7 Rules of Power: Surprising--but True--Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career

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Introduction:

Power is seldom the most important source of success, but what it can do, as it did for Rukaiyah Adams, is help leverage your performance and talent.

Power and performance together will get you much further ahead than either one separately.

One reason why people fail to achieve their objectives or lose out in competitions for high-status positions is their unwillingness to do what is required to prevail.

Deciding what means to employ in pursuing one’s goals is a personal choice. But to make that choice, I believe you need to understand as much as possible about what works, and what doesn’t, and why. And you also need to understand that some of your rivals may not have the same reluctance to go “all in” and to play the game to win.

political skill as “the ability to effectively understand others at work and to use that knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal and/or organizational objectives.”

“Political skill is one of the most powerful predictors of success in the workplace.”

Get Out of Your Own Way

You get to pick which three you want to carry around in your head. How people think of themselves invariably influences what they project to others and what behaviors they will enact. The lesson: use self-descriptive adjectives that convey power, and eschew attitudes that, even if accurate, fairly or unfairly, diminish your status.

I cannot begin to tell you how typical this story is. Talented people, with objectively amazing accomplishments, hold self-descriptions that disempower themselves and that, if and when internalized, inappropriately limit their career prospects. Powerful, accomplished, successful people tell their stories in ways that downplay their gifts and accomplishments. Such behavior is unhelpful.

I'm an introvert. I hate networking - July 31, 2022 @ 9:00 PM

One way of getting over imposter syndrome is to focus on others in high-level positions and their differences from you, if any. Many of them are no more qualified than you are; success is sometimes the result of luck or being born to the right parents.

Mastering imposter syndrome, and describing yourself in positive rather than self-deprecating ways, is critical for achieving power and success. If you do not think of yourself as powerful, competent, and deserving, it is likely that, in subtle and possibly not-so-subtle ways, you will communicate this self-assessment to others. Others are not likely to think more favorably of you than you do of yourself. Colleagues expect that you will, at least to some extent, self-advocate and self-promote—and if you don’t, that behavior will be held against you.

Here’s a practical exercise that you can do and then repeat occasionally as part of your personal development. Write down the adjectives you use to describe yourself, both to yourself and to others. Check with friends to see if your list is correct. Then ask yourself what descriptors you need to get rid of in order to project yourself in a more powerful way. Ask yourself what positive adjectives about yourself—language that gives credit to your accomplishments and credentials—you underutilize in your interactions with others.

This is a useful exercise - July 31, 2022 @ 9:02 PM

And here’s a third exercise you can and should do. As you describe yourself to others, as you articulate a narrative of your career so far, as you create a personal brand—a topic we will explore in more detail in Rule 4—do you talk about your accomplishments, your credentials, or what you have done successfully? Or do you attempt to appear modest and self-effacing, downplay your achievements, positions you have held, honors you have achieved, and your talents?

That is because self-perception theory posits that “individuals come to ‘know’ their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior.”4 People figure out what their attitudes are from the information available to them when they describe their attitude, and salient information about their own behavior, therefore, comes to influence their beliefs and attitudes.5 Consequently, an individual can increase their confidence by acting more confidently, and can build their sense of their own power by describing themselves in a more powerful fashion.

How true is this - July 31, 2022 @ 9:07 PM

BE WILLING TO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES—DON’T RUN AWAY FROM POWER

Everyone gets to determine what they are willing to do to acquire power, or even if they want it. I have had numerous people say to me over the years that if they had to play politics, or flatter their boss, or build interpersonal relationships for strategic purposes, or spend time promoting their accomplishments to become more influential, it would not be worth it.

“For better or worse, gamesmanship and embellishment—or depending on your sensibilities, cheating—are part of high-level soccer. Players exaggerate contact. They amplify the mundane. They turn niggling knocks into something closer to grim death.”11 By so doing, soccer players draw fouls, get free kicks, and knock opponents out of the game on penalties—thereby increasing their odds of winning.

