The Art of Manliness - November 30, 2022


The Real Rules of Power


Episode Stats

Length

37 minutes

Words per Minute

197.37677

Word Count

7,469

Sentence Count

439

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Most leadership advice says the same thing: to be a good leader, you need to be generous, humble, and authentic. Stanford Business School Professor of Organizational Behavior Jeffrey Pfeffer would say that kind of advice may make us feel good and represent the world as we'd like it to be, but it doesn't actually work in the world, as it really is. What the research shows does work is what he lays out in his book, 7 Rules of Power: surprising but true advice on how to get things done and advance your career.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:11.140 Most leadership advice says the same thing. To be a good leader, you need to be generous,
00:00:16.240 humble, and authentic. My guest, Professor of Organizational Behavior Jeffrey Pfeffer,
00:00:20.700 would say that kind of advice may make us feel good and represent the world as we'd like it to
00:00:24.600 be, but it doesn't actually work in the world as it really is. What the research shows does work
00:00:29.420 is what he lays out in his book, Seven Rules of Power, surprising but true advice on how to get
00:00:34.860 things done and advance your career. People often have negative associations with power,
00:00:39.400 but Jeffrey would argue that power, and many of the techniques involved in getting it,
00:00:42.980 are morally neutral and can be used for ill or for good. So if you have a worthy aim and want to grow
00:00:48.040 your influence and move up in your job, you have to get comfortable going after something that may
00:00:52.260 make you uncomfortable. Jeffrey shares how to do that as we take a quick and dirty dive into the
00:00:56.520 real rules of power. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash rules of power.
00:01:16.020 All right, Jeffrey Pfeffer, welcome to the show.
00:01:19.400 It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for having me on.
00:01:22.200 Well, so you are a professor at Stanford, and you spent a lot of your career researching,
00:01:29.040 writing, teaching about business organization, but particularly power. You've written a few books
00:01:34.400 about human power. What led you down that path? Well, I think two things led me down that path.
00:01:40.860 The first thing that led me down that path is one of the things I've tried to do in my career
00:01:44.920 is to find topics that have the following two qualities. Number one, they're important,
00:01:50.660 and number two, nobody's talking about them. If you can talk about something that is important
00:01:57.160 and other people aren't doing, that puts you in a pretty good niche. Empower, for a long time,
00:02:03.160 and really still to this day, is something that's very, very important in social life,
00:02:07.540 but many people are unwilling to teach about it or to talk about it because it makes people
00:02:12.620 uncomfortable. That, I think, is the reason why I got into this.
00:02:15.940 And you make the case that you're in the world of business organization, leadership,
00:02:20.920 things like that, and you make the case that a lot of the literature out there about leadership
00:02:24.240 in the business world isn't actually useful. What do they say about how power works or doesn't work
00:02:30.180 that you think they get wrong? Oh, God. We could spend hours talking about that. I think many people
00:02:38.180 describe human behavior and human psychology as they would like it to be rather than as it is.
00:02:46.180 So the recommendations about leadership are to be authentic, to tell the truth, to be modest,
00:02:53.200 to be self-effacing, to be generous, all of these things. But if you look at the world,
00:02:58.840 the difference between frontline and CEO salaries are higher than they've ever been. The research
00:03:06.240 on lying indicates that people lie all the time. So, you know, the narcissism, not modesty,
00:03:13.000 is reliably and predictably related to getting and then holding leadership positions. So much of the
00:03:20.800 social science research, what does it take to be successful? What are the behaviors that we
00:03:24.960 actually reward? There are almost no resemblance to the aspirational platitudes that much of the
00:03:32.460 leadership literature puts forward. Yeah. Whenever I go on LinkedIn, I check out where people are
00:03:37.260 posting. A lot of this stuff is very aspirational. Like, here's an example of this leader that was
00:03:40.820 modest and, you know, is humble and blah. And I'm like, is that really how it works? And you're saying no.
00:03:47.640 No, that isn't how it works. Of course not. And I think you used the right word. The word is
00:03:53.300 aspirational. I think many people, you know, there's a lot of virtue signaling on LinkedIn and Twitter
00:03:58.680 and holding that aside. There's also a lot of, there's a lot of writing about how people would
00:04:04.060 like the world to be. And what the position that I take is that, you know, it's fine to have
00:04:09.960 aspirations, but if you're going to get from where you are to the aspirational world, you would like
00:04:15.180 to see, you need to understand number one, where you are, and you need to understand why you are where
00:04:20.460 you are. Because otherwise you just put out these platitudes and nothing ever changes.
00:04:24.960 And power is that ability that allows you to make that change that you want.
00:04:29.480 That's exactly right. Power is the ability to get things done against opposition. You know,
00:04:34.300 the Stanford Business School motto is change lives, change organizations, change the world. And if
00:04:40.760 you're going to change anything, you need influence.
