Personal Power and Social Power

Social psychologist David McClelland categorized power into personal power and social power. People with personal power thinking have aggressive impulses and they collect prestige items and they are apt to speed, have accidents and get into physical fights.


In contrast, people with social power thinking, are characterized by a concern for group goals, for finding the goals of the group, taking initiative in providing members of the group with the means of achieving such goals, and for giving group members the feeling of competence for working for those goals. McClelland's data collection showed that social power managers are quite effective.

Reference

Fred Luthans, Organizational Behavior