Wow this is an interesting perspective. You need to flop to be successful. Not flopping wins you nothing. I probably need to be more self aggrandizing - July 31, 2022 @ 9:13 PM

Different people are willing to do different things in order to succeed. Just because you won’t network, or flatter, or self-promote, certainly does not mean that all of your competitors will be as circumspect. To the extent people opt out of doing things their colleagues are willing to do—tactics that build power—they put themselves at a disadvantage. The fundamental point: everyone has choices, not only about how they think of themselves, but about what they are willing or unwilling to do in the contest for power. You can opt in, or out. You can self-handicap, or, like Christina Troitino, “play the game very differently.”

An important part of being “willing to do what it takes” is sticking with efforts to build power and get things done in the face of opposition, criticism, obstacles, setbacks, and failures.

If you want power, you need to toughen up and become able to persist in the face of opposition and persevere even when confronted by setbacks. Persistence and resilience seem to require not overly obsessing about what others think and say while possessing enough ego strength to keep problems and criticism from throwing you off course. Like other personal qualities that help make people powerful,16 persistence and resilience can be developed, particularly with practice, experience, and social support.

In their quest to be their authentic selves and display their real feelings and true opinions to others, people tell me that engaging in activities such as networking, flattering those in power, spending time ensuring that others know of their accomplishments, asking for resources, or presenting themselves to the world in a powerful fashion would not be true to who they really are. Because these behaviors often inherently entail behaving strategically in their interactions with others, building power might require people to behave inauthentically.

Don’t let the notion that doing something new or different—particularly if that new behavior is going to be helpful in your path to power—is inauthentic become an excuse for thinking in ways that hold you back.

If you want to have allies—always a good thing if you want influence—you obviously need to provide others with something so they will support you.

If you want others to support you, you need to be able to answer the question: What’s in it for them if they do?

What is true in politics is true in organizations of all types. The people with whom you work have agendas, insecurities, problems, needs. So stop focusing on trying to figure out who you are. Instead, focus on who your allies and potential allies are. Become a student of the people whose support you need. The sooner you do, the faster you will develop the information and insights necessary for strategically building the alliances you need to succeed.

Yet one more way people get in their own way to becoming powerful is by being overly concerned about others liking them.

Here’s one problem with pursuing the goal of being liked: you may be seen as less competent.

Particularly as people rise to higher levels in organizations, they are evaluated on their ability to get things done, not so much on how nice they are.

Break the Rules

Breaking the rules in this second example meant fundamentally taking the initiative—not waiting to obtain permission or, for that matter, even asking for anyone’s approval, but just creating things—in this case, an event.

“When people have power, they act the part. Powerful people smile less, interrupt others, and speak in a louder voice . . . The powerful have fewer rules to follow.”

the powerful are freer to defy social norms and conventions and get away with it, and thus, powerful people are more likely to enact socially inappropriate behavior—

It Is Easier—and More Effective—to Ask Forgiveness Than Permission

In practical terms for exercising power, this means that resistance to what you want to do is likely to be less than you expect because people will be reluctant to confront you and risk a difficult interpersonal conversation. Therefore, it is easier and often more successful and productive to just do what you want and to ask forgiveness for something that you have done instead of seeking permission for it beforehand. Once you have completed or accomplished something, it becomes a fait accompli and difficult to undo. Moreover, the benefits and consequences of what you have done are no longer hypothetical but real, which also makes others reluctant to undo what you have done and thereby destroy the benefits produced.

“Once you did something physically, it was very hard for even a judge to undo it.”10 In fact, once anything is done, it is harder to undo—and that includes instituting awards, events, and ceremonies. Do something first, and sort out the consequences later—even if this breaks some rules.

BREAK THE RULES BY ASKING FOR THINGS

“help seeking has been described as an uncomfortable, if not embarrassing act that requires a modicum of courage . . . In addition to appearing inadequate or incompetent, most people fear the possibility of rejection.”

A bold move, for sure. But what is the downside? Often the worst thing that can happen if you ask for something, like a dinner with the CEO, is rejection, being told no. But people probably weren’t going to get what they had asked for in the absence of asking for it in any event, so nothing is really lost. Maybe people suffer the sting of being turned down. Most good salespeople will tell you that if you can’t stand being rejected, don’t go into sales—and everyone is selling themselves and their ideas all the time. Get used to asking, being turned down, and asking again, or for different things from different people. Asking does break some rules, but it works. Flynn and Lake’s article title says it all: “If you need help, just ask.”

