The paths to power: How to grow your influence and advance your career | Jeffrey Pfeffer (author of 7 Rules of Power, professor at Stanford GSB)

26:45We would talk about being a disruptor. That you would disrupt an industry and how do you disrupt an industry by doing something that is different from the other industry incumbents. In Southwest Airlines you don't do hub and spoke. In Amazon, you provide an incredible level of customer service. Whole foods, you don't optimize on the cost of the stuff in your store, but you optimize on suit on, fitting local taste. Whatever. You would be a disruptor. You would do things that are different. The same principle holds for you that if you are going to be successful, you have to do what number one place to your strengths.

27:22Use the title of a Gallup book. Number two, you have to do... You have to do things again that cause you to stand out and you have to do things that basically, you know We'll make you more successful one of the conventional wisdoms that people I think and here to way too much is Don't ask Don't ask don't ask for help you need to show self -sufficiency So my colleague Frances Flynn Frank Flynn wrote an article with an essay like a title if you need help just ask and And it turns out people overestimate how many people are going to have to ask to get help. And it turns out asking for help makes people uncomfortable.

28:02But when you, you know, I was married, you know, and so if you read the acknowledgments in seven rules of power, for more than 35 years I was married to Kathleen Francis Fowler, who I could send you a picture. I mean, she looks literally like a supermod. And I didn't, I never have been any particularly better looking than I am now. So somebody said to me, hi, did you get her to go out with you? And the answer of course is? I asked. I asked. I asked. I asked. No one. Well, maybe not no one. But few people are going to go out with you if you don't ask them out. Few people are going to marry you if you don't ask them to marry.

28:41Few people are going to do anything if you don't ask. And what is the worst that can happen? If you ask and they say no, you are no worse off than had you not asked in the first place. Because if you don't ask, you're not going to get it. If you ask, can they say, no, you're not going to get it? Get over your ego, ask. Is there another example that comes to mind if someone breaking the rules saying business that ended up being really successful as a result or just someone that is really good at this in business? I can give you many examples. One of my favorite examples would be Jason Callacannas.

29:13I don't know if you know Jason. Oh, yeah. I know you did a case study on him. Yeah, yeah. and well. Yeah, yeah. So I think Jason, Jason, I think consistently breaks all kinds of rules. First of all, when he comes to my class, nobody likes him, but that's okay. I don't know if he likes him. But you know, he's that's power number one. He's not worried about that. That's number one, but also I think there is a conventional wisdom in the venture capital industry, which he defies almost completely. You know, he makes a lot of little bets, not a few big bets. He runs a very lean operation. He doesn't have a lot of partners.

29:52He doesn't have actually any partners, so he can't be fired by his partners. He began his career in journalism, which is interesting. Being a journalist is a wonderful job because you get to ask people all kinds of questions. If you ask smart people questions, and you have some reasonable level of intelligence yourself at the end of that process, you're going to wind up incredibly smart. And incredibly insightful. And he wound up incredibly smart and insightful around aspects of the internet. And he definitely has a lot of power. It is, I think that I'm going to link to the case study in our show, and then three basically walk through how he went from nothing to a very powerful person.

30:31And by the way, a very rich person as well. Let's talk about another power, power five, networking relentlessly. What does that look like and how do you get better at this? Well, I think there's research that shows that many people find networking dirty and that's because I think they think about it in the wrong way. My friend John Levy, who is written a fabulous book you're invited, which is a book about how to put on events that people want to come to, and the fabulous you want to bring. We'll tell you that the first principle of networking is in fact generosity. It is generosity. What can I do for you?

31:09How can I be helpful. Who can I introduce you to? Either a company or a product or a person who could be helpful to you in your career. But in order to be able to introduce you to someone who's got to be useful to you, I have to know people. If I don't know anybody, I can't introduce you to anybody. And the more people I know, the more likely it will be that if If you say I need to know somebody in X, I will know that person. So the broader your social network, the more people and the more things you will know. If knowledge is power, networking is a fabulous way to get knowledge about people and about ideas.

