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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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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 Troitino had created a successful cross-school event, who was going to criticize her for raising money for charity while providing a fun experience to numerous students—even though she had asked no one’s permission to organize the event?

Consider the actions of Christina Troitino, currently a YouTube employee and a former student in my class. Troitino described how she was able to “crash” an exclusive dinner at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, a place where Stanford business school students mostly go to hang out with each other—something they could do in Palo Alto. Each year I challenge the students to do something at Sundance that they could not do locally, like meet some of the powerful figures that attend this major event. Troitino accepted the challenge. 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. Workplaces are mostly horrible,” he wrote in Leadership BS (p. 10). His contrarian view is that what leaders are told to do—be authentic and modest, for example—is often responsible for perpetuating that. Instead, Pfeffer contends that to get things done, leaders should understand how to amass and retain power. “If power is to be used for good, more good people need power,” he writes, (p. xix) but otherwise largely skirts questions of morality with his sometimes uncomfortable “real talk” about power.Melvin Lerner, the social psychologist, years ago wrote about the just-world effect, or the just-world hypothesis, where people want to believe that the world is just and fair, which gives them a sense of control. Unfortunately, the world is not just and fair, and we know that. Because perception helps create reality, wielding power in ways that demonstrate power, doing things that signal power, helps to ensure that power will be perpetuated. No one is hired to win a popularity contest—you’re hired to get things done. You’re hired to make things happen, so when you show up to lead a group of people, those people want many things from you. What they don’t necessarily want from you is your authentic self. Well, O.K., from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this,” he [Graham] said. I asked what “this” was. “‘This’” Graham said, “is to try to be relevant.” Politics, he explained, was the art of what works and what brings desired outcomes. “I’ve got an opportunity up here working with the president to get some really good outcomes for the country,” he told me. An outcome of particular interest to Graham at the moment is getting re-elected to a fourth Senate term in South Carolina, where Trump owns commanding approval numbers. This small reframe can help people understand the necessity—and the importance—of telling their story, and the story of their colleagues, while making them more comfortable in undertaking the critical task of building their brand.

When someone has a lot on their mind regarding their work and personal life, sitting in for a presentation can be a little tiring. It is easy for people to wander off into the abyss of their minds. This does not have to be the case for your presentations. 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. Maybe it is the perception of similarity—for instance, Johnson could deepen his southern accent when he talked to Southerners, and could present himself as having views consistent with those of liberal Minnesotan Hubert Humphrey and conservative Georgian Richard Russell as the occasion required. 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? Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and CEO of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute; Lester Crown Professor at Yale School of Management and Senior Associate Dean for Leadership StudiesHis stated goal with 7 Rules of Power is to arm readers with tactics so that they “never have to leave a job involuntarily” (p. xv) and to enable them to be healthier and happier, as he believes having more power is associated with that. Pfeffer throughout the book argues that underrepresented groups can benefit from the same approaches to using power as a tool. It is easy to forget the role of the audience in a presentation’s success. It does not matter how much time and energy you put into a presentation if your audience finds it a drab. If your presentation does not grab the attention of your audience, all the other qualities become meaningless.

Robert Moses, New York’s master builder, who wielded immense power over a forty-year career, was a genius in employing the strategy of turning his plans into physical reality—even before he had permission to do so. Often Moses would start his projects prior to obtaining all of the necessary permits and sometimes even the funding to complete them. He understood that once a park or playground was constructed, it was much more difficult and less likely for others to undo his creations. People also worry about the consequences of becoming more powerful. What if, in their rise to power, they create enemies and rivals of the people they outcompete? What if, as is almost inevitable, their success provokes jealousy and resentment? What if the nail that stands out does actually get hammered down, and, like the legend of Icarus, having flown too close to the sun, they fall? Instead of stating that the car is fast, and it goes at 305 mph, you could write the text a bit differently as follows – Great, so you are considering implementing this into your next presentation and want to know how to do it!People often worry about their organizational competitors for advancement, about what their bosses think of them, about their relative skills. All of these things are important. But possibly the single biggest barrier to having power is ourselves. Therefore, the first rule of power is to get out of your own way. The 7 Rules of Power doesn’t dwell much on how to actually use power for good. It also doesn’t spend much time on the noxious side effects of overconfidence, aggressive self-promotion, status-consciousness, and political maneuvering that it endorses. Its frameworks emphasize hierarchy over the collective and sink-or-swim competition over supportiveness and accommodation. The 7 by 7 rule is a method used where each line has no more than 7 words and a slide has no more than 7 lines. This is a way of keeping your presentations easily readable and understandable to the audience. If your lines and slides are too “wordy” you run the risk of turning your audience away.

SOMETIMES, WHEN YOU WANT TO ATTEND a fancy dinner where you can meet amazing people and expand your network, or create a favorable reputation owing to your ability to organize others and get things done, you have to break some rules. What’s the best way to move forward in increasing your own power? Among other things, Pfeffer advises:

Instead of using the text on the slides to merely laying out what point of a research study, you can perhaps pose a question or an interesting fact! Another source of power is social relationships: the networks that you have built and that you have. Management leadership is often defined as getting things done through other people. One source of power, therefore, is how many people you know. How many people are in your sphere of influence, so to speak?

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