Appear Powerful

Certain emotional displays convey strength; others do not. Therefore, it is important to convey powerful emotions and avoid expressing those that signal lower status. In this regard, many people find it counterintuitive that anger is a powerful emotion and that displaying it is often a smart power move—even when, or possibly particularly when, someone has made a mistake or has been uncovered in some malfeasance. By contrast, expressing sadness or remorse and apologizing conveys much less power—and therefore should be avoided under conditions when appearing powerful and competent is important, which is more frequently than most people think.

The logic behind the argument is straightforward. Anger is associated with coercion and intimidation. Displays of anger, as examples of coercive and intimidating behavior, are typically not viewed as nice, normative, or possibly even socially acceptable. To reprise the discussion from the last chapter on rule breaking, if the powerful get to break the rules, then that heuristic association means that breaking the rules can create perceptions of power. Similarly, if the powerful are permitted to display anger more readily than the less powerful—because displays of anger fall outside customary norms for behavior, and only the more powerful are permitted to violate social expectations—then displays of anger can create perceptions of higher status.

Social psychologist Larissa Tiedens noted that “people expressing anger are seen as dominant, strong, competent and smart” and that “people believe individuals with angry facial expressions occupy more powerful social positions than do individuals with sad facial expressions.”

Apology is almost the opposite of expressing anger, and is many people’s default option when confronted with blame. There are three important downsides to apologizing that ought to cause someone to think very carefully before doing it. The first and most obvious downside is that apologizing “inherently associates a transgressor with wrongful behavior.”27 Responsibility for a bad outcome might have been ambiguous or contested, but once someone apologizes, the association of that person or organization with the negative action or outcomes is unambiguously established. Second, someone who apologizes incurs psychological costs, as apology can affect people’s self-perceptions. In two experiments, researchers concluded that the act of refusing to apologize “results in greater feeling of power/control, value integrity, and self-worth.”28 Therefore, not apologizing is consistent with people’s (and organizations’) desire for consistency and self-affirmation—powerful, effective, good people and organizations don’t engage in wrongdoing, so they don’t have anything to apologize for. Third, and possibly most importantly, apology affects not just the social actor that apologizes, by implicating credit and blame and affecting people’s feelings about themselves. Apology also affects what others believe about that social actor. Because apology is a low-power behavior, others will see entities that apologize as possessing less influence, status, and prestige—and this will influence those perceivers’ behavior as a consequence. Thus, apologizing reduces the likelihood that the apologizer will benefit from the perception of being powerful and prestigious.

The importance of projecting confidence is why the first rule of power, in chapter one, was to lose the scripts, language, and (relevant to this chapter) body language that suggests anything other than self-confidence and potency, even if that confidence is unwarranted by objective reality or not what a person is feeling in the moment.

What to do depends on which motive is stronger in a given situation—the motive to associate with strength and success, or the motive to offer help and feel close with someone who has expressed vulnerability. Both are possible, but my reading of the evidence suggests that it is generally better to bet on the motive of being associated with strength and winning, and then to bask in the glory of the powerful.

So, yes, you can express vulnerabilities and insecurities among friends, or when you hold a position in which you are not a leader. But in high-status and task-relevant positions, you are much better off keeping any insecurities to yourself. People want to be aligned with someone who they think is going to win, to prevail, so doing anything that disabuses them of that belief is probably a mistake.

NONVERBAL BEHAVIORS ACTUALLY ASSOCIATED WITH POWER, STATUS, AND DOMINANCE
More Gestures
Open Body Posture
Less Interpersonal Distance
More Controlled Arm and Hand Gestures
Louder Voice
More Successful interruptions of others
More speaking time
Longer gazing time
Higher visual dominance ratio (Look + Talk > Look + Listen)
More disinhibited laughs

Powerful speech has several characteristics. First, it is simple. Powerful speech consists of mostly one-syllable words and no complex sentence constructions with subordinate clauses. Powerful speech is easy to understand, which is one reason it is powerful. Powerful speech also does not impose large cognitive burdens on the listener, but rather draws their conclusions for them in simple, easy-to-understand words.

A second feature of powerful speech is the absence of hedging words such as “sort of” or “kind of” and few hesitations such as “um” or “er,” as well as a lack of polite forms.42 Powerful speech uses powerful words—words that evoke vivid images and arouse people’s emotions—words such as “injured,” “death,” and “problem.”