00:04:43.760 All right. So power is the ability to get things done in opposition. But like, if power is the ability
00:04:47.700 to get things done, like, why are people uncomfortable thinking about and going after power,
00:04:53.120 like being effective? Why are people squeamish about that?
00:04:56.880 I don't know. It could be how they were raised. You're not supposed to seek power. You're supposed
00:05:03.160 to be, you know, do good work and, you know, work hard and keep your head down and everything will be
00:05:10.280 okay. And so I think how you're raised and the literature to which you're exposed causes you to,
00:05:16.400 I think, step away from power. And, you know, my friend Debra Liu is now CEO of Ancestry.com.
00:05:25.040 And prior to that, worked at Facebook, wrote a book, and I love the title, Take Back Your Power.
00:05:31.440 And the reason why I like that title is because the opposite of taking back your power is giving
00:05:37.020 away your power. And I think in a hundred ways, people lean away from being powerful rather than
00:05:44.580 leaning into it. Well, you mentioned earlier, a lot of these things that, you know, if you look
00:05:48.180 at the research, you know, how we reward influence and power to people, you know, people who are
00:05:52.800 narcissistic tend to have more power, deception, you know, these are some negative things. But in
00:05:58.340 this book, The Seven Rules of Power, you make the case that you don't have to be an unethical person
00:06:02.760 to want power. Because if you want to do good, if you want to do, there's a, you have a moral,
00:06:07.240 this good thing you want to do in the world, you have to think about, well, how am I going to do that?
00:06:12.100 And you have to think about, well, how am I going to get power?
00:06:14.780 That's exactly correct. And by the way, you know, the thing, the seven rules, you know,
00:06:20.220 number one, getting out of your own way. Number two, you know, breaking the rules. Number three,
00:06:25.720 showing up in a powerful fashion and building a powerful brand and networking. I don't think
00:06:30.280 networking is unethical. I don't think putting your, putting a brand forward or showing up in a
00:06:37.700 powerful fashion is unethical. I certainly don't think getting out of your own way and losing the
00:06:43.580 descriptions that hold you back are unethical. So I, I don't see, you know, much of the stuff
00:06:49.780 that I talk about in this book is being unethical or, or bad in any way. Of course, you ought to get
00:06:55.100 out of your own way and you ought to lean into your power and try to show up in a way that makes
00:07:00.000 a positive impression on other people.
00:07:02.080 Well, let's, let's dig into these rules a little bit more. So you said the first rule
00:07:05.540 of power is getting out of your own way. What do you mean by that? And how do people get in their
00:07:10.540 own way when it comes to power?
00:07:11.820 Oh my God. That's a great question. People get in their own way in a number of ways. Number one,
00:07:17.400 I think they apologize too much. So I, I call this kind of the preemptory apology. Pardon me for
00:07:23.680 interrupting. You know, I, I see people at meetings or even in my classroom, you know, I'm not sure
00:07:29.500 the comment I'm about to make is worthwhile. This kind of modesty thing, you know, I pardon
00:07:36.800 me for, you know, taking your time. No, don't, do not engage in preemptory apology. And, you know,
00:07:43.000 if you're going to make a comment that nobody wants to hear, don't make it in the first place.
00:07:46.620 Don't apologize for it in advance. I think that's one way in which people give up their own,
00:07:51.140 give up their power. And I think people carry in their heads descriptions of themselves.
00:07:56.520 You know, I'm not, I'm not that good. You know, the, the, you know, this idea about
00:08:02.460 self-handicapping or this idea that you're not worthy and deserving. If you go into a situation
00:08:07.760 and you don't think you're worthy and deserving, the odds are nobody else is going to think you
00:08:11.600 are worthy or deserving either. So, you know, I think, I think you need to come into situations
00:08:16.360 with a sense of your own competence and confidence. And you need to come into situations
00:08:22.080 using a set of adjectives about you that empower rather than disempower you.
00:08:28.640 Well, another way that people get in the way of themselves that you talked about in the book,
00:08:31.780 I thought was really interesting is this emphasis on authenticity. And you call this the authenticity,
00:08:37.320 a curse, actually, when it comes to power. Why is authenticity a curse?
00:08:42.740 Well, it's way too self-referential. People think that you ought to be true to yourself.
