Week 2: Frameworks of power

Introduction

This week was written by Owain Smolović Jones and Fidèle Mutwarasibo.

In this week of study you will be digging deeper into power and the role it can play in leadership. To do this you will focus on some key frameworks that are effective in analysing the basis of power and how it is used in practice. These frameworks should be useful for you in making sense of the kind of power that you are subjected to as you pursue leadership and the kind of power you can draw on.

Figure 1 Leadership and power are intertwined

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The image depicts a number of image in bubbles, connected together in a circular web over a city landscape. The central bubble shows Planet Earth and the smaller bubbles around it contain images showing: a close up of a laptop being used; brain activity; a woman standing holding a laptop; two people in shadow shaking hands; a person manipulating a digital image; a shot of a man from behind with his hand on his chin; a cityscape; a cloud symbol.

Figure 1 Leadership and power are intertwined

You will begin the week by studying a framework that offers three faces of power (Lukes, 2005). By engaging with this framework, you will better understand how power is exercised in overt and covert ways. From there you will explore where power derives from and the various bases people draw on to exercise power. Finally, you will consider a more positive form of power, that of collective solidarity, and how you can harness it to generate impactful Black leadership.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• analyse your own experiences of leadership using the three faces of power framework
• evaluate the operation of various bases of power within everyday work contexts
• identify everyday practices that are useful for building forms of relational power and solidarity in organisations and communities.