Powerful speakers make declarations instead of asking questions. Powerful speech takes into account the fact that the final words in a sentence are important—you want to end strong. Such speech uses pauses and variations in pacing for emphasis and to hold the audience’s attention. Most importantly, powerful speech repeats ideas and themes. Evidence shows that “people are more likely to judge repeated statements as true compared to new statements, a phenomenon known as the illusory truth effect.”

Trump, like most effective presenters, answered the question he wanted rather than what was asked—

Build a Powerful Brand

The implication: One way to build a powerful brand is to associate with other people and organizations that are themselves prestigious.

Chau nicely described the many aspects of the flywheel effect of personal branding—how one thing led to another, and through these activities, someone could differentiate themselves in what would be an otherwise highly competitive space. They could stand out from the crowd. By so doing, their credibility, connections, and power would grow. That’s why building a powerful personal brand is the fourth rule of power.

A brand needs coherence. At its best and most effective, a brand brings together aspects of someone’s personal and professional life in a way that makes it clear why they are uniquely qualified for some position or to found a company in a particular industry.

Everyone needs a brand. Your task: think of a short (two-or three-sentence) way of describing yourself and your accomplishments that brings together your expertise, your experience (what you have done), and a way of integrating that with some aspect of your personal story.

One lesson from the Sonnenfeld experience confirms Mark Twain’s axiom “that a lie will go halfway around the world in the time it takes the truth to put on its shoes.”7 A second lesson is the importance of getting your side of the story out early and often. Once impressions are formed, they are more difficult to change.

DO AS MANY THINGS AS POSSIBLE TO BECOME KNOWN

Once someone has a brand, a story, and a narrative that is compelling and integrates aspects of their professional (and possibly personal) life, it is essential to disseminate that narrative widely. It is also useful to match the outlets to the nature of the brand being promoted. The ways of broadcasting messages are almost endless.
Podcasts - One way of differentiating a podcast is to get others interested in promoting it. See if you can get sponsorship, develop an interesting and unusual angle, bring on well-known guests, and mostly, persist.
Write (Books, Blogs, Guest Articles)
Speak at Conferences

One of the best ways to tell a story—particularly a flattering account of yourself you have developed—is to have others tell it on your behalf, because of the self-promotion dilemma.12 On one hand, people are expected to project confidence and expertise while claiming competence. In situations such as job interviews or making a pitch, self-promotion is virtually required—how else would the target know about your wonderful qualities? On the other, there is often social disapproval and dislike for people who are seemingly boastful and “braggadocious.” Research shows that if a person sings someone else’s praises—even if that person has a financial incentive to do so, such as an agent—many of the downsides of self-promotion disappear.

STAND OUT BY BEING APPROPRIATELY CONTROVERSIAL

LEVERAGE PRESTIGIOUS AFFILIATIONS WHENEVER POSSIBLE

TAKE CREDIT FOR YOUR WORK

Part of brand building and creating a positive reputation is ensuring that you get credit for your work. That entails being willing to tell your story and eschewing any false sense of modesty or the belief that your work will speak for itself. Your bosses and colleagues are busy and often focused on their own objectives. Don’t expect them to necessarily notice or credit your accomplishments.

One way to overcome the reluctance to engage in personal branding and self-advocacy is to reframe what this activity entails and means.

Network Relentlessly

The article’s conclusion: people should spend eight to ten hours a week building professional relationships because “the secret to getting more business through networking is . . . spending more time doing it!”

one reason that people don’t engage in professionally useful networking is that they don’t find the experience particularly enjoyable.

Moreover, research shows that people may see professional networking as a less moral activity because in some sense it entails building relationships for someone’s personal advancement. Many people seemingly hold the belief that it is inappropriate to interact with others for instrumental reasons.

Even when people do engage in networking, they often see it as a task to be done, not as a skill to be developed.

When people think of it [networking] as a task, it’s something you do and then you sort of deposit it away. You know, you don’t think, when you’re actually taking the trash out, what’s the set of elements I could do that would make me better at it. I think a lot of people think of networking as a task. And I think that he’s [Ross Walker’s] taken it to a level of skill. And when you are trying to build a skill, you are much more apt to be strategic or analytical about how you get better at it.

a longitudinal field study of 112 employees assessing career success after three years found that “networking was the most robust predictor of career success.” Another longitudinal study observed an effect of networking on both concurrent salary and the growth rate of salary over time as well as a relationship between networking and career satisfaction.

