Full Title: Power. Why some people have it and others dont
Highlights
The evidence showed that this third group, the managers primarily interested in power, were the most effective, not only in achieving positions of influence inside companies but also in accomplishing their jobs. (Location 92)
Obtaining and holding on to power can be hard work. You need to be thoughtful and strategic, resilient, alert, willing to fight when necessary. (Location 106)
being in a position with low power and status is indeed hazardous to your health, and conversely, having power and the control that comes with it prolongs life. (Location 121)
power, and the visibility and stature that accompany power, can produce wealth. (Location 123)
power is part of leadership and is necessary to get things done— (Location 130)
To be effective in figuring out your path to power and to actually use what you learn, you must first get past three major obstacles. The first two are the belief that the world is a just place and the hand-me-down formulas on leadership that largely reflect this misguided belief. The third obstacle is yourself. (Location 139)
The belief in a just world has two big negative effects on the ability to acquire power. First, it hinders people’s ability to learn from all situations and all people, even those whom they don’t like or respect. (Location 147)
It is important to be able to learn from all sorts of situations and people, not just those you like and approve of, and certainly not just from people you see as similar to yourself. In fact, if you are in a position of modest power and want to attain a position of great power, you need to pay particular attention to those holding the positions you aspire to. (Location 150)
this belief that the world is a just place anesthetizes people to the need to be proactive in building a power base. Believing that the world is fair, people fail to note the various land mines in the environment that can undermine their careers. (Location 153)
The pervasiveness of the belief in a just world, called in social psychology the “just-world hypothesis,” was first described by Melvin Lerner decades ago. 10 Lerner argued that people wanted to think that the world was predictable and comprehensible and, therefore, potentially controllable. (Location 160)
The desire for control and predictability results in a tendency to see the world as a just place because a just world is one that is also understandable and predictable. (Location 165)
leaders touting their own careers as models to be emulated frequently gloss over the power plays they actually used to get to the top. (Location 188)
the teaching on leadership is filled with prescriptions about following an inner compass, being truthful, letting inner feelings show, being modest and self-effacing, not behaving in a bullying or abusive way— in short, prescriptions about how people wish the world and the powerful behaved. (Location 189)
Most CEOs are not the level 5 leaders described by Jim Collins in Good to Great as helping to take companies up the performance curve— individuals who are “self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy,” who get the best out of employees by not soaking up all the limelight and making all the decisions. 15 The rarity of such leaders may be why so few organizations go from good to great. (Location 193)
leaders are great at self-presentation, at telling people what they think others want to hear, and in coming across as noble and good. This ability to effectively self-present is why successful individuals reached high levels in the first place. (Location 201)
one of the best ways to acquire and maintain power is to construct a positive image and reputation, in part by coopting others to present you as successful and effective. (Location 205)
if people know that someone or some organization has been successful, they will almost automatically attribute to that individual or company all kinds of positive qualities and behaviors. (Location 207)
The third big obstacle to acquiring power is, believe it or not, you. People are often their own worst enemy, and not just in the arena of building power. (Location 221)
There is an immense research literature about this phenomenon— called “self-handicapping.” 19 The logic is deceptively simple. People desire to feel good about themselves and their abilities. Obviously, any experience of failure puts their self-esteem at risk. However, if people intentionally choose to do things that could plausibly diminish their performance, then any subsequent performance decrements can be explained away as not reflecting their innate abilities. (Location 224)
our desire to protect our self-image by placing external impediments in our way so we can attribute any setbacks to things outside our control actually contributes to doing less well. (Location 236)
Self-handicapping and preemptively giving up or not trying are more pervasive than you might think. (Location 239)
So get over yourself and get beyond your concerns with self-image or, for that matter, the perception others have of you. Others aren’t worrying or thinking about you that much anyway. They are mostly concerned with themselves. The absence of practice or efforts to achieve influence may help you maintain a good view of yourself, but it won’t help you get to the top. (Location 242)
The lesson from cases of people both keeping and losing their jobs is that as long as you keep your boss or bosses happy, performance really does not matter that much and, by contrast, if you upset them, performance won’t save you. (Location 317)
One of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking that good performance— job accomplishments— is sufficient to acquire power and avoid organizational difficulties. Consequently, people leave too much to chance and fail to effectively manage their careers. (Location 319)
economists James Medoff and Katherine Abraham observed that salaries in companies were more strongly related to age and organizational tenure than they were to job performance. (Location 342)
great performance may leave you trapped because a boss does not want to lose your abilities and also because your competence in your current role does not ensure that others will see you as a candidate for much more senior jobs. (Location 367)
Executives who had power because of their own ownership position, because other ownership interests were dispersed, or because there were more inside board members— executives who reported to the chief executive— were more likely to retain power even in the face of bad business results. (Location 373)
Turnover in senior executive ranks was affected by CEO turnover, particularly when an outsider came in. That’s because CEOs like to put loyalists in senior positions— regardless of what past incumbents have accomplished. (Location 376)
So great job performance by itself is insufficient and may not even be necessary for getting and holding positions of power. You need to be noticed, influence the dimensions used to measure your accomplishments, and mostly make sure you are effective at managing those in power— which requires the ability to enhance the ego of those above you. (Location 379)
People in power are busy with their own agendas and jobs. Such people, including those higher up in your own organization, probably aren’t paying that much attention to you and what you are doing. (Location 382)
your first responsibility is to ensure that those at higher levels in your company know what you are accomplishing. And the best way to ensure they know what you are achieving is to tell them. (Location 384)
the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Many people believe this statement and as a consequence seek to fit in and not do anything to stand out too much. (Location 387)
For you to attain a position of power, those in power have to choose you for a senior role. If you blend into the woodwork, no one will care about you, even if you are doing a great job. (Location 389)
Quiet work, or heads-down work, which is efficient and effective— but never flashy— usually fails to get noticed. You can make a great career as a middle manager doing quiet work, but can you gain a lot of power? The answer is most definitely, “no.” (Location 393)
“the mere exposure effect.” As originally described by the late social psychologist Robert Zajonc, the effect refers to the fact that people, other things being equal, prefer and choose what is familiar to them— what they have seen or experienced before. Research shows that repeated exposure increases positive affect and reduces negative feelings, 12 that people prefer the familiar because this preference reduces uncertainty, (Location 397)
In order for your great performance to be appreciated, it needs to be visible. But beyond visibility, the mere exposure research teaches us that familiarity produces preference. Simply put, in many cases, being memorable equals getting picked. (Location 403)
No one is going to perform equally well on all the dimensions of their work. What you can do is consistently emphasize those aspects on which you do well. (Location 420)
REMEMBER WHAT MATTERS TO YOUR BOSS (Location 436)
what matters to your boss may not be the same things that you think are important. (Location 443)
Many people believe that they know what their bosses care about. But unless they are mind readers, that’s probably a risky assumption. It is much more effective for you to ask those in power, on a regular basis, what aspects of the job they think are the most crucial and how they see what you ought to be doing. Asking for help and advice also creates a relationship with those in power that can be quite useful, and asking for assistance, in a way that still conveys your competence and command of the situation, is an effective way of flattering those with power over you. (Location 445)
MAKE OTHERS FEEL BETTER ABOUT THEMSELVES (Location 451)
The surest way to keep your position and to build a power base is to help those with more power enhance their positive feelings about themselves. (Location 453)
worry about the relationship you have with your boss at least as much as you worry about your job performance. If your boss makes a mistake, see if someone else other than you will point it out. And if you do highlight some error or problem, do so in a way that does not in any way implicate the individual’s own self-concept or competence— for instance, by blaming the error on others or on the situation. (Location 477)
One of the best ways to make those in power feel better about themselves is to flatter them. The research literature shows how effective flattery is as a strategy to gain influence. 19 Flattery works because we naturally come to like people who flatter us and make us feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments, and being likable helps build influence. Flattery also works because it engages the norm of reciprocity— if (Location 481)
Most people underestimate the effectiveness of flattery and therefore underutilize it. If someone flatters you, you essentially have two ways of reacting. You can think that the person was insincere and trying to butter you up. But believing that causes you to feel negatively about the person whom you perceive as insincere and not even particularly subtle about it. More importantly, thinking that the compliment is just a strategic way of building influence with you also leads to negative self-feelings— what must others think of you to try such a transparent and false method of influence? (Location 500)
you can think that the compliments are sincere and that the flatterer is a wonderful judge of people— a perspective that leaves you feeling good about the person for his or her interpersonal perception skill and great about yourself, as the recipient of such a positive judgment delivered by such a credible source. There is simply no question that the desire to believe that flattery is at once sincere and accurate will, in most instances, leave us susceptible to being flattered and, as a consequence, under the influence of the flatterer. (Location 504)
Keith Ferrazzi says that, contrary to what most people think, they are not responsible for their own careers. As he noted, your driving ambition and even your great performance are not going to be sufficient to assure success in a typical hierarchical organization. The people responsible for your success are those above you, with the power to either promote you or to block your rise up the organization chart. (Location 513)
