Power: Why Some People Have it and Others Don't

by Jeffrey Pfeffer

both organizations and people are known by the company they keep—so it behooves you to associate with high-status people.

Could the other coach provide such access and a similar sort of experience? He got the business. People like to bask in reflected glory and associate with high-status others. Versions of this story in different contexts happen every day.

i sometimes catch myself in this...I've never seen Nancy be much impressed by this nor Filer for that matter

If virtually all information and communication flows through you, you will have more power.

people attribute power to individuals who are central.

assess your centrality by asking what proportion of others in your work, for instance, nominate you as someone they go to for...

ask what proportion of all communication lin...

occupying brokerage positions—filling structural holes—is advantageous for one’s career.

You have to do the network “work” yourself if you want to accrue the benefits.

research literature typically divides knowledge into two types: explicit, codified knowledge such as that represented in diagrams, formulas, or “recipes” for task performance; and implicit, tacit knowledge such as that possessed by good clinicians who understand not only the scientific basis of job performance but also know, based on their experience, when to do what.

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.

Both in the process of creating social ties and once you have created a network, your ability to create and leverage social ties depends in part on how others perceive you. And those perceptions depend in part on your ability to speak and act with power.

expressing anger is usually much more effective than expressing sadness, guilt, or remorse in being seen as powerful.

sad but true. leads to all kids of games

ACTING WITH POWER

You are on stage more than you think,

and not just as a senior leader.

When you read an e-mail while you are talking to someone or in a meeting, the message you send is clear: I have other things to do that are way more important than paying attention to you.

stop doing this right away.

people who express anger are seen “as dominant, strong, competent, and smart,” although they are also, of course, seen as less nice and warm.12

experimental research supports the view that women may benefit less than men by acting angry.

both men and women conferred less status on angry female professionals than on angry male professionals, and angry women, regardless of their presumed rank, received less status when they expressed anger than when they did not.

Tiedens maintains that forceful displays of anger that put the other person on the

the question of gender differences in the effectiveness of expressing anger remains open.

“Don’t be so humble; you’re not that great.”

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.

Rather, acting, including acting with power, entails tapping into your authentic feelings but just from a different time and place.

depends on what your definition of the word is is

They know what they are going to say, have thought consciously about how they are going to use the space and their movements to inspire confidence, and have gotten their nervousness under control so they can project influence.

three faces of power.

first is the ability to win in direct contests: Whose point of view prevails?

second is more subtle: Who sets the agenda, and in the process determines whether a specific issue will even ...

third form of power is more subtle still: Who determines the rules for interpersonal interactions through which age...

one way in which someone in a dominant position can leverage that influence is to question and challenge the basic assumptions that underlie another person’s account.

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.

By contrast, Kerry would use more convoluted sentence structure and words that did not seem presidential (for instance, “stupid”). Kerry often presumed his audience had information he had yet to provide.

holy shit. this is brad

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.

The lesson? Accomplishment matters, but so, too, does your reputation.

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.

Groysberg’s research shows that leaders are not particularly portable and this outside hiring often does not work.

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.

yikes. seems like a dangerous formula...and one that

first impressions are remarkably accurate in predicting other more durable and important evaluations. Social psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert

Not only are reputations and first impressions formed quickly, but they are durable.

attention decrement,

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.

cognitive discounting—once people have formed an impression of another, they disregard any information that is inconsistent with their initial ideas.

Third, people engage in behavior that helps make their initial impressions of others come true. One study of interviewers of job applicants examined the impressions interviewers formed on the basis of test scores and resumés. Then the actual job interviews were analyzed.

this goes to my parable jeffrey hsieh

biased assimilation, involves taking later information and reinterpreting it in ways consistent with our original beliefs and judgments.

Many behaviors are ambiguous—is someone eccentric and brilliant or just socially incompetent? How people interpret what they see depends on their expectations that precede their observations.

We see what we expect to see,

Impressions and reputations endure, so building a favorable impression and reputation early is an important step in creating power.

inquisitive questions.

aren't all aquestions inquisitive

Marketing expert Keith Ferrazzi recommends writing articles because it helps you clarify your thinking. It does that, but writing can also be a way to build visibility and create an image, helping you find a good job.

when people are going to meet you, they Google you, and in her case, they could read her musings, which gave her credibility.