31:53It's funny to hear this where it's like, yes, obviously this is right, but connecting it to if you want to become more powerful, more successful, like you need to do this. I think that is a powerful point that we're all making here is just like this actually is necessary if you want to acquire more power of course I have a funny story about no working so We have a thing in Sanford called view from the top and which these fancy people come in and give a talk and one of the people came in and give a talk and Made my class instantly popular because he's an extraordinary wealthy person his name is homie cordistani And so I said I reach out to him.

32:31I said homie Let's have breakfast. So I can understand, because during the thing, somebody asked him with class with the most important in his success, he said mine. So I said, well, tell me your story. He said, well, you know, I graduated from Stanford. I'm Persian and background, immigrant background, and engineer, HP, all the things that would make you kind of a nerd or something. He said, I went to work for a couple of startups. They didn't do well. Then I found myself in the mid -90s at Netscape, the browser company, big deal, anyway, Mark and Dreson. Okay, so I found myself at Netscape in marketing and business development.

33:12I was not making any progress. So one day I decided to take your class to an extreme. I decided to stop doing my job. So I said, when people gave you projects to do or assignments or tasks and you didn't do them, he said it turns out that I spent my time not obviously at the bar, but in networking, first of people inside of that scape and it turns out if you're well connected to the senior leaders, they don't really care if you do your job or not. That's number one. Number two, he said, you know, oftentimes I can find other people to do the work I was doing. So instead of basically spending time doing my job, I now worked first within that escape.

33:56But that escape was not that big of a company. So after a while, he decided to go through, which is by the way, his job anyway, and marketing his tail, he decided to basically drive to the Silicon Valley, talking to people. And this is, you know, the Brussels browsers are just beginning. Nobody knows what a browser is. Nobody knows what the internet is going to become. So he's having all these fabulous conversations. All right, so he's now, now those basically everybody. It's 1998 and a little tiny company decides 10 engineers, typical Silicon Valley company, 10 engineers, all engineers. I have a friend of what's the work for a company, we're on a company, I had 26 people, he didn't have one sales and marketing person.

34:38Anyway, the company's now has 10 engineers, they decide they need to hire their first business person. Being an analytically oriented company, They say we're going to do this very analytically. We are basically going to ask everybody we can think of and a few people we can't. Do you want to list of the best, technically oriented business people that you know? And there is of course one name that appears on every list. It is Omead, quarter -starning, who becomes employee number 11 at Google and makes $2 .5 billion. Great success from networking. Well, then, when people hear about networking, it just feels like you said, like, very cringe.

35:21I don't want to go to these networking events and try to pretend to talk and care about people. Do you have any advice for just how to make networking feel less cringy? One of the exercises I give my students is, you know, I say, right -a -list of 10 people who, So if you knew them and if they knew you would be important for whatever you're trying to accomplish in your career. So maybe you're trying to get into biotech, you need to know 10 executives of biotech or whatever. Make all this to 10 people. Then for each person figure out how you're going to meet them. You know, by the way, that necessarily the networking event.

36:01Maybe you want to do what John Levy does, which is whole dinners. in which, by the way, the guests do the cooking, which is a very interesting idea. That, of course, taps into the IKEA fact. You always like something better if you participate in creating it. Maybe you want to hold dinners. Maybe you want to hold, maybe you want to try to reach out to them a lunch. Maybe you want to reach out to them and say, here's an article I think you'd be interested in. Here is somebody who I think you benefit from meeting. You know, so recently, I mean, I'm not particularly good now worker, though I'm better, I guess, than some people.

36:37I recently met Esther Wojciski. I'm sure I killed her name. She's considered the grandmother of Silicon Valley. She's Susan Wojciski's mother. And she is interested in depression, particularly depression among teenagers. And I said, you should know Leanne Williams, who's in the psychiatry of behavioral science department who has done probably 300 articles on depression and has invented something which is called precision psychiatry. So I connected them to each other. You know, I just sent out a email, I think about it, know each other, they got together. I get credit for knowing people and connecting them, but I also benefit them.