00:08:48.000 I don't think that's what leaders need to be. Leaders need to be true, not to what their own
00:08:52.680 feelings are, what their own preferences are, or what their own ideas are. They need to be true to
00:08:58.540 what the people around them need. So, you know, if you're running a startup and you come in one day
00:09:04.140 and, you know, you've, you've, you've had setbacks because startups invariably face various kinds of
00:09:09.860 setbacks and challenges. And you say to your team, you know, I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure
00:09:15.940 how we're going to get out of this. You're going to lose the team. You're going to lose your
00:09:19.420 investors. You're going to lose your customers. You have to sometimes display confidence that you
00:09:24.020 don't feel. You have to sometimes display certainty that you don't feel. And certainly if you show up,
00:09:31.420 it's my friend, Gary Lubman, who used to run Caesars, the casino company. If you show up in the
00:09:36.420 middle of the night and you're tired and, you know, and you're not, and maybe your family has done
00:09:42.180 something bad or your, your children have gotten into trouble or whatever, you know, the people in
00:09:47.840 the casino don't want to hear about this and they don't want to hear that you're tired. They, you,
00:09:52.520 you need to show up with energy. You need to show up with a dedication to, and a focus on the people
00:09:58.540 who are around you and what do they need from you. And I think what they need from you is they need
00:10:03.140 energy and they need a sense that you care about them and you're going to devote your efforts to
00:10:08.660 making them more successful. Well, as you're describing that idea of being authentic,
00:10:12.020 with the example of, you know, if you're late at night, no one wants to hear that you don't know
00:10:16.200 the question or you're tired. There's just always a lot of talk lately in the past decade or so about
00:10:20.600 being vulnerable as a leader. And I think people are like, well, if you don't know, and if you're
00:10:24.980 tired, you should let people know that because then they'll trust you more or whatever. And you're
00:10:28.220 saying, it sounds good, but that really people don't respond well to that.
00:10:33.000 There's research that suggests that, you know, it's fine to be vulnerable to your significant other
00:10:37.600 or maybe to your children or to close friends. But in a work situation, people want to know that
00:10:43.440 you're going to lead them to victory, that you have the confidence and you are going to tap into
00:10:50.260 their energy and you're going to give them energy because we know emotions, including energy, is
00:10:55.120 contagious. And then at the end, you're going to lead them to success. Absolutely.
00:11:00.020 Another thing that gets in the way of how people get in their own way is this wanting to be liked.
00:11:04.560 But the problem is if you want to wield power, sometimes you're going to do things that people
00:11:08.540 don't like and they're not going to like you. So how do you overcome that desire to be well-liked
00:11:13.780 by everybody? I think you need to focus on results. You know, again, my friend Gary Lublin, who ran
00:11:19.720 Caesars for many years as a CEO, has this lovely saying, you want to be like a dog. A dog will love
00:11:24.840 you unconditionally. But your job as a senior leader is not to win a popularity contest. I mean,
00:11:31.960 people are looking to you to make sometimes tough decisions. Maybe you need to lay people off
00:11:37.120 because of economic circumstances. Maybe you need to fire people because they've underperformed or
00:11:42.160 they've let you down in various ways. You know, maybe you need to make decisions about strategic
00:11:47.940 direction for the organization that not everybody is going to agree with. And you're paid as a leader.
00:11:54.120 Your job as a leader is to help people become more successful. And sometimes that involves making
00:12:00.220 pretty tough decisions. All right. So this first rule of getting out of your own way,
00:12:03.240 it seems like it's a mindset shift. You have to just start getting comfortable with the idea that
00:12:07.720 to be a leader, you're going to do things that might go against what you feel is authentic or
00:12:12.420 natural if you actually want to get stuff done. I think that's exactly right. I mean, if you think
00:12:18.200 about Jeff Bezos of Amazon or Elon Musk of Tesla, you know, I'm not sure they're going to win
00:12:24.520 popularity contests or people are going to like them. I think most entrepreneurs, most, many CEOs
00:12:30.880 leading, you know, successful organizations, they are focused on accomplishment and, you know, and
00:12:37.340 they are focused on making things happen. And sometimes that involves, you know, not necessarily
00:12:44.100 behaving as everyone would want you to behave. Well, related to that is the second rule and that is
00:12:48.780 break the rules. What do you mean by break the rules and what kind of rules are we breaking here?
00:12:52.520 Breaking almost all rules. I'm, you know, my friend, Jason Calacanis, the angel investor
00:12:59.060 who wrote a book talking about how he turned a hundred thousand into a hundred million dollars
00:13:03.420 when he was applying to Fordham, he would drop in on the admissions office, the admissions officer
00:13:10.640 without an appointment. When he got admitted to Fordham, he dropped in on the Dean without an
00:13:16.160 appointment to get a better job in the computer lab. You know, I think breaking the rules,
00:13:21.060 there's a Malcolm Gladwell has a 2009 article in the New Yorker, how David beats Goliath.
