Constructive consequences of leaders' forcing influence styles

In contrast to non-forcing influence styles used by leaders, their forcing influence styles are commonly found to be ineffective, evoking sheer resistance, rather than compliance. As a corollary of conglomerate conflict behavior theory, we state that forcing, if combined with non-forcing, may nonetheless be quite effective, while both styles interact in such a way that forcing tends to strengthen the compliance brought about by non-forcing. In a sample of 145 police officers, reliable questionnaire data were collected, regarding the power use of their supervisor (forcing/non-forcing) and their tendency to comply with their supervisor's wishes. By means of moderated regression analyses the forcing-non-forcing interaction hypothesis was tested. As expected, a significant interaction effect was found with regard to the impact of forcing and non-forcing power use by leaders on the one hand, and coworkers' behavioral compliance on the other. The use of forcing influence styles thus appears to add to effective leadership, not because it is effective in and of itself (which is certainly not the case), but because it reinforces the impact of non-forcing power use.