Power There Are a Number

Power There are a number of types of power in law enforcement leadership. Among the different types are position power, coercion power, reward power, expert power and charisma power. Each of these powers comes from a different source and is often used in different ways. This paper will analyze these different sources of power for law enforcement leaders. The first source of power is position power, or formal authority. Law enforcement is often a highly-hierarchical culture in which position power is high.

Police in particular work with position power, where those with higher positions of authority are not typically questioned by those below them. One is compelled to act simply on the basis of the position power than the leader has. The second type of power is coercive power. This type of power is basically when the leader has the ability to coerce another person into doing something that they do not wish to do. Typically, this coercion comes in the form of threats -- demotion, punishment, taking something away.

The reverse of coercive power is reward power. Reward power comes when somebody has the ability to deliver a reward of some type to a person. Bestowing a reward can serve as a motivator for someone to act in a specific manner. Reward power is the opposite of coercive power -- they are the proverbial carrot and stick, where the reward power is based on the promise of attaining something positive and coercive power is based on trying to avoid attaining something negative.

Reward, coercive and position power are all formal power types (Abudi, 2011). They exist in part because of the formal authority that the leader has. The leader has access to resources to reward, the ability to punish and the position alone commands respect. All leaders in law enforcement will have access to these three types of power, and they can use all of them in the course of their duties. There are also informal power types, which are powers that do not rely on formal authority in order to work.

These types are power can be used by anybody who can skillfully wield them. Expert power is that power which derives from somebody's expertise in a subject (Giang, 2013). They have experience or formal training in something, and others trust in their knowledge, abilities and insight. Senior people at lower levels of the organization will still have a fair bit of expert power that they have cultivated over their years of experience.

Respect lies at the heart of expert power, which differentiates it from the formal power types where respect is not a precondition for the power to be effective. Another informal power type is charisma power. This form of power works on the basis of a person's personal charisma. A good example from outside of the workplace is the con man, who uses charisma to gain power over his victims.

But not all charisma power is bad, it just means that certain people have the ability in their personalities to get others to act. Charisma can be found among people of all types and at all levels. Respect is not.