Jeffrey Pfeffer: How to Win Power and Influence People

what are the kind of fundamental tactics recipes for somebody who is looking to accumulate power what's let's list the core of your advice to them well the core of my advice would be I think several things number one you've got to understand the personal qualities that produce power and you need to get I think an a very objective self assessment which is hard to do because we all like to believe that we're above average on everything that's positive so I often tell people they ought to get themselves a personal board of directors of two or three people who are not competitive with them and are not in the same organization that they're working in but who will give them honest and objective advice now again now let give them honest and objective advice and ratings on the various qualities that produce power but also hold them accountable so we often have as you know personal development plans we're going to become better at X or Y or Z and then we slide off the wagon if you will and it's nice to have a personal board of directors that would hold you accountable so my first thing is you know figure out what are the what are your strengths and weaknesses and get some people to help you build your strengths and I mean overcome and overcome your weaknesses and hold you accountable for that personal development plan I think the second thing is you know I had the networks are important that everybody understands the importance of building efficient and effective social networks they need to understand how to do that and go about doing that people need to learn how to act and speak with power I will show in a few weeks in my class a video which I've carefully edited from the hours of testimony that I've watched of Tony Hayward of BP and boy point-five of Goldman Sachs and I show it with it without sound and listen to the language and you know and these are two guys each whose companies have caused a lot of economic damage the Lloyd of course never admits it which is one of his advantages and and you know Android comes in and he's forceful and Tony Hayward comes in and he's remorseful and the research literature and certainly that little experience shows that you're better off being forceful than remorseful and you can learn these are all skills that people can learn people can learn to speak more effectively people can learn to show up more effectively people can learn to adopt more powerful postures people can learn how to become more efficient social networkers and with respect to this networking issue it's really interesting I recently talked to chip Connelly there's your outer V hotels on a case I'm writing that I check put on somebody else and I said Chuck why is it that so few people become effective in building these efficient and effective social networks and he said I think something is extremely insightful he said look to most people networking is a task and so the person on who I'm writing the case networking is a skill a task is something like taking out the garbage nobody works out getting better at taking out the garbage nobody thinks about that this is a skill that they want to develop or that they're proud of he said most people think about networking as a task it's something you got to do you go into a meeting you've got to meet a bunch of people exchange a bunch of business cards whatever they don't think about it is a skill that you can get better at that you can develop that you could develop some crafted and some artistic you know confidence in and he said this guy that we were talking about this guy understands that networking is a skill so it's a difference between tasks and skill these are things that people can get better at as long as they recognize that just like we've used the word earlier political skills that this is a skill this is something you could develop like your skill than riding a bike or speaking French or your particular interest in and and and passion is you can get better at these things that you can get better in plan organizational politics as well probably the most single most important quality that I would allude to and tell people that they need to develop is the ability to respond and overcome setbacks because everybody is going to have them you know this is an academic journal articles get rejected editors are not happy with your first draft of the manuscript which doesn't mean that you don't pay attention to or listen to what the people are telling you but it says okay I've heard this I'm not going to take this too personally I'm not going to you know get depressed I'm going to figure out how I can take this advice and get back on the horse if you will and continue writing and continue and continue doing but what I need to do in order to be effective and successful and the disability to overcome setbacks and to just be persistent one of the people I talk about the book is my friend Laura Esserman who's changing the world of medicine is just an incredible physician as well as an MBA at the University of California San Francisco and you know what I meant Richard Blum the chair of the Board of Regents a very successful money manager at Diane Feinstein's husband at a conference I said you know how Laura get you to this conference Sansa was pretty much the same way she got you here you I've learned over the years that if you say no it doesn't do you any good because she's going to basically pound on you until you say yes so you might as well just say yes at the beginning and at this whole issue of persistence and resilience I think are really really critical I came away thinking a little bit Jeff as I've read the latter parts of the book that in a way you're kind of suggesting that the pursuit of power is theater that you know it's it's the process of constructing this the set of images and perceptions around yourself that convinced the rest of the world you are as powerful as you say you are I mean it's you know the wizard was completely powerful the Dorothy pulls back the curtain so um you know is that is that is that kind of a correct characterization let me put in every way how far can you go in constructing a reality you know that that doesn't mean the reality I mean the real sense of who you are and what you're capable to do I mean the people ultimately catch up with this and you're saying often not maybe because the powerful protect the powerful I don't know but you find people who lost billions of dollars who blown half of the global economy and still seem to be suffering no consequences so you know should we be celebrating how capable these people are getting power should be promoting the fact that you know we don't have people who are powerful enough to unseat them I think the short answer is we should be doing both we should be we should not be celebrating their ability to keep power but we should that I think more importantly or practically we should be understanding the forces and the theories and the and the behaviors and why they have been able to keep power in spite of the fact that they blown off half of the world economy and I know you go to Davos occasionally and when you go to Davos and the World Economic Forum I'm sure you will see many of these people still being wined and dined and feeded and everything else and we ought to understand why that is and we ought tell you because if we're going to change it I think we need to understand what keeps the system working as it is in the first place but you know there is this interesting thing that you allude to which is the perception becomes reality because force over time I really do have a huge believer in both the individual level and at the organizational level and at the societal level in the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy if everybody believes the stock is going to go up in price it will go up in price because everybody will want to rush out to buy it if everybody believes that to take an example which I use in the book that Tina Brown is a great editor and her taking over Newsweek and providing with The Daily Beast is going to make Newsweek more successful this will increase her ability to get talented people to write for the magazine and if you increase your probability of getting talented people to write for the magazine the odds of the magazine success go up so you know if everybody went Heidi Roizen is a graduate of Stanford was and now as a venture capitalist the prior to that was the head of developer software developer relations at Apple Computer her job was to convince people these are years ago Apple year on the 90s wasn't like so hot as it is today her job was to convince software developers that they ought to write software for a company that had about three percent market share now by the way if no software developer will write software for Apple their market share is going to zero if everybody will write cool apps for Apple their market sure actually goes up so it's not just the perception creates its own reality it creates its own reality in a very physical way in a very material way that if people believe our product is going to be successful they will support it a devil increase the products capacities and its quality and will make it more successful if people believe you are going to be successful if everybody believes that Gary Hamel is the world's greatest management theorist more talented people will want to work with you and a more talented people want to work with you your odds of doing better work will of course go up so the so these are real as well as a perceptual a way in which in a way in which the world does create its own self-fulfilling prophecies you

Channel: mlabvideo

Views: 46,739

Keywords: management innovation, power

Id: JWjdQgRiG28

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2011