The less powerful you feel at work, the less likely you are to take initiative. — AFP
Whether it’s feeling left out of important decisions, not daring to speak up in meetings or thinking that everything has already been decided, for many employees, their lack of power at work engenders a form of despondency.
Yet a recent study suggests that a simple change of perspective could be enough to help reverse the situation.
It could be having a thousand ideas in your head, but never being able to share them. Or being present, but not really existing in the eyes of others.
This common feeling affects many workers, without them always being able to name it. Long considered a brake on initiative and proactive behaviour, this feeling is now the subject of research by academics from various universities.
Their study, published in the journal Organizational Behavior And Human Decision Processes, challenges the idea that lack of power necessarily leads to inaction.
Indeed, the less powerful we feel at work, the less initiative we take. And this lack of proactive behaviour reduces the chances of gaining greater responsibility. A vicious circle sets in, limiting the scope for advancement.
“Powerlessness is usually associated with being submissive and diminutive, and this is a problem because it creates a self-reinforcing cycle for powerless people. In other words, powerless people often don’t engage in agentic behaviours, but it’s agentic behaviours that help you become more powerful, so this is kind of a problem,” explains Trevor Foulk, associate professor at the Warrington College of Business and co-author of the study, quoted in a news release.
An opportunity, not a deadlock
So how can you get out of this spiral? The solution may well lie in reframing the situation.
Foulk and colleagues propose a simple yet powerful method called a “cognitive reappraisal”.
It involves getting employees to see their situation not as a deadlock, but as an opportunity.
According to the researchers, this change of perspective activates the “behavioural approach system”, a psychological mechanism that encourages employees to pursue their goals, seek rewards and be more proactive.
This theory was tested in three different contexts: a negotiation simulation, as well as two field studies carried out in companies. In each case, participants who had been invited to reconsider their sense of powerlessness as an opportunity showed more initiative than those who did not use this strategy.
In other words, in business, it’s not so much how much power you have, but how you perceive it that counts. “It’s very easy for a sense of powerlessness to nudge us into passivity and inactivity,” says Foulk.
“But this tendency is just a nudge – not a strong force. You can easily counteract this pattern of behaviour with a simple, free, and easily implementable intervention – simply take a moment, and remind yourself that feeling powerless can actually be an opportunity.”
Beyond its theoretical contributions, this study invites us to take a fresh look at power dynamics in the workplace – and to strive for proactive behaviours, even when everything seems to be at a standstill. – AFP Relaxnews
