Assess Your Actual Power—Formal and Informal, Social and Professional

Once you’ve been with an organization for a while, you get a sense of the office culture: who to cultivate and who to ignore, what skills and behaviors are rewarded. At that point, you are in a position to figure out where you fit in the organizational structure. This isn’t just about what box on the flowchart has your name in it; it’s about what other kinds of leverage you bring to your workplace.

The position you hold does matter. Fifty years ago, the social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven outlined five different types of power, an outline that is still used and cited by organizational theorists today. Some of these power types are attached to a specific position in the office hierarchy, some to the role played in collegial networks, and others to particular skills.