your job is to ensure that those influential others have a strong desire to make you successful. That may entail doing a good job. But it may also entail ensuring that those in power notice the good work that you do, remember you, and think well of you because you make them feel good about themselves. It is performance, coupled with political skill, that will help you rise through the ranks. Performance by itself is seldom sufficient, and in some instances, may not even be necessary. (Location 517)
you must come to believe that personal change is possible; (Location 531)
you need to see yourself and your strengths and weaknesses as objectively as possible. (Location 533)
important qualities for building a power base so you can focus your inevitably limited time and attention on developing those. (Location 535)
CHANGE IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE (Location 537)
strategically changing individual attributes to become more personally effective is both possible and desirable. (Location 559)
DO AN OBJECTIVE SELF-ASSESSMENT (Location 566)
If you are going to develop yourself, you need to begin with an honest assessment of where your developmental needs are the greatest— where you have the biggest opportunity for improvement. Such an assessment poses a big motivational challenge. (Location 567)
as you progress through your career, you need to develop new ways of thinking and acting, and such development requires effort, you must be sufficiently motivated to expend the effort. (Location 573)
instead of giving people feedback about what they have done right and wrong in the past, he focuses on “feedforward,” which emphasizes what people need to do to get ready for the subsequent positions and career challenges they will confront. (Location 577)
when people focus on what they need to get to the next stage of their careers, they are less defensive. This is very clever: focusing on what you need to change to accomplish future personal goals can be much more uplifting than going back and reviewing past setbacks or considering areas of weakness. (Location 579)
Even if you are willing to do the emotionally tough work of being clinically objective about your strengths and weaknesses, you may not have the requisite expertise to know how or what to improve. (Location 587)
Cornell social psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning did pathbreaking research about a decade ago showing that people without the requisite knowledge to perform a task successfully also lacked the information and understanding required to know they were deficient, and in what ways. (Location 599)
As Confucius said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s own ignorance.” (Location 609)
SEVEN IMPORTANT PERSONAL QUALITIES THE BUILD POWER (Location 613)
The two fundamental dimensions that distinguish people who rise to great heights and accomplish amazing things are will, the drive to take on big challenges, and skill, the capabilities required to turn ambition into accomplishment. (Location 619)
The three personal qualities embodied in will are ambition, energy, and focus. (Location 621)
The four skills useful in acquiring power are self-knowledge and a reflective mind-set, confidence and the ability to project self-assurance, the ability to read others and empathize with their point of view, and a capacity to tolerate conflict. (Location 622)
Success requires effort and hard work as well as persistence. To expend that effort, to make necessary sacrifices, requires some driving ambition. (Location 625)
Organizational life can be irritating and frustrating and can divert people’s effort and attention. Ambition— a focus on achieving influence— can help people overcome the temptation to give up or to give in to the irritations. (Location 636)
the relentless focus on a goal permits her to put up with the annoying, stupid, frustrating situations she encounters— to, in her words, not get hung up with the imperfect in the moment. (Location 638)
energy does three things that help build influence. First, energy, like many emotional states such as anger or happiness, is contagious. 14 Therefore, energy inspires more effort on the part of others. (Location 650)
Your hard work signals that the job is important; people pick up on that signal, or its opposite. And people are more willing to expend effort if you are, too. (Location 655)
energy and the long hours it permits provide an advantage in getting things accomplished. Research on genius or talent— exceptional accomplishment achieved in a wide range of fields— consistently finds that “laborious preparation” plays an important role. (Location 656)
differences in performance in a wide diversity of talent domains can be largely attributed to the number of hours devoted to the direct acquisition of the necessary knowledge and skill… Some investigators have even suggested that the notion of talent or innate genius may be pure myth.” (Location 659)
people often promote those with energy because of the importance of being able to work hard and also because expending great energy signals a high degree of organizational commitment and, presumably, loyalty. (Location 662)
There are several dimensions to focus. One is specialization in a particular industry or company, providing depth of understanding and a more substantial web of focused relationships. (Location 673)
card company since 2002. She noted that one advantage of staying in one place is that you get to know more people in a single organization, and this deeper knowledge permits you to better exercise power because of the stronger personal relationships you form and your more detailed knowledge of the people you are seeking to influence. (Location 681)
it is often easier to acquire positions of influence as an insider. (Location 684)
If, as much research suggests, genius requires a large number of hours to achieve outstanding levels of competence, it is true, by definition, that you can acquire those hours in less elapsed time if you focus your attention more narrowly. (Location 687)
A third aspect to focus is to concentrate on those activities within your particular job or position that are the most critical— that have the most impact on getting work done and on others’ perceptions of you and your effectiveness. (Location 689)
they often feel that diversification in their work roles provides some protection against making the wrong choice. That may all be true, but the evidence suggests that you are more likely to acquire power by narrowing your focus and applying your energies, like the sun’s rays, to a limited range of activities in a small number of domains. (Location 696)
There is no learning and personal development without reflection. (Location 711)
Structured reflection takes time. It also requires the discipline to concentrate, make notes, and think about what you are doing. But it is very useful in building a path to power. (Location 713)
Formal job titles and positions can provide influence and power. But in many situations, you will be working with peers or with outsiders who may not know your formal status. (Location 723)
you need to seize control of the situation. In making decisions about how much power and deference to accord others, people are naturally going to look to the other’s behavior for cues. Because power is likely to cause people to behave in a more confident fashion, observers will associate confident behavior with actually having power. (Location 725)
Showing confidence seems often to be a particular issue for women, who are socialized to be deferential and less assertive. (Location 736)
Research by social psychologist Brenda Major shows that women work longer and harder for the same amount of money, award themselves lower salaries, and have lower career-entry and peak-earnings expectations than men. 18 One implication of this research is that because women don’t think they are worth as much, they are disadvantaged in salary negotiations, which is one reason why there are persistent male-female earnings differentials. (Location 737)
If you aren’t confident about what you deserve and what you want, you will be reluctant to ask or to push, and therefore you will be less successful in obtaining money or influence compared to those who are bolder than you. (Location 741)
Empathy with Others (Location 743)
Training in negotiation often includes advice to negotiate over “interests” rather than “positions.” Through a process of mutual concessions, both parties may end up better off, but in order to succeed at such an approach, you need to understand where the other is coming from. (Location 744)
What sometimes gets in the way of putting ourselves in the shoes of others is too much focus on the end goal and our own objectives and not enough concern for recruiting others to our side— or at least curtailing (Location 754)
far from diverting you from accomplishing your objectives, putting yourself in the other’s place is one of the best ways to advance your own agenda. (Location 766)
Capacity to Tolerate Conflict (Location 767)
most people are conflict-averse, they avoid difficult situations and difficult people, frequently acceding to requests or changing their positions rather than paying the emotional price of standing up for themselves and their views. If you can handle difficult conflict-and stress-filled situations effectively, you have an advantage over most people. (Location 771)
INTELLIGENCE (Location 792)
People who are exceptionally smart think they can do everything on their own and do it better than everyone else. Con sequently, they may fail to bring others along with them, leaving their potential allies in the dark about their plans and thinking. (Location 814)
Being recognized as exceptionally smart can cause overconfidence and even arrogance, which, as we will see in more detail later, can lead to the loss of power. (Location 815)
Many of the people who seem to me to have the most difficulty putting themselves in the other’s place are people who are so smart they can’t understand why the others don’t get it. (Location 817)
while intelligence helps in building a reputation and in job performance, it often holds the seeds of people’s downfall in creating overconfidence and insensitivity. (Location 826)
WHERE YOU begin your career affects your rate of progress as well as how far you go. (Location 831)
people often err in choosing where to start building their power base. The most common mistake is to locate in the department dealing with the organization’s current core activity, skill, or product— the unit that is the most powerful at the moment. This turns out to not always be a good idea because the organization’s most central work is where you are going to encounter the most talented competition and also the most well-established career paths and processes. (Location 853)
if you want to move up quickly, go to underexploited niches where you can develop leverage with less resistance and build a power base in activities that are going to be more important in the near future than they are today. (Location 857)
Yusuf built a department that had its hand in almost every high-level decision that required data collection and analysis— issues such as how to redo the human resources department, pricing questions, and organizational structure and design choices. The department, called the corporate consulting team (CCT), became the point of contact for managing any outside consultants SAP used. (Location 885)
Finance moved talented people into other areas of the company to extend its influence and came to control the agendas and the flow of information throughout the company. (Location 923)
The Whiz Kids and the finance function at Ford illustrate one source of departmental power— unit cohesion. At Ford’s finance function, there were socialization rituals— running the overhead projector at meetings, preparing briefing books, gathering articles and information— that served the same function as training in the military for the company’s young, up-and-coming executives: imparting some specific skills and knowledge but more importantly building common bonds of communication and trust that come through shared experiences. (Location 931)
