Ideas and Feelings about Power and Influence

MGB Class Self-Reflection
Student's Name
Institution
Course
Professor's Name
Date
MGB Class Self-Reflection
Ideas and Feelings about Power and Influence
Most people dream of occupying powerful positions, becoming powerful and influential. Power refers to directly influencing people's behavior or course of events. On the other hand, influence is the ability to impact a person's development, character, or behavior. Power and influence are related because powerful people are often influential. This makes it vital to study power and influence in colleges and universities to ensure that youths venture into leadership and power when they are sober to positively influence society. This piece presents my reflection on the MGB course about power and influence. It also describes how I would handle various situations related to power and influence.
My ideas and feelings about power and influence changed drastically during the semester. Power has a different perception when learned as a lesson in class compared to when observed in powerful people. I always thought that power refers to how a person controls others or events, showing absolute authority like governments often do. Orders by a government are irreversible and non-negotiable in most cases because the government is powerful. The same applies to institutions like the justice system and workplaces. The bosses in such organizations have absolute power to give orders rarely defied. However, I learned during the course of the semester that power should not always be used absolutely to intimidate and show might (MGB Class Notes). Power is a good thing where the powerful and the subjects to whom the power is exercised feel equal. It creates mutual respect where the powerful give directions to their subjects respectfully, and their due respect is reciprocated.
I learned that influence is often given by the strong society members who thrive on getting followers to subscribe to their ideologies. Influence can be negative or positive, but the negative influence is often more pronounced. It is often easy to influence people negatively using the ethos and pathos appeal. Ethos involves a person using their status to influence others to subscribe to their ideas, while pathos refers to emotional appeals that capture people's emotions like anger and sympathy (Han et al., 2019). Politicians often use these appeals to attract followers. One would say they come from a minor ethnic group or a poor background and the rest of the politicians despise them because of their class. This way, the people would sympathize with them and vote for them. Therefore, I have changed my perception of power and influence during the semester. I now know that power does not have to be enforced through threats and definite orders. Power should earn a person a respectful place in society where they can influence the rest of the society members. A person's personality determines how they use power. The important application of power is in conflict resolution. I learned that power should solve societal conflict and ensure that society is habitable for human survival.
Implementing Concepts and Ideas Learned for the Past Fifteen Weeks
I applied the content of the course in the fifteen weeks of the se...