37:19Leanne needs to raise money, Esther's got money. Esther needs to understand the cutting edge research and depression and the biomarkers of depression, which is what Leanne and specialty is, so they benefit. So this is not some Ike thing. This is connecting people who benefit from being connected. It touches on something you teach in the book is in your networking, you wanna become a broker, you wanna be central, that's kinda what you wanna work on. Can you talk a bit about what that means? Well, that means you wanna connect people. So many people would benefit, and then groups would be, would benefit from being connected, and they're not connected.

37:56What is a venture capitalist? Can I ask people with ideas that people wouldn't money and takes a fee for doing it? What is an investment banker doing? Can I ask people trying to sell businesses or raise capital with people trying to buy businesses or who have capital? What's a real estate agent? Can I ask buyers and sellers of houses? I mean, there are all kinds of examples where persons in where the person's entire job is connecting people. But even for the people whose job it isn't, you benefit from knowing people, the more people you know, the more things you know. As I sometimes say in my class, if leadership management, call what you will, is getting things done to other people.

38:39It seems like common sense that the more other people you know, the more you'll be able to get done. Yeah. As someone that has become central to a lot of things in the product world and has built the large network as a result of this podcast newsletter, I can tell you a thousand percent this creates a lot of opportunity and power you could say in quotes. So I've seen it happen. Of course. This episode is brought to you by Heap, the product analytics solution that shows you everything users do on your digital product, website, mobile product, or other digital services. We all know a great digital experience when we see it.

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39:59Visit heap .io slash Lenny to get started with a demo that's heap .io slash Lenny. Another lesson I guess you teach us to pursue weak ties, talk a bit about what that means, what do you mean by that? Well, the people to whom you're strongly tied, your family, your spouse, significant other, your friends, your work, the people who work with you at work, will probably, because they are close to you, know the same things and the same people that you do. So, to the extent that you build ties with people who are more different from you and every dimension, you are more likely to learn non -redunded information and come in contact with people that you don't already know.

40:47This again seems common sense. There's a lot of research behind it. Mark Rattavetter, a sociologist who still teaches at Stanford wrote a book entitled The Strength of Week Ties. And that's, and basically, no actually, pardon me, he wrote an article called The Straight Through Weaties. His book was called Getting a Job. And he did a study, I guess it was at that time in Boston, he did a study of job seekers in Massachusetts. And he looked at people who got jobs through applying to ads and through more formal means. and then he looked at people who got jobs through referrals from their network.

41:28And it turns out, of course, the jobs that you get through your network referrals are much better jobs. And oftentimes, the best jobs that people got were referred to them by people that were not particularly close to them. Because they had a view, that's the word I was a key quote. and view into the ecosystem of the boss of the labor market that the other people didn't have because they weren't in the same place as the other people. I love that lesson. Let's talk about another power, which is using your power. So when people think of using your power, build more power, that's not intuitive. You talk about how it creates this self -repetuating growth of power, the more you practice power.

42:15Can you talk a bit about that? Sure. So when you were giving, you know, it's interesting. My friend, Deborah Goonfeld, who wrote a book, Collacting with Power, talks a lot about people's ambivalence to power. So sometimes people are put in a job. Her media bar, who teaches now at London Business School at one point, Tottidance, God, at one point, Thottidance Harvard has an article in the Harvard Business Review in which She talks about a woman in a drug company who gets a promotion and says to her colleagues to whom she's now overseeing that she's not sure why she got the job. She's not sure she deserves a job.