Speaking with one voice, being able to act together in a coordinated fashion, is an important source of departmental power and effectiveness. 9 That’s why the military evaluates leaders in part on the cohesion of their units and why coaches of team sports work so hard to build unity of action and purpose. (Location 934)
Another source of departmental power is the ability to provide critical resources, such as money or skills, or the ability to solve critical organizational problems, (Location 937)
as the ERP marketplace became more competitive, pricing and marketing strategy and user-centered design were all becoming much more critical. All of these changes made Yusuf’s skills and the departments and connections he built more important. (Location 957)
Design and engineering weren’t that critical when innovation was mostly about the size of tail fins, and although the industry was always cyclical, sales skills were not that critical, either. As the Whiz Kids arrived, finance and business education were both about to take off on a sustained period of expansion, and to be an analytically skilled, highly educated person in finance at Ford was to be almost in the center of this emerging universe. (Location 965)
It is always useful to be able to diagnose the political landscape, whether for plotting your next career move or for understanding who you need to influence to get something done. (Location 973)
people within the firm with the most accurate perception of the power distribution and networks of influence had more power. 14 Skill at diagnosing power distributions is useful. (Location 977)
for diagnosing departmental power. Any single indicator may be misleading— but if many such indicators provide a consistent answer, then your confidence should be greater. (Location 980)
Both starting salaries and the pay of more senior positions in departments connote relative power. (Location 983)
In the public utility study mentioned earlier, the starting salary was about 6 percent higher for people beginning their careers in the departments with higher power. (Location 984)
Being physically close to those in power both signals power and provides power through increased access. (Location 992)
THE TRADE-OFF: A STRONG POWER BASE VERSUS LESS COMPETITION (Location 1015)
You face a dilemma. Being in a powerful department provides advantages for your income and your career. But for that very reason, lots of talented people want to go to the most powerful units. (Location 1016)
benefited from being valued pioneers of an important, new (for the company) business unit with tremendous visibility at the executive board level. Many people moved from the CCT to other important roles within SAP— something that was intended from the beginning, since one of the department’s defined objectives was to be an entry point for talented people from different academic disciplines. (Location 1021)
trade-off— pioneering a new path and the risk that entails versus entering an established domain but facing greater competition— (Location 1025)
whatever your choice, you would be well served to try to understand not just what today’s powerful departments are, but where you think the power is going. And that forecasting skill is possible, although not assured or easy, by paying attention to the unfolding dynamics of the particular business and its environment. (Location 1044)
Getting In: Standing Out and Breaking Some Rules (Location 1065)
Not many people would have the audacity to ask to speak with the head of the firm where they were being hired, and even fewer would ask that individual to have dinner with them once a year. They would be afraid of being turned down, of seeming arrogant or audacious, of creating waves, and plus, that’s not how things are done in the typical recruiting scenario. (Location 1073)
launching or re-launching your career requires that you develop both the ability and the willingness to ask for things and that you learn to stand out. People often don’t ask for what they want and are afraid of standing out too much because they worry that others may resent or dislike their behavior, seeing them as self-promoting. (Location 1077)
You need to get over the idea that you need to be liked by everybody and that likability is important in creating a path to power, and you need to be willing to put yourself forward. (Location 1079)
Both Reginald Lewis and Keith Ferrazzi understood that the worst that could happen from asking for something would be getting turned down. And if they were turned down, so what? They would not be any worse off than if they had not asked in the first place. If they didn’t ask or if they were refused, they would not receive what they sought, but at least with asking, there was some hope. Some people do believe that worse things could occur: that their bold behavior could offend those exposed to it and they could develop a “bad reputation.” Probably not, and the risk of standing out is well worth taking, (Location 1096)
ASKING WORKS (Location 1101)
Asking for help is something people often avoid. (Location 1108)
people are afraid of rejection because of what getting turned down might do to their self-esteem. Third, requests for help are based on their likelihood of being granted: (Location 1109)
people underestimate the chances of others offering help. That’s because those contemplating making a request of another tend to focus on the costs others will incur complying with their request, and don’t emphasize sufficiently the costs of saying no. Rejecting an appeal for help violates an implicit and socially desirable norm of being “benevolent.” Would you rather be known as generous or stingy? In addition, turning down a request made in person is awkward. We are taught from childhood to be generous, so we are inclined to grant the requests of others almost automatically. (Location 1111)
One reason why asking works is that we are flattered to be asked for advice or help— few things are more self-affirming and ego-enhancing than to have others, particularly talented others, seek our aid. (Location 1132)
When Barack Obama arrived in the U.S. Senate, he built relationships by asking for help. He asked about one-third of the senators for advice and forged mentoring relationships (Location 1134)
Inside are 18 very, very short chapters by leading Indian entrepreneurs, all of whom now know Ishan Gupta and are at least committed enough to him to have written something for his book. He told me that of all the people he approached to write a piece for the book, only four or five turned him down, even though he knew none of them personally when he first approached them. Gupta’s strategy for getting these people’s help was simple: determine who he wanted to be involved in the project and then ask them in a way that enhanced their feelings of self-esteem. Of course, once some prominent people agreed, those who were approached later were flattered to be asked to join such a distinguished group. Gupta focused his pitch on how important the subject of entrepreneurship was to India’s economic development, how successful the people he approached had been in building businesses, how much wisdom and advice they could share, and how much help they could provide to others. He told them that he was a fellow entrepreneur and a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology like many of them, that he appreciated how they had risked striking out on their own, and how unusual and courageous it was to start a business at that time in Indian society. Gupta then paid them the ultimate compliment, noting that no one would take a book by someone like him seriously and he might miss important insights, but with their help, it would be a better and more widely read book. Gupta also lowered the cost of agreeing to his request by asking the prominent and busy people he approached to write just a page or two, a few hundred words, with some key advice. People love to give advice as it signals how wise they are, and Gupta packaged the request brilliantly. (Location 1148)
research shows that people are more likely to accede to requests from others with whom they share even the most casual of connections. (Location 1161)
If you are approaching someone to ask for something— help finding a job, a chapter for a book like Gupta’s, advice on some matter of consequence— presumably you have selected the person you are asking because of their qualifications and experience. Show that you understand their importance and how wise they are in how you frame the request. (Location 1166)
Asking for help is inherently flattering, and can be made even more so if we do it correctly, emphasizing the importance and accomplishments of those we ask and also reminding them of what we share in common. (Location 1169)
DON’T BE AFRAID TO STAND OUT AND BREAK THE RULES (Location 1171)
There is lots of competition inside organizations— for jobs, for promotions, for power. Your success depends not only on your own work but also on your ability to get those in a position to help your career, like your boss, to want to make you successful and help you in your climb. For someone to hire you or promote you they must notice you. You need to do some things to stand out. (Location 1172)
you need to build your personal brand and promote yourself, and not be too shy in the process. (Location 1176)
Many people believe that they can stand out and be bold once they become successful and earn the right to do things differently. But once you are successful and powerful, you don’t need to stand out or worry about the competition. It’s early in your career when you are seeking initial positions that differentiating yourself from the competition is most important. (Location 1186)
Hasegawa often employed a brash style, speaking frankly to customers and even potential customers about their organization’s problems. When I asked him about his unusual approach, he described his marketing strategy as almost seducing people to come to you and your company to see what you are about. One way of doing that was by doing things differently, which intrigued others and piqued their interest. (Location 1210)
In advertising, the concept of standing out to become memorable is called “brand recall,” which is an important measure of advertising effectiveness. (Location 1214)
What works for products can work for you too— you need to be interesting and memorable and able to stand out in ways that cause others to want to know you and get close to you. (Location 1215)
the rules tend to favor— big surprise— the people who make the rules, who tend to be the people who are already winning and in power. (Location 1218)
“When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win.” 11 So, if you have all the power you want or need, by all means not only follow the rules but encourage everyone else to do so too. But if you are still traversing your path to power, take all this conventional wisdom and “rule-following” stuff with a big grain of salt. (Location 1223)
Research generally shows that people are more likely to do things for others whom they like, and that likability is an important basis of interpersonal influence, 12 but there are two important caveats. First, most of the studies examined situations of relatively equal power where compliance with a request for assistance was largely discretionary. Second, as Machiavelli pointed out 500 years ago in his treatise The Prince, although it is desirable to be both loved and feared, if you have to pick only one, pick fear if you want to get and keep power. (Location 1228)
the two virtually universal dimensions used to assess people are warmth and competence. 13 Here’s the rub: to appear competent, it is helpful to seem a little tough, or even mean. (Location 1234)
nice people are perceived as warm, but niceness frequently comes across as weakness or even a lack of intelligence. (Location 1239)
Likability Can Create Power, but Power Almost Certainly Creates Likability (Location 1246)
people will join your side if you have power and are willing to use it, not just because they are afraid of your hurting them but also because they want to be close to your power and success. (Location 1247)
Research shows that attitudes follow behavior— that if we act in a certain way, over time our attitudes follow. For example, if we act friendly toward an adversary whose help we need, we will come to feel more friendly as well. (Location 1276)
if we interact with powerful people because we need them to do some task or to help us in our career, over time we will come to like them more or at least forgive their rough edges. (Location 1281)
