Influence processes and types/factors

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Part A

Every leader is an influential leader; a person cannot be a leader if he cannot influence or able to change the behavior of surrounding people. In the following section, emphasis was laid to explain the influence process and how leaders uses them to pursue their motives and goals with the application of different leadership practices.

Influencing process is an important part of leadership programmes where a mass of people gets inspired, influenced and motivated with the help of motivation speech including various guiding principles, inspirational stories so that all can be used for a common purpose. In the simple language of management, influence can be defined as the attempt by an individual to change the behavior of the people in the vicinity around him. These people in the vicinity of the individual may be peers, family members and superiors or employees working in the organization (Kippenberger, 2002). The main reason behind the influence can be anything; it can be of selfish reasons, might be good or bad objectives, sometimes used for attaining organizational goals or enhancing the performance of the organization.

There are various generic influence tactics which are generally used by different managers. These tactics are consultation, rational persuasion, and inspirational appeals, in ingratiating tactics, coalition tactics, upward appeals and exchange tactics. In this way, leadership can be termed as process of inspiring, influencing and guiding others to participate in a common purpose. Basically there are two types of leadership practices: 1) Formal leadership practices and 2) Informal leadership practices.

Formal leadership practices are generally used in the structured organization to pursue organizational goals. While informal leadership practices are general practices which are practiced to pursue unofficial objectives, they may or may not play a significant role in serving organizational purposes (Kippenberger, 2002).

In the above section, efforts were made to explain influencing processes generally used by the leaders and what are the different tactics applied by an influential leader to motivate the masses. In the below discussed section light is shed on the different types of influential processes and what are basic qualities must be possessed by a good leader.

Leadership and influencing are closely interrelated because leadership needs power and those who have the power they can easily influence others. This power can be of any type whether it is power of money, power of speech, power of some skill. One can be a good leader, only with power. Majority of the political leaders have the power of speech. They influence and motivate the large number of people from their speech, and they are ready to die even on their voice. Hence, managers in business organization should focus on increasing their sources of power so that they can influence more and more people. Following are the types of influencing processes which great leaders generally possess (Bonnici, 2011).

Charisma: It is the inherent power that a leader possesses. The other people in the vicinity are influenced by the leader's unique and different personality and ambitious visionary approach. The main source of influential style is the charismatic communication with the employees through powerful speeches. Charismatic leaders make their communication more effective with eye contacts.

Legitimacy: It is the another way to influence others when leaders pursue their objectives with polite requests, but legitimacy only work when leader is in powerful condition because people only accept the request of powerful persons. Polite requests are very much effective if they are made with respect and humility instead of arrogance (Bonnici, 2011).

Rewards: Sometimes managers give effective rewards to the ...