00:13:27.860 How does David beat Goliath? Then we're talking to now the biblical David and Goliath. You know,
00:13:32.520 if David puts on all of the armor like Goliath has, and has a sword like Goliath has before David is a
00:13:39.780 little, much smaller than Goliath, isn't going to be able to move. So David says, I'm not going to
00:13:44.980 fight Goliath on Goliath's terms. I'm going to fight Goliath using my tools, the tools of a
00:13:51.020 shepherd. I'm going to use a slingshot. So David beats Goliath by basically engaging in what the
00:13:56.600 technical term would be asymmetric warfare. And it's true, not just in warfare, it's true in business
00:14:02.180 strategy. I think the most successful business organizations are ones that change the rules of
00:14:07.560 the game to favor what their particular capacities and capabilities are. So what does that look like
00:14:13.760 on a day-to-day basis? Like, you know, let's say you just got hired at a company and you want to make
00:14:19.880 a mark. I mean, like what kind of, what kind of rules should you start breaking and what does that
00:14:25.700 look like? Well, you know, so I have a friend, the former student named Tristan Walker. And Tristan
00:14:31.420 Walker wanted to get a job at Foursquare. He sent emails and resumes to the CEO at the time at Foursquare
00:14:39.020 and the CEO was busy running this startup. And so Tristan Walker began, basically, he didn't get the
00:14:47.620 job of being the head of business development. He started doing the job of being the head of business
00:14:54.620 development. And when he landed a contract with Starbucks, the head of Foursquare, the CEO said,
00:15:01.040 wow, maybe I ought to hire this guy because he was already doing the job for which he wanted to be
00:15:07.400 hired. Now that's an extreme example, but it's an interesting example. And I see this inside
00:15:12.660 organizations all the time. People take initiative. You know, I believe this organization ought to do
00:15:19.280 a strategic review. Okay. I can't get anybody's attention. I will do it myself. I think we ought to
00:15:26.320 reach out to the following potential customers. I can't get the sales team to do it. I'll do it
00:15:31.580 myself. In other words, you take initiative and do what you think needs to be done without waiting
00:15:37.280 for permission to do it. Yeah, I think that's interesting. A lot of times we tell people to
00:15:42.480 take initiative. You know, we tell our kids that you got to take initiative. But when you get in an
00:15:45.820 organization, taking initiative is seen as, well, you don't do that, that you're a renegade if you take
00:15:50.040 initiative. But you're saying you need to do more of that. You need to keep doing that when you get in
00:15:53.600 an organization. And, you know, if you land a contract for Foursquare with Starbucks, nobody's
00:15:59.060 going to say you shouldn't have done that. If you reach out to a potential customer and you're
00:16:03.820 successful in landing that customer, nobody's going to say, oh, you shouldn't have done that.
00:16:08.000 You know, if you undertake a strategic review that leads to some great insight that makes the
00:16:13.140 organization successful, nobody's going to say, oh, you shouldn't have done that. You know, at the
00:16:18.140 end, it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. That's the basic principle.
00:16:24.040 And you use the example of Robert Moses, who he did this a lot when he was doing his thing in New
00:16:28.900 York City. Instead of going through the typical bureaucratic rigmarole to get something to prove,
00:16:33.200 he would just do it. He would just build it. Yeah. He would absolutely. He would, you know,
00:16:38.060 instead of asking, you know, for permission to do something, he would do it. And then, you know,
00:16:41.860 once the park was built or once the playground was built or once the swimming field was built,
00:16:45.780 what are you going to do? You know, people are enjoying it. You're not going to say,
00:16:48.700 well, you shouldn't have done that. Well, then you also bring in research,
00:16:51.500 like all this stuff isn't, you just kind of, you're not just pulling the stuff out of your
00:16:54.060 hat somewhere. You're just, you actually, there's research that shows that we actually,
00:16:57.520 when we see someone break the rules, we kind of like that guy, I want to listen to that guy
00:17:02.040 because he's, he's, I don't know, he's like above the law in a way. So maybe we should pay
00:17:05.520 attention to him. Yep. Yep. Rule breaking, you know, because, because it's heuristic association
00:17:11.520 between, you know, but the powerful people get to break the rules. So if you break the
00:17:15.660 rules, people will think you have more power than maybe you have.
00:17:18.660 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:17:27.600 And now back to the show. All right. The next rule is about appearing powerful and use the
00:17:33.000 example of two CEOs to highlight this rule. It's a Lloyd Blankenfine and Tony Hayward.
00:17:39.260 What can these two guys teach us about the importance of, of appearing powerful?
00:17:42.700 People, you know, I think people respond to how you look, you know, and so if you show up and
00:17:48.660 you speak in a powerful voice and you show up and use powerful gestures, as opposed to hunching over,
00:17:54.720 you know, people pay more attention to you. You could look at Oliver North and his testimony years
00:17:59.620 ago for Iran-Contra, you know, he shows up in his military uniform and he, he, he is assertive.
00:18:06.160 People respond to others, how others look and how they appear. Body language is important.
00:18:12.040 My colleague at the Berkeley, Dana Carney, has done a ton of research. She's writing a book
00:18:16.180 on the importance of body language. We know this and we see this. Next time you watch a political
00:18:21.080 debate or something on TV like that, turn off the sound and you can, you can tell who's winning
00:18:26.840 just by the body language.