The principle of hedonism underlies many theories of individual behavior, ranging from economics to psychology— we seek pleasure and avoid pain. (Location 1284)
We also forgive the slights and wounds inflicted by others, and are particularly likely to forgive people if we are in contact with them. And we are more likely to remain in contact if they are powerful. (Location 1287)
Standing out helps you get the jobs and power you may seek. Asking for what you need and being less concerned about what others are thinking about you can help in launching your path to power. But acquiring and wielding power requires the resources to reward your friends and punish your enemies, the information and access that can foster your rise in the organization. (Location 1299)
having resources is an important source of power only if you use those resources strategically to help others whose support you need, in the process gaining their favor. (Location 1310)
of chief executive compensation found that firm size accounted for more than 40 percent of the variation in pay while performance accounted for less than 5 percent. 3 The positive association between firm size— the amount of resources controlled by the CEO— and pay results in efforts to expand the size of the pot regardless of the financial consequences. Such behavior includes merging with other companies to create a larger entity, even though studies consistently show that the vast majority of mergers destroy shareholder value. (Location 1325)
Resources are great because once you have them, maintaining power becomes a self-reinforcing process. (Location 1331)
People with money or with control over organizational money get appointed to various for-profit and nonprofit boards where they are in contact with others who have business and investment ideas and social and political influence. (Location 1333)
power and resources beget more power and resources. Your task is to figure out how to break into the circle. (Location 1339)
important implications of resources as a source of power. The first is that in choosing among jobs, choose positions that have greater direct resource control of more budget or staff. That generally means preferring line to staff positions, since line positions typically control more staff hiring and more budgetary authority. (Location 1340)
Most headhunters will tell you that when they seek candidates for senior general management positions, including the CEO job, they look to people who have had responsibility running operations, and the larger the division or operation the potential candidate has run, the better, other things being equal. (Location 1348)
The loss of personal importance and power that occurs when you leave a position with substantial resource control is why, as Jeffrey Sonnenfeld documented in his book The Hero’s Farewell, many CEOs who have enjoyed a lot of fawning attention because of their position have great trouble stepping down from that role. 4 (Location 1361)
building a power base is a process of accumulating leverage and resource control little by little over time. It’s important to be able to see or even create opportunities that others may miss— and even more important to have the patience and persistence to follow through on those opportunities. (Location 1367)
A resource is anything people want or need— money, a job, information, social support and friendship, help in doing their job. There are always opportunities to provide these things to others whose support you want. (Location 1375)
Helping people out in almost any fashion engages the norm of reciprocity— the powerful, almost universal behavioral principle that favors must be repaid. (Location 1376)
helping others generates a more generalized obligation to return the favor, and as a consequence, doing even small things can produce a comparatively large payoff. (Location 1378)
Being nice to people is effective because people find it difficult to fight with those who are being polite and courteous. (Location 1387)
most people like to talk about themselves— give them the opportunity to do so. Being a good listener and asking questions about others is a simple but effective way to use a resource everyone has— time and attention— to build power. (Location 1392)
if you don’t have much power, you probably have time. Use that time to befriend others and go to events that are important to them. (Location 1394)
People appreciate help with doing some aspect of their job, and they particularly appreciate assistance with tasks that they find boring or mundane— precisely the kinds of tasks (Location 1396)
Taking on small tasks can provide you with power because people are often lazy or uninterested in seemingly small, unimportant activities. Therefore, if you take the initiative to do a relatively minor task and do it extremely well, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to challenge you for the opportunity. Meanwhile, these apparently minor tasks can become important sources of power. (Location 1412)
Leverage Your Association with a Prestigious Institution If you’re in a place that has status, you can use that status to your advantage. (Location 1455)
taking initiative to create resources by finding speakers, organizing meetings, making connections, and creating venues where people can readily meet others, learn interesting things, and do business brings appreciation for your efforts, even as you create the resources to help you on your path to power. (Location 1487)
Bringing people together entails your taking on a brokerage role and becoming central in social networks. Networking skills are important and the networks you create are an important resource for creating influence, (Location 1489)
some jobs are mostly about networking and everyone can benefit from developing more efficient and effective social networks and honing networking skills. (Location 1507)
Hans-Georg Wolff and Klaus Moser, offer a good definition of networking: “Behaviors that are aimed at building, maintaining, and using informal relationships that possess the (potential) benefit of facilitating work-related activities of individuals by voluntarily gaining access to resources and maximizing… advantages.” (Location 1510)
Building internal contacts (e.g., “I use company events to make new contacts.”) 2. Maintaining internal contacts (e.g., “I catch up with colleagues from other departments about what they are working on.”) 3. Using internal contacts (e.g., “I use my contacts with colleagues in other departments in order to get confidential advice in business matters.”) 4. Building external contacts (e.g., “I accept invitations to official functions or festivities out of professional interest.”) 5. Maintaining external contacts (e.g., “I ask others to give my regards to business acquaintances outside of our company.”) 6. Using external contacts (e.g., “I exchange professional tips and hints with acquaintances from other organizations.”) 3 The networking behaviors they describe entail making some incremental effort to build, maintain, and use social ties with people. (Location 1515)
Venture capital involves bridging the gap between people and institutions who have money to invest and entrepreneurs with business ideas who need capital. The role of the venture capitalist also entails helping start-ups find talent and occasionally business partners to assist in distribution or product development, and an extensive set of contacts is obviously helpful in these tasks. (Location 1526)
jobs high in networking content require bridging separate organizations, brokering deals, and relationship building to influence decision making. (Location 1530)
studies show that networking is positively related to obtaining good performance evaluations, objective measures of career success such as salary and organizational level, and subjective attitudes assessing career satisfaction. 4 There is a problem with many of these studies in that networking and success are measured at the same time, so it is not clear what is causing what. For instance, it may be that successful people have more social contacts not because the networking produced their success but because others want to be in touch with them to obtain the benefits of their status. (Location 1548)
Networking affected career satisfaction, concurrent salary, and salary growth over time, with the two most important networking behaviors being “maintaining external contacts” and “building internal contacts.” (Location 1555)
effective networking creates a virtuous cycle. Networking makes you more visible; this visibility increases your power and status; and your heightened power and status then make building and maintaining social contacts easier. (Location 1567)
there is some evidence that people can learn how to diagnose network structures and become more effective in developing their social capital, with positive effects on their career. (Location 1571)
The evidence shows that networking is important in affecting career progress, and you need to get over qualms about engaging in strategic behavior to advance your career— and that includes who you are in touch with. (Location 1591)
Networking actually does not take that much time and effort. It mostly takes thought and planning. (Location 1593)
Keith Ferrazzi’s book title Never Eat Alone makes the point. People are going to eat and exercise anyway— why not use that time to expand your network of contacts? (Location 1594)
Because networking does entail some effort, you ought to be strategic about your networking activities. Make a list of people you want or need to meet and organizations where some personal connection might be helpful. Work your way down that list, figuring out ways to build social relationships with a wider and more diverse set of individuals. (Location 1612)
Another barrier that seems to stand in the way of networking is that people naturally fall into habits, and one habit is interacting with the same set of people all the time. You get comfortable with them, you come to trust them, and it is easier and more pleasant to interact with people you already know than to build relationships with strangers. So go out of your way to meet new people. (Location 1618)
NETWORK WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE (Location 1626)
Not everyone is going to be equally useful to you and you should account for that fact in how you spend your networking time. (Location 1627)
Granovetter found that social ties were important in the job-finding process and the more one used social ties, as contrasted with less personal mechanisms such as formal applications, the better the job the individual found. He also found that the process used to fill jobs differed by job type: managerial jobs were more likely to be found through personal contacts rather than through more formal means (Location 1629)
The intuition behind the idea that weak ties are frequently more useful than stronger ones is that the people you are closest to, your close friends and family, are more likely to travel in the same circles, be close to each other also, and therefore provide redundant information. Weak ties, by contrast, are more likely to link you to new people, organizations, and information, providing new information and contacts. For weak ties to be useful, however, two things must be true: casual acquaintances must be able to link you into diverse networks and they must be willing to do so. (Location 1636)
Asking someone if she knows about a job opening or about the particulars of a company or job will almost always produce information even if the relationship is fairly weak and casual. (Location 1642)
an optimal networking strategy is to know a lot of different people from different circles, have multiple organizational affiliations in a variety of different industries and sectors that are geographically dispersed, but not necessarily to know the people well or to develop close ties with them. (Location 1644)
One way to acquire status is to start an organization that is so compelling in its mission that high-status people join the project and you build both status and a network of important relationships. (Location 1658)
doing good and doing well. (Location 1666)
