The research-backed way to go from powerless to proactive at work

Seeing low-power situations as opportunities helps empower employees to break the cycle of inaction, according to new research.

New research from the University of Florida suggests that people who feel powerless at work can overcome their tendency to remain passive by simply reframing their situation as an opportunity rather than a constraint.

According to the study, employees who feel powerless often get trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle: lacking power makes them less likely to take initiative, which prevents them from gaining more influence and power in their organization.

“Powerlessness is usually associated with being submissive and diminutive, and this is a problem because it creates a self-reinforcing cycle for powerless people,” explained Trevor Foulk (Ph.D. ’17), Associate Professor at the Warrington College of Business and co-author of the study. “In other words, powerless people often don’t engage in agentic behaviors, but it’s agentic behaviors that help you become more powerful, so this is kind of a problem.”

Foulk and his coauthors identified a cognitive reappraisal intervention, which specifically encourages people to view their powerless situations as opportunities rather than limitations. Doing so can help them break the cycle by boosting what psychologists call the Behavioral Approach System (BAS), which motivates someone to focus on desired outcomes, to seek out rewards and opportunities and to be more attuned towards opportunities for goal pursuit.

Across three studies, including in a negotiation simulation and two field experiments where employees were in their real workplace, participants who reframed their powerlessness as an opportunity showed more initiative and proactive behaviors than those who didn’t use this strategy.

“It’s very easy for a sense of powerlessness to nudge us into passivity and inactivity,” said Foulk. “But this tendency is just a nudge – not a strong force.  You can easily counteract this pattern of behavior with a simple, free, and easily implementable intervention – simply take a moment, and remind yourself that feeling powerless can actually be an opportunity.”

The complete research, “From low power to action: Reappraising powerlessness as an opportunity restores agency,” is published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.