42:55Needless to say, she didn't do very well in the job because she got her own way. But part of this is you are putting a position of power, you're putting a position of authority in order to make things happen. So to the extent you mobilize your resources and get things to happen, you will get more resources. People want to be associated with success. To the extent that you become successful, more people will want to work with you. To the extent that you get more stuff done, you'll get more promotions, more opportunities. I mean, nobody's going to give you a job to do if the last five jobs like that they gave you, you couldn't get done.

43:33So the more you're able to do Oftentimes, of course requires power and influence the more you're able to do the more you'll be asked to do But better yet the more resources you'll be given To help you get things done And I think there's interestingly you teach that just showing that you have power Create smart power people see that you have this power and they start to follow your lead more right? That's a part of this. Yeah, I just saw over the weekend the movie the latest movie in the franchise of the planet of the apes. It's, you know, when Jim Collins left Stanford, he gave me a book called, Chimpanzee Politics, which is, of course, not based on the planet of the apes, but it's based upon the study of chimpanzees.

44:14We are the same. People are attracted to power. You know that. Yeah. By the way, that will count for a lot of what is going to happen in the presidential election. Let's save that for the end, because I think that's an interesting piece of your book of the connection to Trump. So let's say that for a bit. I think that'll be really interesting. Kind of along the same lines of the area we're just talking about. And one of the another rule of power is to show up in a powerful fashion. So look powerful. Talk about what that looks like. So my colleague at Berkeley, Dana Karney, and she's here, and he's writing a book called Tell, which is about the importance of body language and how to master body language.

44:54There is some evidence that suggests we respond mostly to how people look, secondarily to how they sound and by far the least important to the content of what they say. You can see this by turning on your TV and turning off the sound. Watch the presidential debates with the sound off. They'll be much better. I have another colleague of marketing by the name of Bob Aschiv who talks about people's freaky mind or, you know, the idea that we are in fact descended from primates and and that we are controlled in lots of ways by our emotions. And so we respond effectively to other people. We respond to how they look.

45:38You know, there's evidence in economics that suggests how people earn more salaries, control, earn more money, controlling province of things, attractive people, so I'm sure not too attractive. You earn more money. It's an optimal level of attractiveness. Because people respond subconsciously to how people look, how they sound, how they show up, how they present themselves. In my class, I take the example of Tony Hayward of BP, the Macon of the oil spill, and Lloyd Blankfine, who was accused of shorting the securities that he was selling, which by the way, Goldman did. And before I let them hear, Tony or Lloyd, we show about 60 seconds, and Lloyd's case, 34 seconds, with no sound.

46:25And even if you did not know who these people were and I asked you to make a bet. Who's going to keep the job and who's going to lose it? You would know just from their physical appearance. I love that. And by the way, what Dana Karne will tell you and what Common Sense will tell you is that these are skills that can be mastered. Robert De Niro was not born Robert De Niro in the sense of, you know, acting skills are learned. How do you show up? How you command the room? There's a guy named Regis McCembe, who is older than God, who's famous for running a very, very, very fancy public relations firm in the Silicon Valley.

47:06And his biggest contribution to life, as well as, by the way, to his personal wealth, is that he makes Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs. When Steve Jobs began, Steve Jobs couldn't convince you to buy water if you were dying of thirst. He could not give a presentation to save his life. And Regis McKenna and his team took Steve Jobs under their wing and created Steve Jobs, a man who could sell anything to anybody. These are skills. This is not about personality. This is not about undergoing some kind of cosmetic surgery or whatever. These are skills. Everything we've talked about, networking, showing up. All these things, these are skills that can be learned.

47:55I have a list of some of the stuff you actually recommend for looking and appearing powerful. So I'll read a few and I'm curious what else comes to mind. So do not read from notes, make eye contact, keep it brief. You say that anger can be a signal of power because it's outside the norm. It's kind of breaking the rules. don't apologize. It's kind of the opposite. More gestures, which is interesting. Open body posture, louder voice. Okay, I'm going to speak louder now. I like this. Okay. What else comes to mind as ways to appear powerful? Invading people's personal space. So gentle touching, standing close to someone.