The fact that status hierarchies are stable means not only that it is difficult to move up but also that it is difficult to move down. Once you have achieved power and status through the network of your relationships, you will be able to maintain your influence without expending as much time and effort. (Location 1667)
You can monetize your high-status network. (Location 1669)
Power and influence come not just from the extensiveness of your network and the status of its members, but also from your structural position within that network. Centrality matters. Research shows that centrality within both advice and friendship networks produces many benefits, (Location 1676)
If virtually all information and communication flows through you, you will have more power. One source of your power will be your control over the flow of information, and another is that people attribute power to individuals who are central. You can assess your centrality by asking what proportion of others in your work, for instance, nominate you as someone they go to for advice or help with their own work. Another way of assessing centrality is to ask what proportion of all communication links flow through you. (Location 1683)
Centrality provides power within a network, but it is also important to have power through connections across diverse networks. Most people tend to associate with those similar to themselves— a tendency called homophily. Consequently, groups that might gain from interacting with other groups don’t do so, because group members are more comfortable associating with the people in their own group. (Location 1699)
This natural tendency to associate with those close to us creates an opportunity for profiting by building brokerage relations— or, to use the terminology of University of Chicago business school professor Ronald Burt, by bridging the structural holes that exist between noninteracting groups. 13 (Location 1702)
by connecting units that are tightly linked internally but socially isolated from each other, the person doing the connecting can profit by being the intermediary who facilitates interactions between the two groups. (Location 1705)
research strongly suggests that occupying brokerage positions— filling structural holes— is advantageous for one’s career. Social capital, measured by how many structural holes an individual bridges, positively affects promotions, salary, and organizational level attained. (Location 1717)
People sometimes believe that if they are connected to someone else who occupies a good brokerage position, they can achieve almost as much benefit. However, Ron Burt found that this intuition was not accurate. People even one step removed from the person doing the brokerage enjoyed virtually no benefit. (Location 1722)
Bridging structural holes and being in the center of many social ties requires time. You should decide how much time to spend and your specific networking strategy based on the extent to which your job requires building social relationships for you to be successful— a topic already considered in this chapter— and the type of knowledge most useful in your job. (Location 1728)
When you need to access tacit knowledge, a smaller network of close ties is important because it takes close relationships to get people to spend the time to explain their tacit expertise. When the project requires locating explicit knowledge that can be readily transferred once you find it, a large network of weak ties provides greater benefit. (Location 1734)
product development efforts that entail doing very new things, where the type of information required was almost impossible to specify in advance, and product development projects using existing competencies and information that could mostly be anticipated. Hansen and his colleagues found that a network rich in weak ties was most useful for doing new things because a large network of weak ties permitted product development teams to explore broadly for information that was helpful. In contrast, when the product development effort leveraged well-established existing competencies, a smaller network got the product out the door more quickly. (Location 1737)
large network of weak ties is good for innovation and locating information, while a small network of strong ties is better suited to exploiting existing knowledge and transferring tacit skills. (Location 1742)
Acting and Speaking with Power (Location 1748)
Observers watching people who don’t deny or run away from their actions naturally presume that the perpetrators don’t feel guilty or ashamed, so maybe no one should be too upset. This phrasing also communicated power, that North was in charge rather than a “victim” of circumstance. (Location 1763)
Her experience suggested that the secret of leadership was the ability to play a role, to pretend, to be skilled in the theatrical arts. 4 Rubin is right. Differences in the ability to convey power through how we talk, appear, and act matter in our everyday interactions, (Location 1796)
research literature shows the interview is not a reliable or valid selection mechanism, it is almost universally used. And the impressions people make as they talk to others matter for their likelihood of getting a job offer or a promotion. It may not seem right that we are judged on our “appearance,” on how we present ourselves and our ideas. But the world isn’t always a just place. To come across effectively, we need to master how to convey power. We need to act, and speak, with power. (Location 1805)
Authority is 20 percent given, 80 percent taken. 6 Words to live by. If you are going to take power, you need to project confidence, (Location 1821)
Andy Grove understood three important principles about acting with power. First, after a while, what started out being an act becomes less so. Over time, you will become more like you are acting— self-assured, confident, and more strongly convinced of the truth of what you are saying. Attitudes follow behavior, as much research attests. Second, the emotions you express, such as confidence or happiness, influence those around you— emotions are contagious. (Location 1833)
Third, emotions and behaviors become self-reinforcing: if you smile and then others smile, you are more likely to feel happy and smile. This reflexive quality in human interaction means that a mood or feeling, once generated, is likely to be quite stable. (Location 1841)
Grove may have had to act confident and knowledgeable at first, but as others “caught” that feeling, it would be reflected back, making Grove himself more confident. If acting is important as a leadership skill and for acquiring power, it is important to know how to perform. One principle is to act confident. There are others. (Location 1843)
Research shows that people who express anger are seen “as dominant, strong, competent, and smart,” although they are also, of course, seen as less nice and warm. (Location 1872)
In another series of experimental studies, Tiedens showed that people actually conferred more status on people who expressed anger rather than sadness. (Location 1879)
If you express anger, not only do you receive more status and power and appear more competent but others are reluctant to cross you. (Location 1891)
women who acted more assertively and displayed ambition were seen as too tough and unfeminine, although they were also seen as more competent. (Location 1897)
Some experimental research supports the view that women may benefit less than men by acting angry. (Location 1899)
the effectiveness of expressing anger remains open. But if you have to choose between being seen as likable and fitting in on the one hand or appearing competent albeit abrasive on the other, choose competence. (Location 1909)
You can dress up, an act that conveys power and status— to look like you belong in the position to which you aspire. You can do things with your hair, the style of the clothes you wear, and colors to enhance your appearance. Get professional help in enhancing the influence you convey by how you look. (Location 1918)
Everyone can stand up straight rather than slouching, and can thrust their chest and pelvis forward rather than curling in on themselves. Moving forward and toward someone is a gesture that connotes power, as does standing closer to others, while turning your back or retreating signals the opposite. (Location 1923)
Moving your hands in a circle or waving your arms diminishes how powerful you appear. Gestures should be short and forceful, not long and circular. Looking people directly in the eye connotes not only power but also honesty and directness, while looking down is a signal of diffidence. Looking away causes others to think you are dissembling. (Location 1926)
Sometimes you will be called upon to display emotions you don’t feel— confidence when you are uncertain, anger when you are fearful, and compassion and empathy when you may be feeling impatience or disappointment. To display the emotion you need to show, go within yourself to a time and event when you did feel the emotion you need to project at that moment. Recalling that event will bring back the associated feelings, which you can then display. (Location 1929)
One reason people don’t come across as forcefully or effectively as they might is that they begin to speak while they are flustered or unsure of the situation. (Location 1953)
there will be times when a question or comment blindsides you or when you find yourself in a situation without preparation. Breathe and take time to collect yourself— you will be much more effective than if you just rush into the situation. (Location 1962)
One source of power in every interaction is interruption. Those with power interrupt, those with less power get interrupted. In conversation, interrupting others, although not polite, can indicate power and be an effective power move, something noted by scholars (Location 1969)
If someone challenges these assumptions— such as how the company is competing, how it is measuring success, what the strategy is, who the real competitors are now and in the future— this can be a very potent power play. The questions and challenges focus attention on the person bringing the seemingly commonsense issues to the fore and causes people to have to renegotiate things that were always implicitly assumed. (Location 1992)
PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE Language that influences is able to create powerful images and emotions that overwhelm reason. 24 Such language is evocative, specific, and filled with strong language and visual imagery. (Location 1995)
Churchill understood the power of language, having once commented, “Words are the only things that last forever.” (Location 2004)
Max Atkinson describes a number of conventions that make speech more persuasive and engaging. Here are five such linguistic techniques. (Location 2016)
Use us-versus-them references. (Location 2017)
Pause for emphasis and invite approval or even applause through a slight delay. (Location 2023)
Use a list of three items, or enumerations in general. “One of the main attractions of three-part lists is that they have an air of unity and completeness about them.” 29 Lists make a speaker appear as if he or she has thought about the issue and the alternatives and considered all sides thoroughly. (Location 2026)
Use contrastive pairs, comparing one thing to another and using passages that are similar in length and grammatical structure. The contrast is strategically chosen to make a point. (Location 2029)
Avoid using a script or notes. If you speak without aids, the implication is that you have a mastery of the subject and are spontaneous. In addition, not using notes or a script permits the speaker to maintain eye contact with the audience. (Location 2035)
use humor to the extent possible and appropriate. (Location 2042)
Salman Rushdie noted on a radio program, “If you make people laugh, you can tell them anything.” 31 Humor is disarming and also helps create a bond between you and your audience through a shared joke. (Location 2043)
We often avoid situations in which we feel uncomfortable, but if we are going to get better at talking and acting with power, there is no substitute for experience. Seek out opportunities to make presentations for your company, give talks at clubs or professional groups, and find someone to observe you and provide feedback on what you are doing well and poorly. (Location 2056)
Building a Reputation: Perception Is Reality (Location 2062)