00:18:28.560 Well, when you talk about these two guys, they, they, they both got called up to, you know,
00:18:32.760 I think Congress to give testimony or something because of wrongdoing that their companies were
00:18:37.060 accused of taking part in. And one of them went there and there was, he's very conciliatory and
00:18:42.200 like, oh, you know, we're really sorry. And he was talking about what's been so hard for me and
00:18:45.380 blah, blah, blah, blah. And the other guy was just, he didn't really talk about what he's being
00:18:49.580 accused of. He's like, well, here's, you know, I'm running this company. We're trying to get this
00:18:52.920 done. And as a consequence, something like this happened. It's just, that's just part of doing
00:18:56.600 business. And, but we're doing this, we're creating more, so much more value because we,
00:19:01.140 would that thing happen or something like that?
00:19:03.220 Yep. That's exactly right. I mean, Tony Hayward from BP, you know, reads a statement,
00:19:08.060 which of course prevents him from making eye contact, which is already a bad thing.
00:19:12.500 He's all hunched over. He doesn't use forceful arm gestures. And he certainly apologizes a lot
00:19:18.040 for the BP Gulf oil spill. Lloyd Blankfein representing Goldman Sachs, which has been accused of shorting
00:19:24.720 securities that it sold its clients, comes up and says, you know, we are the other side of what
00:19:29.700 our clients want to do. So we buy what we, you know, if they want to sell to us, we buy from them.
00:19:34.660 If they want to buy from us, we sell to them. And then we cover the risk by taking the other,
00:19:39.220 by perhaps making shorts or, you know, buying derivatives or whatever they do. And yes,
00:19:45.740 we are the other side of what our clients want to do. And by the way, we're 140 year old firm.
00:19:50.260 And this is what marketing making is. Market making is being the other side of our clients
00:19:55.000 transactions and a completely unapologetic. All right. It's a pure, more powerful thing
00:20:00.720 about body language. That's important. Look people in the eye, stand up straight. We've had people on
00:20:05.040 the podcast talking about those. Those are powerful social cues that signal competence and effectiveness
00:20:11.480 and power to other people. So you might think that's just dumb stuff, but it actually is really
00:20:15.160 like those little small details are important. Absolutely. Okay. So another rule is if you have
00:20:21.320 power, you have to use your power to increase your power. Why does using your power increase your
00:20:26.720 power? People want to be associated with success. People want to be associated with other people
00:20:32.220 who are able to get things done. So to the extent that you're able to get more done,
00:20:36.940 more people are going to support you. I mean, think about yourself as a startup or think about
00:20:42.840 yourself as, you know, maybe Robert Moses building parks, playgrounds or swimming pools or think
00:20:48.840 about yourself as Lyndon Johnson passing all that great society legislation. The more stuff you get
00:20:54.440 done, the more effective you look. The more effective you look, the more people want to support you
00:21:01.100 because, you know, while Don Quixote is a nice figure in literature, nobody wants to be associated
00:21:06.420 with people who are tilting at windmills. They want to be associated with people who are actually
00:21:10.780 making things happen. So the more you're able to get done, the more people want to invest in you
00:21:16.280 and to work with you. Well, I think FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he understood this principle.
00:21:21.580 You know, as soon as he got in, this is where the whole idea of, you know, the first hundred days
00:21:24.260 of a president, right? How much are they going to get done? Well, as soon as he got in, he established
00:21:28.680 all these agencies and was doing all this different stuff to help alleviate the depression. I think what
00:21:33.640 he was trying to do, he's trying to give confidence to the American people that we're in charge,
00:21:38.260 we're going to get stuff done and that only increased his power. Yep. That's exactly right.
00:21:42.880 That's another good example. Yeah. And LBJ did that too. And you talk about as soon as after
00:21:47.520 the assassination, like immediately he was setting out, here's what we're going to do to get the
00:21:51.200 great society going, education, civil rights. He had a plan like within that first day to get stuff
00:21:56.640 done. Yep. And the more bills he passed, the more people then say, wow, here's somebody who can
00:22:04.900 actually get the civil rights legislation that Kennedy tried to get through and was never able
00:22:09.800 to. And the more effective you look, the more people want to be associated with you and to work
00:22:16.660 with you. I mean, you think about this, if you're working in a company and you got two leaders,
00:22:21.420 one leader is getting stuff done and making stuff happen. And the other leader isn't, you know,
00:22:26.200 who do you want to, who do you want to work with? You want to work with people you want to work
00:22:30.160 in the, in the unit where that's making things happen. Well, so yeah, I think a lot of, I've
00:22:35.360 heard, I've read business advice where if you're put into a new leadership position, well, maybe what
00:22:39.260 you should do is just kind of embed yourself in the organization, see how things are run and then
00:22:43.700 you make your changes. You're saying, no, you need to go in there and just start making things happen
00:22:48.000 right away. People are looking to you and, and, and they are trying to evaluate, is this somebody
00:22:54.260 who's going to be successful or not? And the sooner you show that you're going to be successful,
00:22:59.040 the more support you're going to get. Okay. And then what this also does by exercising power,
00:23:05.060 it also, it's fights, it helps you fight off would-be pretenders as well to your, your leadership
00:23:10.320 position. That's, that is absolutely correct. And you see this with outside succession and CEO roles
00:23:16.320 and obviously in political roles. You know, a new CEO comes in from outside. Oftentimes there's a lot
00:23:21.880 of turnover in the top management team. Jim Collins, good to great, the great management thinker
00:23:27.840 and writer talks about getting the right people on the bus. And that's exactly right. It's very hard
00:23:33.260 to get things done if you don't have the right talent and skills working with you. And by the way,
00:23:38.840 getting the right people on the bus oftentimes means getting the wrong people off the bus.