48:31We're not talking about sexual touching. We're talking about touching the arm of the shoulder. you know, shaking people's hands. That's a way of, I think, being more powerful. But you've covered the main ones. I mean, I contact one of the problems with Tony Heyward and the BP is that he's been given a statement to read. You cannot read something in front of you and make eye contact at the same time. So he looks like he's scripted. He looks like he's insincere. You know, so I, you know, so I... Jack Valeni, who I had the privilege of knowing, who for 38 years was the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, and typically rated one of the number one or number two most effective lobbyists in Washington DC, said to my class when he came to my class, which he did, I never appeared before Congress with notes.

49:26I wanted them to believe, which was by the way true, that I was in complete control and complete mastery of the material and that I did not need notes or a bunch of assistants around me to help me that I is the head of the MPA. Understand the motion picture industry and then he would give you a little aside about how it was the one industry that consistently had a bunch of surplus in trade. We would talk about how many jobs it created and yet all the stuff of his fingertips. But basically, his command of the material made him more powerful. It's interesting. Jack Lennie was five foot two inches tall.

50:06And he came, talked to my class, and the next class, I said to people, what are your reactions? What are your thoughts?

50:24And a woman thought that was an assessment that was both true and insightful. When the five foot two jack validity appeared because of his presence, because of his body language, because of his Texas draw, because of his how he moved on the stage, he felt bigger. You would not say he did not feel So if I put... You read a couple more because this is a good example of stuff he did. Other ways to appear more powerful is more speaking time, longer gazing time, more disinhibited laughs. Is that just you laughing and feeling like you're just... Well, the way that we do, you're talking humor. Humor.

51:10The famous author Salman Rushdie said, and I quote Salman Rushdie, it's a fabulous quote, if you can hear people throw laugh, you can tell them anything. That's a, yeah, stand up comedy is a great example that. So, again, I think here people might be hearing this and they're like, I don't want to be this person. I don't want to be talking all the time. I don't want to be pretending like, oh, been posture is the advice here just, you don't need to do all these things. Just know this is makes people more powerful. They'll necessarily judge people. Do some of these things maybe because it'll add to your power.

51:42How do you think about just people that are like turned off by this order thing? It's a wonderful question. So I say to my class on the very first day of class that we will go through four stages. We will go through the stage of denial. It doesn't work in my culture. It doesn't work in my organization. It doesn't work for me. It doesn't work in my religion, whatever. Then we'll go through anger. They get angry at me. How can you teach us this stuff? Then it goes to sadness. I actually believe this to crest. And if we're successful, they will go through acceptance. And the process I have, I'm getting, you know, I am not, I do not have the most popular class in Stanford Business School because I am good looking because I'm the smartest person at Stanford or anything else.

52:26I am strategic about thinking about if I have someone who's going to come into this class, I have to get them from denial to acceptance in 10 weeks. and how are we going to do that? And was the easiest way to do that? If I said Lenny, I want you to become a better tennis player, or a better rollerblader, or a better ice skater, whatever, a better panel player in 10 weeks, what would we do? We have practice and coaching, and that's what I do in the class. Practice and coaching. I have executive coaches who work with the class, And I give them assignments that ask them to practice what they're learning.

53:10And therefore, by the end of the class, most people have made this transition because it is true. You know, if you've never, I had dinner the other night, this is really a woman who's like, I've done amazing stuff. Amazing, just fabulous. And she said, at the dinner, she said, I would have never done this before taking your class. And the way you get them to do this is I don't say, Lenny, you're going to swim the English Channel tomorrow. If I want you to swim the English Channel, we're going to start by swimming in pools and make every day a little bit more challenging. That's what we do. I don't start by saying you're going to network like Keith Farrati or John Levy or you're not going to be as bold as Jason Calacana who trusts me as extraordinarily bold, you're not going to necessarily do what I did.