Accomplishment matters, but so, too, does your reputation. Therefore, one important strategy for not only creating a successful path to power but also maintaining your position once you have achieved it is to build your image and your reputation. (Location 2068)
In an experimental study of the performance appraisals people received, those who were able to create a favorable impression received higher ratings than did people who actually performed better but did not do as good a job in managing the impressions they made on others. (Location 2072)
Instead of competing for a job and selling yourself to the board and senior executives, if you have a stellar reputation, companies will be fighting to hire you. (Location 2076)
The companies will do this even though the evidence shows that these outside hires frequently fail and even if your reputation for executive brilliance is more myth than reality. (Location 2079)
Sometimes reputation adheres to individuals, but sometimes individuals get a good reputation by their association with high-status institutions. General Electric is considered to be a great training ground for senior leaders. Consequently, senior executives can leave General Electric for CEO jobs at other firms with big salaries and enormous financial market expectations. (Location 2080)
Groysberg’s research shows that leaders are not particularly portable and this outside hiring often does not work. But for the leader with the great reputation, no problem— when Nardelli left Home Depot under duress, he departed with a total package valued at a quarter of a billion dollars. His reputation apparently still intact, Nardelli moved on to run Chrysler even though he had no auto industry experience. Chrysler subsequently went into bankruptcy. (Location 2087)
The fundamental principles for building the sort of reputation that will get you a high-power position are straightforward: make a good impression early, carefully delineate the elements of the image you want to create, use the media to help build your visibility and burnish your image, have others sing your praises so you can surmount the self-promotion dilemma, and strategically put out enough negative but not fatally damaging information about yourself that the people who hire and support you fully understand any weaknesses and make the choice anyway. The key to your success is in executing each of these steps well. (Location 2091)
people start forming impressions of you in the first few seconds or even milliseconds of contact. Impressions aren’t just based on extensive information about you, your behavior, and what you can do as manifested in job performance, but also on initial readings of your facial expression, posture, voice, and appearance. One study found that judgments of people made in the first 11 milliseconds correlated highly with judgments made when there were no time constraints, suggesting that extremely brief exposure was all that was required for people to form a reasonably stable impression. (Location 2098)
Not only are reputations and first impressions formed quickly, but they are durable. (Location 2114)
One process, attention decrement, argues that because of fatigue or boredom, people don’t pay as close attention to later information as they do to information that comes early, when they first form judgments. When you first meet people, you are going to be quite attentive to what they say and do as you seek to learn about them and sort and assign them to categories, including how helpful and powerful you think they are or could be. (Location 2117)
A second process entails cognitive discounting— once people have formed an impression of another, they disregard any information that is inconsistent with their initial ideas. This process is particularly likely when the decisions and judgments are consequential. Who wants to admit that we are wrong about something important, with the negative consequences such an admission has for our self-image? It is much easier to discount inconsistent information and seek data that buttresses our original assessments. Third, people engage in behavior that helps make their initial impressions of others come true. (Location 2121)
When interviewers had formed an initially favorable impression of an applicant, they showed positive regard toward that person, engaged more in “selling” of the company, provided more information about the job and the company, and asked for less information from the candidate. Interviewers built more rapport with candidates they thought they would like. (Location 2127)
Behavioral dynamics tend to reinforce initial impressions and reputations, making those impressions become true even if they weren’t originally. (Location 2131)
How people interpret what they see depends on their expectations that precede their observations. We see what we expect to see, so entering a situation with a reputation for power or brilliance is, other things being equal, more likely to have you leave the setting, regardless of what you do, with your reputation for power or brilliance enhanced. (Location 2142)
Impressions and reputations endure, so building a favorable impression and reputation early is an important step in creating power. (Location 2144)
if you find yourself in a place where you have an image problem and people don’t think well of you, for whatever reason, it is often best to leave for greener pastures. This is tough advice to hear and heed— many people want to demonstrate how wonderful they are by working diligently to change others’ minds and repair their image. But such efforts are seldom successful, for all the reasons just enumerated, and moreover, they take a lot of effort. Better to demonstrate your many positive qualities in a new setting where you don’t have to overcome so much baggage. (Location 2146)
because impressions are formed quickly and are based on many things, such as similarity and “chemistry” over which you have far from perfect control, you should try to put yourself in as many different situations as possible— to play the law of large numbers. If you are a talented individual, over time and in many contexts, that talent will appear to those evaluating you. But in any single instance, the evaluative judgment that forms the basis for your reputation will be much more random. (Location 2150)
This advice is consistent with that offered on network building, where again the best practice is to widely disperse your network building efforts and build many weak ties. (Location 2153)
Don’t get hung up on making a favorable impression in any single place, but instead find an environment in which you can build a great reputation and keep trying different environments until this effort succeeds. (Location 2154)
CAREFULLY CONSIDER AND CONSTRUCT YOUR IMAGE You need to think strategically about the dimensions or elements of the reputation you want to build and then conduct yourself accordingly. (Location 2156)
The specifics of a useful reputation will obviously vary depending on the context and your own personal strengths and weaknesses. What is important is that you think carefully about the dimensions of the reputation you want to build, and then do everything in your power, from how you spend your time to what organizations and people you associate with, to ensure that is the image that you project. (Location 2180)
The lessons from the Marcelo story are to be persistent and to spend time cultivating media people— not just press, radio, television, and the Internet, but also business writers and thinkers who can help you burnish your image. The best way to build relationships with media people is to be helpful and accessible. (Location 2207)
There is no doubt that it is easier to get media attention once you are in power. Once in a very senior leadership role, you can hire the ghost writers to help you get your favorable story out and you can put your company’s marketing muscle behind such efforts, which makes magazines and book publishers much more interested in the project. And by so doing, you can take control of your image, burnishing the positive aspects and ignoring anything negative. (Location 2223)
it is possible and desirable to have a media image– building strategy even at the beginning of your career. Consider getting public relations help early on. Reach out to the media and academics who write cases and articles, and write your own articles or blogs that enhance your visibility. (Location 2239)
you need to be cognizant of the self-promotion dilemma and figure out some ways around it. The dilemma is this: on the one hand, research shows that when people don’t advocate for themselves and claim competence, particularly in settings such as job interviews or pushing for a promotion when they would be expected to do so, others believe they must be either incompetent or unskilled in handling such situations, a perception that works to their disadvantage. 21 On the other hand, self-promoting behavior, although expected in many instances, also creates difficulties. When you tout your own abilities and accomplishments, you face two problems: you are not going to be as believable as presumably more objective outsiders; and research shows that people who engage in blatant self-promotion are perceived as arrogant and self-aggrandizing, which causes others not to like them. 22 Although likability is not essential for obtaining power, there is no point in putting others (Location 2250)
don’t be cheap— hire people to represent and tout you. It can work to your advantage in several ways. (Location 2273)
If you know you are hiring someone who is difficult, and you do so anyway, you will be more committed to the decision— because you will have made the selection in spite of whatever flaws the person has. Displaying some negative characteristics, as long as they aren’t so overwhelming as to preclude your selection, actually increases your power because those who support you notwithstanding your flaws will be even more committed to you and your success. (Location 2282)
A great reputation can help you achieve great performance and vice versa. The trick is to be sure you do the things to build your reputation, have others tout you, and attract the kind of media coverage and image that can help build your power base. (Location 2300)
everyone encounters opposition and setbacks along the path to power. (Location 2305)
Because people come from different backgrounds, face different rewards, and see different information, they are going to see the world differently. Consequently, disagreements are inevitable in organizations. (Location 2344)
many people are conflict-averse, finding disagreement disagreeable and avoiding surfacing differences of opinion and engaging in difficult conversations with their adversaries. (Location 2346)
“Conflict is just an opportunity for another person’s education,” for exploring why people think the way they do, and for sharing perspectives so the parties to the conflict can learn about and from each other. (Location 2347)
Particularly in a leadership position, it is irresponsible to avoid people with whom you have disagreements and to duck difficult situations. (Location 2349)
TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS AND LEAVE PEOPLE A GRACEFUL OUT (Location 2351)
people rebel against constraints or efforts to control their behavior— force is met with countervailing force. 4 Seeking to dominate the conversation and the decision making and totally control the situation may work on some of your adversaries, but probably not too many. Most will seek to push back, very hard— they will react to your attempts to overpower them by doing things to maintain their power and autonomy. (Location 2352)
one way to deal with opponents is to treat them well and leave them a graceful way to retreat. Sometimes, coopting others and making them a part of your team or organization carries the day by giving them a stake in the current system. (Location 2356)
You can turn enemies into allies, or at least people who are indifferent to you and not in your way, through strategic outplacement— getting them a better job somewhere else where they will not be underfoot. (Location 2364)
Helping opponents move to another organization where they won’t be in your way may not be the first thing you think about doing, but it ought to be high on the list. (Location 2371)