00:23:43.720 So yes, you, you, you want a team who can execute. You want a team who can get things done. I mean,
00:23:48.860 think about a football team. You come in as a coach, look at Lincoln Riley at USC. One of the things
00:23:54.060 Lincoln Riley did when he came to coach USC is he said, I'm going to apparently, according to the,
00:24:01.140 what I read in the newspaper, have the largest number of transfers almost in the history of
00:24:06.780 college football, because I want to try to get the best talent on this team. So I have the best
00:24:13.560 chance of winning. Yeah. Lincoln, right. He I'm from Oklahoma. I went to OU. He is persona
00:24:18.040 non grata here. We don't like, we don't like Lincoln Riley. Okay. So, and another rule is
00:24:24.080 success excuses, almost everything. What's behind that rule.
00:24:30.160 Well, what's behind that rule is that once you are successful, once you are rich, you can,
00:24:36.280 and there are a bunch of psychological dynamics behind this. People will forget or forgive what
00:24:41.780 you did to get into that position of power. You see this all the time with wealthy business people,
00:24:47.660 you know, once you're rich and successful, you can put your name on a lot of pieces of concrete
00:24:53.420 and auditoriums and concert halls and et cetera. And people are happy to take your money and you,
00:24:59.560 you can buy legitimacy. Once you become rich and successful, people want to be associated with,
00:25:04.660 with, with power, with that rich, with that wealth and success. And so, and they will forget or forgive
00:25:09.940 or both what you did to get there in the first place.
00:25:13.200 Well, and so going to like a more, you know, down to earth example, right? So you talk about
00:25:17.420 someone taking initiative to start a thing that they, you know, maybe they didn't get permission
00:25:21.460 to start a development thing within their business. Well, if it's successful, people
00:25:26.180 aren't going to care. Like the boss is going to care that you didn't follow protocol because it
00:25:29.120 was successful. That's, that's correct. The saying is always failure is an orphan and success has many
00:25:35.600 parents. And one of the things you talk about in your previous book on power too, is that the just
00:25:42.520 world fallacy contributes to the way people will allow success to excuse almost anything. How does
00:25:50.740 that work?
00:25:51.680 The just world idea is an idea that started by the social psychologist, Melvin Lerner,
00:25:56.280 who says that people want to believe that the world is a just and fair place, that you get what
00:26:00.940 you deserve. But the dual of idea of, did you get what you deserve? Is once you get a lot of stuff,
00:26:07.000 once you're successful and powerful, people will say, well, you must've deserved it in the first place.
00:26:11.020 Yeah. It's a double-edged sword though, because we figure someone who's, who is successful,
00:26:15.400 you know, they deserve their success. So he's a skillful, good person and we want to be associated
00:26:20.860 with them. But when it, when it comes to be, you know, when it's related to ourselves, we can get
00:26:27.060 caught up into believing that our good actions will always be rewarded. And then we'll, you know,
00:26:33.700 we start to feel frustrated and resentful that we're not being adequately rewarded. Or, you know,
00:26:39.300 you, you see someone at work who's getting something using nefarious means, or they're just
00:26:44.720 kind of just not a pleasant person. And we think, well, they don't deserve that. So you, but you have
00:26:49.720 to accept that, you know, good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people,
00:26:54.560 but regardless, you have to keep trying to be proactive and make things happen in the world with
00:27:01.900 your own actions, right? You have to like, you know, exercise your agency.
00:27:05.000 Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, I used to believe that the big contribution of my class
00:27:11.060 was to teach people a lot of social science and a lot of social psychology around power and influence.
00:27:17.260 And I've now come to believe that while I am teaching them social psychology and social science
00:27:22.300 and everything I talk about in seven rules of power, of course, has a lot of research behind it.
