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366 PART 4: THE LEADER AS A RELATIONSHIP BUILDER

IN THE LEAD Anu Shukla, RubiconSoft
When she began her leadership career in the technology industry as vice-president
of marketing and product development at Compuware, Anu Shukla says she thought
leaders got results by giving orders. “I thought I would force my will on people and
make them follow me whether they wanted to or not,” Shukla says. “I didn’t under-
stand that my employees were the prize stallions and my job was to unblock things
for them and help them succeed.”
As she moved through jobs at different companies, Shukla gradually learned a
different way of leading, fi nding that she got far better results when she stopped
barking orders and instead got her employees to understand and embrace her
ideas. She began listening to employees’ ideas and contributions as well, which in-
creased her referent power. When she started her own company Rubric, an Internet
software firm, Shukla found that acknowledging her dependence on her employees

was the key to retaining her most talented workers. It was the height of the
dot-com boom, and the competition for talent was fierce. Shukla believes if she

had relied on formal authority alone, she would have lost many of her most valued
employees to other startups.
After Shukla sold Rubric, many of her colleagues followed her to her new ven-
ture, RubiconSoft. Both Rubric’s former CFO and its former vice president of mar-
keting, who had also worked with Shukla at three other companies, even invested
in the new company. Ted Mihara, Rubric’s former western regional sales manager,
also joined RubiconSoft as vice president of sales. He explains why: “I want a leader
who makes my own efforts easier, and Anu’s intellect, competitiveness, and great
customer skills are very compelling.” 33

Rather than relying on her position of authority in the organization, Anu Shukla
now leads primarily with referent and expert power, gaining strong commitment
from employees. Needless to say, commitment is preferred to compliance or re-
sistance. Although compliance alone may be enough for routine matters, com-
mitment is particularly important when the leader is promoting change. Change
carries risk or uncertainty, and follower commitment helps to overcome fear and
resistance associated with change efforts. Successful leaders exercise both per-
sonal and position power to infl uence others.

The Role of Dependency
You probably know from personal experience that when a person has control
over something that others want and need, he or she gains power. A simple ex-
ample is a star high school quarterback graduating at a time when there are few
excellent quarterbacks coming out of high schools. The star will be courted by
numerous colleges who will vie for his interest and make increasingly attractive
offers to entice him to sign on with their team.
One of the key aspects of power is that it is a function of dependence—that
is, the greater Individual B’s dependence on Individual A, the greater power A
will have over B. People in organizations, as elsewhere, have power because other
people depend on them—for information, resources, cooperation, and so forth.
The more people depend on someone, the greater that person’s power. 34
The nature of dependency relationships between leaders and subordinates in

organizations fluctuates depending on economic circumstances. When unemploy-
ment is low and jobs are plentiful, people feel less dependent on their supervi-
sors, and managers are more dependent on employees because they are hard to
replace. Only a few years ago, for example, the shortage of engineers and other