Giving adversaries something to make them feel better works to your advantage, particularly if the move doesn’t cost you that much. That’s why boards and bosses often say nice things about people being shown the door, and even sometimes provide money— seldom from their own pockets— that makes the exit easier to swallow. (Location 2372)
Conflict arouses strong emotions, including anger, and these strong feelings interfere with our ability to think strategically about what we are really trying to do. You need to continually ask yourself, “What would victory look like? If you had won the battle, what would you want that win to encompass?” (Location 2380)
Not creating enemies or turmoil when it isn’t necessary requires something I have discussed before— focus. You need to have a clear understanding of where you are going and the critical steps on the way. When you confront opposition on this path, you need to react. But you just waste your time and possibly acquire gratuitous problems if you get involved with any issue or individual that has some connection, regardless of how irrelevant, to you and your agenda. (Location 2392)
DON’T TAKE THINGS PERSONALLY— MAKE IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIPS WORK (Location 2395)
after you reach a certain level, there comes a point in your career where you simply have to make critical relationships work. Your feelings, or for that matter, others’ feeling about you, don’t matter. To be successful, you have to get over resentments, jealousies, anger, or anything else that might get in the way of building a relationship where you can get the resources necessary for you to get the job done. (Location 2403)
The ability to not take opposition or slights personally, think about whose support you need and go after it, regardless of their behavior toward you or your own feelings, and remain focused on the data and impartial analysis requires a high level of self-discipline and emotional maturity. It is a rare skill. But it is crucial in surmounting and disarming opponents. (Location 2409)
Persistence works because it wears down the opposition. Much like water eroding a rock, over time keeping at something creates results. In addition, staying in the game maintains the possibility that the situation will shift to your advantage. Opponents retire or leave or make mistakes. The environment changes. (Location 2420)
Don’t wait if you see a power struggle coming. While you are waiting, others are organizing support and orchestrating votes to win. (Location 2452)
In companies, in government, even in nonprofits, people who have any resource control use it to reward those who are helpful (Location 2463)
Your path to power is going to be easier if you are aligned with a compelling, socially valuable objective. That doesn’t mean you are cynically using some social cause for your own gain— just that to the extent you can associate your efforts with a socially desirable, compelling value, you increase your likelihood of success. (Location 2470)
Power struggles inside companies seldom seem to revolve around blatant self-interest. At the moment of crisis and decision, clever combatants customarily invoke “shareholders’ interests.” (Location 2476)
this talk about shareholder sovereignty is also a framing that works to portray his power at the gaming company in a socially desirable and acceptable fashion. (Location 2485)
We are as subject to the just-world effect— believing that we get what we deserve— as are outside observers, so when people lose a power struggle, the first thing they do is blame themselves. (Location 2515)
The best way to overcome the embarrassment is to talk about what happened to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. You will probably learn that you have more support than you think, and that others, rather than blaming you, will want to come to your aid. Also, the more you tell the tale, the less the telling will stimulate strong emotions in you. You will become acclimated to the story and desensitized to its effects. Making what happened less emotionally fraught is absolutely essential for your being able to think strategically about your next moves. (Location 2520)
People who reach senior-level positions in any field are good at what they do. Even if job performance is not the most important determinant of career success, it does matter and, moreover, once you reach a high-level position, unless you go to sleep, over time you will become more capable at doing the job through your accumulated experience. That means that when you face a setback, don’t take the advice of those who advocate finding another area of work. Your experience and contacts are all context-specific— you have human and social capital in a particular job domain. Moving to something else, whatever else the virtues of that new career path, will rob you of the resources and competence you have built doing what you do. (Location 2525)
You want to convey that everything is fine and under your control, even under dire circumstances. People want to associate with winners. At the very moment when you have suffered a reversal in fortune and most need help, the best way to attract that help is to act as if you are going to triumph in the end. (Location 2552)
the ability to act as if you will win becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Location 2560)
is no free lunch.” Nothing comes without cost, and that is certainly true of power. As you chart your course and make decisions about what you will and will not do to acquire power, consider carefully what you are striving for and if you really want it. People who seek and attain power often pay some price for the quest, for holding on to their positions, and confronting the difficult but inevitable transitions out of powerful roles. (Location 2565)
if you are going to misbehave in any way, do so before you achieve a high-level position that makes you the object of constant attention by peers, subordinates, superiors, and the media. (Location 2576)
holding a position of power means that more than your job performance is being carefully watched— although that happens, too. Every aspect of your life, including how you dress, where you live, how you spend your time, who you choose to spend time with, what your children do, what you drive, how you act in completely non-job-related domains, will draw scrutiny. (Location 2579)
“social facilitation effect.” 4 When you are in the presence of other people, even if they aren’t watching you, you are more motivated and on edge. That’s fine, up to a point. The relationship between motivation and performance is curvilinear— positive up to some level as effort increases but then negative as increased tension decreases your ability to process information and make decisions. The social facilitation literature shows that the presence of others, by increasing motivation and psychological arousal, will enhance performance of overlearned and simple activities such as running or walking, but will decrease performance on tasks that entail new learning or involve novel or difficult activities. (Location 2592)
Another cost of visibility is distraction of effort. People are interested in their reputation and image. Consequently, they spend time on impression management. This need to spend time and other resources on image maintenance increases as public scrutiny increases. And time spent dealing with scrutiny and managing appearances is time that cannot be spent doing other aspects of one’s job. (Location 2601)
the “innovator’s dilemma,” described by Clayton Christensen. 9 Christensen noted that once companies became large and successful, they seldom introduced the next generation of innovations in their industries, particularly when such innovations were disruptive to their existing business model. This reluctance to innovate occurred even though the large, dominant players typically had the intellectual and financial wherewithal to bring the new technologies to market and in many instances had discovered or developed the new ideas themselves. (Location 2625)
you could have power or autonomy, but not both. (Location 2634)
people who have recently been promoted tend to be overwhelmed by the time demands of their more powerful job. Not wanting to refuse requests by groups and individuals whose support they may need and whose attention they value, powerful people can easily find themselves overscheduled and working too many hours, something that drains their energy and leaves them unable to cope with the unexpected challenges of their job. After a while, most of the CEOs and other senior leaders I know block out time for themselves and the activities that they want to do. But all of them talk about the loss of control over how they spend their time as one of the big costs of being in a position of power. (Location 2640)
The quest for power often exacts a high toll on people’s personal lives, and although everyone bears some costs, the price seems to be particularly severe for women. (Location 2647)
Sociologist Hanna Papanek described women’s frequent response to the demands of their husbands’ occupations as the “two-person single career.” 12 Wives contribute to their husbands’ success by providing advice and support, entertaining colleagues, and relieving husbands of many of the routine tasks of daily life. (Location 2664)
Two talented people working on a single career bring more time and resources to bear, enhancing the odds of success. (Location 2668)
Research shows that being married and having children has either no effect or a positive effect on men’s careers, while most studies show a negative impact on the careers of women from being married and having children. 13 (Location 2673)
Here’s a simple truth: the higher you rise and the more powerful the position you occupy, the greater the number of people who will want your job. Consequently, holding a position of great power creates a problem: who do you trust? (Location 2686)
Some people will be seeking to create an opportunity for themselves through your downfall, but they won’t be forthcoming about what they are doing. Some people will be trying to curry favor with you by telling you what they think you want to hear so you will like them and help them advance. And some people will be doing both. (Location 2687)
the higher you rise in an organization, the more people are going to tell you that you are right. This leads to an absence of critical thought and makes it difficul for senior leaders to get the truth— a problem both for the company and its leaders, as you can’t address problems if you don’t know about them. (Location 2691)
Loveman tried to overcome this problem by regularly and publicly admitting the mistakes he made so that others would be encouraged to admit where they had messed up too. He also placed a lot of emphasis on the process by which decisions got made— particularly, the use of data and analytics— and almost no emphasis on who was making the decision. (Location 2693)
in the typical senior management team, all the people reporting to the CEO believe they could hold the CEO position, many think they could do better than the incumbent, and most direct reports aspire to their boss’s job. Some people are going to be willing to take their turn and hope that they will be chosen when the incumbent steps down, but others will be more proactive in their efforts to move up. Therefore, for CEOs to survive in their jobs, they need to be able to discern who is undermining them and be tough enough to remove those people before they themselves lose the power struggle. (Location 2701)
When you are in power, you should probably trust no single person in your organization too much, unless you are certain of their loyalty and that they are not after your job. The constant vigilance required by those in power— to ensure they are hearing the truth and to maintain their position vis-à-vis rivals— is yet another cost of occupying a job that many others want. (Location 2718)
Power is addictive, in both a psychological and physical sense. The rush and excitement from being involved in important discussions with senior figures and the ego boost from having people at your beck and call are tough to lose, even if you voluntarily choose to retire or leave and even if you have more money than you could ever spend. In a power-and celebrity-obsessed culture, to be “out of power” is to be out of the limelight, away from the action, and almost invisible. It is a tough transition to make. And because it is, some executives seek to avoid switching to a less powerful role— Sandy (Location 2760)