00:27:27.600 My, the biggest effect of my class is to cause people to be bolder than they were before,
00:27:33.560 to take more risks than they thought they could, to break the rules, to step out of their comfort
00:27:39.120 zone and to try stuff and to be, and to be, and you use the word, I think it's exactly the right
00:27:44.300 word, to become more proactive, to become more agentic. And, you know, once you become more
00:27:50.880 proactive and more agentic, you're more likely to get more stuff done. The more stuff you try to do,
00:27:55.660 the more stuff you're going to get done.
00:27:57.580 I've had, I had this conversation with, I coach flag football, a bunch of 11 year olds.
00:28:01.280 And sometimes that, sometimes that games, you know, they're like the ref, you know,
00:28:04.200 this is like, this is flag football. So there's one ref, you can't see the entire field.
00:28:07.380 There's no playbacks. And sometimes the ref will miss a penalty and there's like, Oh,
00:28:11.200 that's not fair. Oh, they just get really it. I'm like, I always tell like guys did all that
00:28:15.680 yelling. Did that change the call? No. It's like, well, you gotta, well, you got the only thing
00:28:19.800 you can do is go out there and play harder and try to do better. That's complaining and whining
00:28:24.000 about, you know, they, that's not fair. It's not doing anything. It happens every game,
00:28:28.060 but like for some kids it's landed. Some other kids are still, I still have to try to pound into
00:28:33.380 their head. Sounds like a great coaching idea. You know, I mean, it is a great coaching idea
00:28:40.360 because the question that you asked in the comment you just made is exactly the right question.
00:28:47.500 Does your complaining, does your whining, does your this, that, or the other thing,
00:28:51.520 does it change anything? And if the answer to that question is no,
00:28:55.020 then let's do something that's way more productive than doing things that don't make a
00:28:59.800 difference. Yeah. Another rule is you gotta expand your brand or develop a personal brand.
00:29:04.540 What role does that play in acquiring power? Well, I think narratives are, narratives are
00:29:09.500 important. And I think you will, you just as, you know, products need a brand. I think you,
00:29:14.260 people need a brand, you know, and they need a, not only do they need to build a brand,
00:29:18.340 which is a short statement that summarizes, you know, what they've done in their lives and who
00:29:24.940 they are and how that makes them uniquely qualified for the job to which they aspire,
00:29:30.820 the job that they hold. And then you need to promulgate that brand through social media.
00:29:35.260 And the example I use in the book is Tristan Walker. He's a graduate of Stanford, African-American,
00:29:41.700 was an executive in residence at Andreessen Horowitz, and, you know, thought about doing the same
00:29:47.060 stuff that everybody else thought of doing, you know, FinTech or, you know, social media.
00:29:53.400 But as, as an African-American man, he understood, number one, that there weren't a lot of personal
00:29:59.180 grooming products and, you know, that many of the shavers left him with razor bumps or, you know,
00:30:05.480 were hard on his skin. And he said, well, you know, instead of doing what everybody else is going to do,
00:30:10.580 I'm going to basically build grooming products for people of color, which are a large
00:30:16.460 growing segment of the population, completely underserved. And if you think about it, that is
00:30:22.520 a product and that is a brand that fits him. I am a black man and I am going to build products for
00:30:30.360 black men and for Latino and African-American women, for people of color. And I know that market
00:30:37.540 because I am that market and I've lived that experience. And so that's a brand that fits him
00:30:42.800 and suits him. And he built Walker and company brands, which was then bought by Procter and
00:30:47.320 Gamble. So, you know, the, you need a brand that somehow integrates your life experience with your
00:30:52.880 competence and capabilities in a way that says you are uniquely qualified to do what you're doing.
00:30:59.640 When you also say, sometimes you got to be appropriately controversial. What do you mean by that?
00:31:04.760 Well, you know, there's, what is the, what is the saying? There's various forms of publicity.
00:31:09.220 There's good publicity. There's bad publicity. And then of course the worst is no publicity.
00:31:14.880 You need, you need, you need to, you need to stand out. And one of the ways of standing out
00:31:19.280 is by saying things and doing things that catch people's attention. I mean, if I said to you,
00:31:24.880 if I said to you, I want you to bring out a personal computer, the last thing you would do
00:31:29.300 was bring out another windows machine that's black because there are like a zillion windows machines
00:31:35.340 that all look alike. I mean, you know, Apple had at one point, these kind of pastel colored machines
00:31:41.020 and they have different operating system. I mean, you need, you need to do something to stand out
00:31:45.720 and to differentiate yourself so that people notices. So the people notice your product.
00:31:50.540 So the people notice you, no one has ever been hired into a job for which nobody knew them or thought
00:31:58.020 of them. The first thing you need to do, if you're going to be hired, if you're going to be promoted,
00:32:01.960 somebody has to know who you are. And I think for a lot of people, again,
00:32:05.900 this goes back to this idea of getting out of your own way, right? Some people like, well,
00:32:09.460 it's just, I'm a modest person. I don't feel authentic when I'm talking about what I do.
