, power is the ability of one person (the agent) influencing the behavior and/or attitudes of others (the target). The most major source of power Ho Ching possesses is legitimate power. Legitimate power is an agreement among organizational members that people in certain roles can request certain behaviors of others. This perceived right partly comes from formal job descriptions as well as from informal rules of conduct. Executives have considerable legitimate power, but all employees also have this power based on company rules and government laws. For example, an organization might give employees the right to request customer files if this information is required for their job.
Ho Ching possesses the title of Chief Executive Officer, which gave her supreme rights to direct the company and influence the behaviors of others. She has imposed her ideas and made her aggressive decisions to run the company. In the East Asian culture the top management is obeyed strictly without or very less sharing of ideas from lower management, so this also increases her power over others.
Apart from that she being the wife of Lee Hsein Loong, the current prime minister of Singapore, she also possesses a sort of reward power.
She is capable of winning big contracts by using her sources. All the Singaporean companies under her portfolio are growing really well, which is quite a good evidence of her reward power. She easily managed to persuade the dealers through her connections with royals of Singapore. Her husband is also the son of Lee Kwan Yew, one of the most admired people in East Asia. This also helped her making good relations in market which ultimately gift her power to sign good and big
contracts.
Thirdly she possesses the personal power due to her ability of working efficiently and charismatic leadership. Since she has been appointed the CEO, she has doubled the portfolio of Temasek Holdings. Yet she was an electrical engineer from Stanford but she has proven her self capable of doing and running business. In this aspect she has also proven her self a charismatic and influential leader capable of reaching to her goals by different methods. It is the reason of her charismatic leadership that in just 3 years she got a position in the world’s most influential women list. And this is also the reason of charismatic leadership that a small Singaporean company becomes one of the giants of the world.
Last but not least is her political power. Being the wife of the prime minister and daughter in law of the most influential and admired personality of East Asia she possess the political power which enables her to control over the decisions in the government level institutions. Her organizational constraints are well under her control. She has an influence in the political decisions as well as policy making. This enables her to get influence over the whole market as well.
So in short, Ho Ching possesses almost all sorts of power. And this is the reason which makes her to enter the list of world’s most influential and powerful people.