FOUR FUNDAMENTAL NETWORKING PRINCIPLES
Pursue your weak ties
Become a Broker
Be Central
Create Value for Others

The straightforward message of weak ties’ importance: don’t spend too much time with people who are close. Instead, ensure that you are meeting a wide variety of people in a wide variety of organizations and industries. You never know when one of them will have information important to your job performance or career prospects.

The practical implication: network structure matters. People’s careers—and their job performance—are enhanced if they can find positions or jobs where they can perform brokerage and bridge structural holes—connecting units, people, or organizations that would mutually benefit from being exposed to different ideas, information, opportunities, and resources.

Centrality affects visibility. More people will know and know about people who are more central, and that visibility will often work to those people’s advantage for becoming the focal point for information and opportunities. Centrality also affects access to information. The first network studies demonstrated that people in central positions saw more information—because more communication flowed through them—and had greater direct contact with more people. The implication: when people evaluate jobs and roles, one dimension they should account for is the centrality that will accrue to them from occupying that job or position. Other things being equal, choose more central jobs.

Last, be sure to create value for others—or why would people want to be connected to you? Sometimes this idea is described as being generous. I would describe it slightly differently: as putting yourself in the other’s place, having some empathetic understanding of where they are coming from and what challenges they face, so that you can provide help reasonably easily and effectively.

Two implications follow. First, as Ross Walker has told my class, if you want to get value from your connection to another, don’t make that other do your thinking for you. In other words, to the extent that you have a specific request for some specific help for a specific and sensible reason, others can quickly ascertain whether and how they will connect you to resources that might be helpful. If you show up with a more general request, such as helping you think through career options, the response won’t be as favorable because the request is too general and untargeted.

Second, offering help to others actually helps build your power. If you can connect people to others in useful ways, you have implicitly demonstrated your centrality and value just by being able to make those connections. The more connections you make, the more people come to see you as a well-connected (translation: powerful) individual. Thus, helping others builds your own reputation even as it provides a service of real value—the very definition of win-win.

Consider how you spend your time, maybe by looking at your calendar, asking others, or some combination. Are you devoting enough time to building social relationships and engaging in social interactions? And with whom are you spending your time? Are you building brokerage relationships—connecting people or organizations who could benefit from such connections? Are you associating often enough with high-status others? Are you spending your time in professionally useful ways, at least on occasion? Believe it or not, people can learn about how to see social capital—and that learning translates into many career advantages.

Networking, like other power skills, can be taught and learned. It is important to master this rule of power.

Use Your Power

power is not some scarce, limited resource that becomes depleted by being used. Instead, the more someone uses their power to get things done—including structuring the world around them and changing who works with and for them in ways that support themselves and their objectives—the more power they will have. Using power signals that you have it, and because people are attracted to power, the more you use your power and demonstrate that you are powerful, the more allies you will accumulate. Therefore, Rule 6 is to use the power one has, maybe even using more than people think you have. Using power effectively is more likely to perpetuate it than to exhaust it.

Success Excuses Almost Everything

Simply put, Rule 7 is that power and its associated prestige excuse almost everything. Its implications are straightforward: your task is to acquire power, and once you have it, you will probably keep it.

“For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them”

Cumulative advantage arises from many social forces. The more powerful and successful someone is, the more likely it will be that talented people will want to work with them—and the ability to attract more and better talent increases the chances of subsequent success. Likewise, the more powerful and successful someone is, the greater the odds that others will want to invest in and with them. This advantage in attracting resources increases the likelihood of future success and higher performance. Confirmation bias—the tendency for perception to confirm preexisting beliefs—suggests that once someone has enjoyed success, that individual will be perceived as successful again in the future, regardless of objective measures of results. Research shows that people pay more attention to confirming information, remember information that fits their perceptions more readily, and selectively forget discrepant information.13 Cognitive processes of attention and memory and a preference for consistency in beliefs thus act to reinforce initial advantage.

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7 Rules of Power: Surprising--but True--Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career

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