How— and Why— People Lose Power (Location 2774)
The obsequious and less powerful flatter the powerful to remain on their good side. Those with power have their wishes and requests granted. They get used to getting their way and being treated as if they are special. Although the powerful may be conscious that the special treatment comes from the position they occupy and the resources they control, over time these thoughts fade. (Location 2801)
power produces overconfidence and risk taking, 7 insensitivity to others, stereotyping, and a tendency to see other people as a means to the power holder’s gratification. (Location 2806)
Overconfidence and insensitivity lead to losing power, as people become so full of themselves that they fail to attend to the needs of those whose enmity can cause them problems. Conversely, not letting power go to your head and acting as if you were all-powerful can help you maintain your position. (Location 2825)
As they focus on achieving their own or the organization’s objectives, those with power pay less attention to those who are less powerful. But this lack of attention can cost leaders their jobs. (Location 2835)
Having a position of formal authority or even being right is not going to win you the support of those whose mistakes you have called out. It is tough for those in power to see the world from others’ perspectives— but if you are going to survive, you need to get over yourself and your formal position and retain your sensitivity to the political dynamics around you. (Location 2847)
Patricia (Location 2850)
the best way to hold on to your position is to maintain your perspective and balance. She commented that “unless you understand yourself pretty well, you’re going to lose control of yourself.” (Location 2850)
“What you have to do is every now and then expose yourself to a social circle that really doesn’t care about your position.” (Location 2853)
people who arrive at high-level positions with lots of power often do not like to be reminded of what and who they once were and how far they have come. (Location 2855)
When you are powerful and successful, you are overconfident and less observant— and one specific manifestation of such tendencies is to trust what others tell you and rely on their assurances. As you become less vigilant and paranoid about others’ intentions, they have the opportunity to take you out of your position of power. (Location 2860)
It’s easier to lose your patience when you are in power— power leads to disinhibition, to not watching what you say and do, to being more concerned about yourself than about the feelings of others. But losing patience causes people to lose control and offend others, and that can cost them their jobs. (Location 2911)
It is hard work to keep your ego in check, to constantly be attentive to the actions of others, and obtaining and keeping power requires long hours and lots of energy. After a while, some people get tired; they become less vigilant and more willing to compromise and give in. We (Location 2914)
If you feel yourself getting tired or burned out and you hold a position of substantial power, you might as well leave. There are going to be others who will be willing to wrest your position from you. With reduced energy and vigilance, you won’t be able to resist very well in any case. (Location 2933)
the leadership skills of the “new” CEO— and among such skills are listening, paying attention to multiple constituencies, and displaying less arrogance than CEOs got away with in the past. (Location 2939)
Companies and leaders can fail to see the changes in the social environment that can make old ways less successful than they once were. The tendency of power to diminish the power holder’s attention and sensitivity to others with less power compounds this problem. (Location 2962)
“leave before the party’s over” and to do so in a way that causes others to remember you fondly. You cannot always completely control how much power you maintain, but you can leave your position with dignity and thereby influence your legacy. 12 (Location 2972)
“Is all of this political behavior good for the organization, even if it is good for me and my career?” (Location 2979)
The empirical evidence supports this view. Higher levels of perceived politics inside organizations are associated with reduced job satisfaction, morale, and organizational commitment, and higher levels of perceived politics are also correlated with higher intentions to quit. 2 (Location 2983)
political struggles are more likely to occur and to be more fierce and power is used more often when resources are scarcer and therefore there is more struggle over their allocation. Studies of budget allocations in universities found that when money was tighter, the relationship between departmental power and the amount of the budget obtained was stronger. (Location 3008)
you should always watch your back, but be particularly wary and sensitive to what is occurring during times of economic stress. That is when political turmoil and the use of power are likely to be at their peak. (Location 3017)
If organizations aren’t worrying about you and you can lose your job in a political struggle or on a whim, why should you worry about them? Reciprocity works both ways. This is not a book about broken promises, but the list of companies that have shown little concern for their employees is enormous. (Location 3029)
Pack Your Own Parachute, suggesting that managers be less loyal to their companies and adopt free-agent thinking. 10 To survive in the new world of work, managers needed to be visible, marketable, and, above all, mobile. (Location 3043)
reason at all. So don’t worry about how your efforts to build your path to power are affecting your employer, because your employer is probably not worrying about you. Neither are your coworkers or “partners,” if you happen to have any— they (Location 3047)
Holding aside the fact that you are probably in an environment where survival of the fittest— the most politically skilled— prevails, even if you wanted to avoid the organizational politics, I don’t think it is possible. (Location 3052)
As soon as hierarchy exists, it is natural to want to move up and avoid being at the bottom. Consequently, there are contests for dominance among all animals that travel or congregate in groups. (Location 3063)
In human interaction, even in the absence of formal organizational arrangements, job titles, and differences in resource endowments, differentiation arises among individuals as they interact. 12 Informal leaders with more influence emerge even if groups are just engaged in pleasurable social interaction such as (Location 3064)
Some people are uncomfortable with having power over others, feeling that they don’t really deserve to be in positions where they get to control others. The people uncomfortable with their authority don’t exercise the leadership that others expect, failing to provide direction that leaves those they supervise lost and uncertain about what to do. (Location 3075)
wealth and social ties could be redeployed and also because people assume that if you are smart enough to succeed in one highly competitive domain, you must be competent in other, even unrelated domains as well. One implication of this phenomenon for you is that the specific organization or domain in which you rise to power may matter less than the fact that you manage to achieve high-level status someplace. The prestige and power that come from achieving a senior position will generalize to some extent to other contexts, providing you with status there as well. (Location 3082)
The second fact about hierarchies is that people seem to prefer them. (Location 3086)
people will voluntarily contribute to their own disempowerment to maintain a stable hierarchical social order. In a series of studies, Jost found that lower-power groups often developed attitudes that justified their own inferior (and others’ more favored) position, thereby contributing to the persistence of hierarchical arrangements that disadvantaged them. (Location 3094)
Most people I talk to think they don’t have enough power and would love to become more effective at wielding influence. There are many, many jobs— project or product manager would be one good example— where people have tasks to accomplish that require the cooperation of others but do not have the formal authority to order, reward, or punish those whose cooperation they need. (Location 3103)
responsibility and authority don’t always coincide. As organizations have become more matrixed, with overlapping and dotted-line chains of command, employ more task forces and teams to bring disparate expertise together to solve problems, and face greater demands for speed, the premium for execution is going up. (Location 3111)
Getting things done under circumstances where you lack direct line authority requires influence and political skills— a knowledge of organizational dynamics— not just technical skills and knowledge. (Location 3113)
do excellent quality work, which entails hiring and effectively leading outstanding talent. And second, understand the organizational dynamics— how different people perceive things, what their interests are, how to make a persuasive case, and how to get along with people and build effective personal relationships. (Location 3118)
We seem to like markets and democracies for societies, but prefer more dictatorial arrangements inside organizations. (Location 3123)
even though many commentators speak about the evils of dictatorship, the folly of central planning, and the wisdom of crowds in making forecasts, centralization of control inside organizations in the hands of a few people prevails. (Location 3135)
Building power does not require extraordinary actions or amazing brilliance. Instead, as comedian, actor, and movie director Woody Allen has noted, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” (Location 3170)
Some jobs require more political skill than others. Project or product manager would be one such job— lots of responsibility without a lot of formal authority over the people whose cooperation you need to be successful. (Location 3189)
John Kotter told me that he thought for many people, the biggest obstacle to success was not talent or motivation but the fact that they were in the wrong place— that the power and influence requirements of their job did not fit their personal aptitudes and interests. (Location 3206)
You need to be in a job that fits and doesn’t come with undue political risks, but you also need to do the right things in that job. Most important, you need to claim power (Location 3221)
It’s not just that the world is not always fair so you should stop counting on the triumph of your merit. People align with who they think is going to win. (Location 3275)
If you don’t stand up for yourself and actively promote your own interests, few will be willing to be on your side. Since observers will see you as not trying to triumph and therefore losing, they will either not join you side or desert you, making your organizational demise more certain. Therefore, although self-promotion and fighting for your interests can seem unattractive, the alternative scenario is invariably much worse. (Location 3276)
often the little things that matter. Just as companies sometimes overemphasize grand strategy and overlook the mundane details of execution, individuals often neglect the small steps they can take that can provide them with control over vital resources, visibility, and the opportunity to build important relationships. The people who pay attention to these small things have an edge in creating power. (Location 3280)
Organizational politics is everywhere. You may wish it weren’t so, but it is. And because of fundamental human psychology, there isn’t much prospect of power and politics disappearing from organizational life. (Location 3295)
Stop waiting for things to get better or for other people to acquire power and use it in a benevolent fashion to improve the situation. It’s up to you to find— or create— a better place for yourself. (Location 3301)
“The Paths to Power.” The course outline is publicly available. Go to my personal home page, http:// faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/ pfeffer/. There is a link on the left-hand side of the page that will take you directly to the most recent version of the course. (Location 3315)
