Influencing Group Communication your name
XBCOM/230
University of Phoenix

In any organization today, one will be able to see the five basis of power at work. Some of these powers will be evident in some individuals and it may take longer to see them in other within the organization. The five basis of power that we will discuss are, coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent. These five basis of power are broken down into two separate groups, one being formal and the other being informal. The formal group will consist of three of the five basis of power and they are: coercive, reward and legitimate. Obvious this leaves expert and referent as the two that will be referred to as the informal basis of power. After taking the time to look into and study each individual basis of power, I feel that the informal basis of power would be the most efficient way of leading.

The three formal basis of power being coercive, reward and legitimate are the powers that I will begin to discuss. Although most people tend to have some sort of fear towards their supervisor, it takes a turn for the worst when you have a supervisor that uses coercive power on any worker. Coercive power or authority is the utilization of fear to get an employee to do what the supervisor is asking. In this day and time, with jobs being harder and harder to come by, supervisor will use the fear of an employee losing their job to the supervisors advantage. Both employee and supervisor know how hard jobs are to come by and how easy it would be to replace someone. A supervisor will tend to use this to their advantage even if they do not say it directly to the employee, the implication of an employee being easily replaced will tend to have the employee work harder. Unfortunately, there are employees that are being mistreated because they fear backlash and