00:32:13.380 And you say, no, if you actually want to get stuff done, you have to get comfortable talking
00:32:17.200 about how effective you are. That's exactly right. I mean, you should not assume that your boss
00:32:22.840 is watching you every minute and is noticing everything you're doing. So maybe you ought to let you help
00:32:29.220 your boss understand your accomplishments. No, that's a good point because someone else is
00:32:33.720 probably taking credit for that team effort you did. And it's not you, but it's some other guy.
00:32:39.080 Could be.
00:32:40.000 So another important part of gaining more power is networking.
00:32:43.240 Yep.
00:32:43.520 So how does networking increase your power? What type of networking are we talking about here?
00:32:48.120 Well, if leadership is getting things done to other people, it seems pretty obvious to me that the
00:32:53.120 more other people you know, the more you're going to be able to get done. Organizational life,
00:32:57.640 social life is in fact social. And so the more connections you have, and particularly the more
00:33:03.580 connections you have with people who can help you be effective, the better off you're going to be.
00:33:08.560 When you also talk about this importance of focusing on weak links, what are weak links and
00:33:12.760 why are they important to building power?
00:33:15.760 Yeah. So many people spend most of their time with people who are close to them. They are their
00:33:23.520 family. They are their close friends. They are the people they work with all the time.
00:33:28.880 And the problem, there's not problem. The issue with spending most of your time with people who
00:33:34.080 are close to you is people who are close to you probably know the same things and the same people
00:33:39.960 that you do. And the people to whom you're weakly tied, people that you may have met only once or twice,
00:33:45.520 people who are casual acquaintances, is they are going to diversify both what you know and who you
00:33:52.400 know. And just as diversification is good in financial markets, it's good in social markets as
00:33:58.200 well. The more different ideas you're exposed to, the more different people you are exposed to,
00:34:05.460 the more different sectors of the economy you're exposed to, the more creative you're going to be
00:34:11.200 and the more you're going to be able to get done because you'll know more different people and
00:34:15.440 things. Well, I think one issue that might happen with people who are proactive, like to get things
00:34:20.680 done, they might think, well, man, networking just takes a lot of time and it just takes me away from
00:34:25.080 my core competency, which is like why I'm here to like, you know, increase whatever profits in this
00:34:29.360 sector. But you still got to network. So how do you make time? Have you found any good advice on
00:34:34.360 making time for networking? I think you need to write down the people who you need to meet in order
00:34:41.840 to, you know, advance your and your organization's agenda and then figure out how you're going to
00:34:47.280 meet them and then like literally make lists and hold yourself accountable and spend and use your
00:34:53.440 phone or use something to keep track of how you spend your time and say to yourself, I'm going to
00:34:59.200 spend a certain amount of time networking. You know, I, I, people say to me, I don't spend enough
00:35:04.980 time exercising or I don't spend enough time taking care of my, my physical body. You know,
00:35:11.520 how do you, how do you do a better job of that? You make a certain time in the day, every day to run
00:35:17.420 or to do whatever exercise you're going to do. Similarly, I think you want to set a time and a certain
00:35:23.420 amount of time each week to build the relationships. They're going to permit you to get things done.
00:35:28.440 And a world basically of interdependence. You know, for me doing stuff like building your
00:35:34.340 personal brand or, you know, networking, even though I know they're, they're effective in
00:35:39.260 building power and influence. These are stuff, it's just stuff I don't like doing. I can't bring
00:35:44.600 myself to do. So I guess at the end of the day, people have to learn these rules of power and
00:35:50.120 influence, and then they got to decide if they want power enough to be willing to do the things they
00:35:55.980 may not do things they may not like or be comfortable doing, or they got to decide,
00:36:01.920 well, maybe I just don't want that much power and influence because I don't want to do all that
00:36:05.420 stuff. So that's something they got to think about. Well, Jeffrey, this has been a great
00:36:08.880 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:36:13.060 Well, I have a personal homepage, www.jeffreypfeffer.com. I have a podcast myself
00:36:22.120 called Pfeffer on Power, which is pfefferonpower.com. So between the podcast and my personal
00:36:29.620 homepage, or you can read Seven Rules of Power, those are all ways to learn more about this. And,
00:36:35.620 you know, I'm happy to send people my course outline or, you know, whatever. So there,
00:36:40.880 I think there are a variety of ways to learn about this.
00:36:43.780 All right. Well, Jeffrey Pfeffer, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:36:46.060 Thank you.
00:36:47.400 My guest today was Jeffrey Pfeffer. He's the author of the book,
00:36:49.780 Seven Rules of Power. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:36:53.640 You can find more information about Jeffrey's work at his website, jeffreypfeffer.com. And
00:36:57.240 that's pfeffer with a P. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash rules of power.
00:37:01.700 We can find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.
00:37:11.280 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website
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