54:03You're going to begin where you can begin and push yourself out of your comfort zone. Because, and again, this is common sense. It's awful. It's not a research behind it. If you will always stay in your comfort zone, you will never do anything different or better than what you're currently doing. This is true. If I said to you, I want you to at the end of 10 weeks, lift 100 pounds. I can't do that by the last day saying, lift 100 pounds. We have to work up to it. And that is the same principle here. So don't do something that looks so off the wall or so out of character for you that you can't conceive doing it.

54:45Push yourself a little. Push yourself a little. There's an interesting connection here too. What some say is kind of the opposite of your class at Stanford, which is touchy feely We had Carol Robin on the podcast and she has a framework the 15 % Rule where you push yourself 15 % beyond your comfort zone We're just a little bit. It's not too far and it feels like you try to do a similar thing. Yeah, absolutely So you you you begin by doing what you don't think you can do Let's spend a little more time here around the homework assignments and this kind of knowing doing gap that you talk about So you share a couple homework assignments.

55:18You give already, find 10 people. Think of 10 people you want to meet that will help you their career and then try to meet them. And then there's this like, I guess my friend's sort of podcast that I know would try to get them with. What are the homework assignments do you give? So we begin, there's a literature on goal setting. If you said goals are more likely to achieve them, this is again not, you know, not some huge insight, but there's an enormous scientific literature about this. And so I begin the very first hallwork assignment, which is by the way, in the very first day of class, why are you here?

55:50Why are you here? It is now the end of this class. What would success look like to you? What would you like to accomplish in our 10 weeks together?

56:02Second assignment. I give them a reading from the Power Book, which is the book before Seven Rules, which talks about the seven attributes of power. go out and get people to rate you on these or rate yourself. Yes, that for yourself, a development plan, energy, focus, being willing to tolerate conflict, all these qualities. What are you strong on? What do you week on? What do you want to build during our time together? And how are you going to do it? So we begin with goal setting.

56:41One of these diamonds I give them, which is the class that Jason comes through. What resources can you create? You're at Stanford Business School. Elite, fancy, Stanford. What can you do in your 10 weeks here? I have people who create an award. A woman who created an award. gave it to a colleague class, the model, got in trouble with the school. It turns out it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. So, you know, what can you do to create resources that will give you some leverage? That would be a third assignment. The networking is a fourth assignment. The acting with power, I showed them the videos and I in advance of the class, and I tell them they need to become Tony Hayward.

57:33They need to do a better job, which is by the way a little part, representing BP. And then you know, give me a 60 to 90 second video, and then share it with colleagues and get feedback on it. And then we're going to call on people in the class. In other words, for every idea, I try to think of something, and this is all by the way, this is all front -loading, And by the end of the class, we're not doing this so much. But I try to give them an exercise that causes them to actually take that idea and implement. Find people, oh, for brand, right, a personal brand statement. Get some feedback on it.

58:17Then write it again. How do you want to be known? Which is, by the way, useful to you, because you're a second in your MBA. You're going to go into the damn job market. What do you want people to think about? How do they want people to respond? How do you want to be known? So I basically take for every topic and have them do it. And then the coach, their person, their coach, who is responsible for 23 of these people, give them feedback on this. I could see how this makes a big impact on someone's life. Yeah. And so at the end, I had the student a couple years ago said to me, it is not that I got more feedback.

58:56And more useful feedback from your class that I did in any other class. I got more useful feedback in your class that I did on every other class I took. Come back. I can see why I'm. Let's talk about the last power. So we've talked it through 6 already. We have only one more to go, which is maybe the one that probably upsets people most, which is that once you have power, people will forget what you did to get there. Talk about what that looks like. Is that a power or is it more just like, this is what you should know about? So, and I put in rule seven for the following reason. In spite of everything you and I have been talking about, many people in a stage of, I don't know denial or something, say, I'm worried that if I do this, at the end, people believe that the world is homeostatic it is not, you know, that it's going to adjust, but whatever.

59:55You know, at the end, you know, at the end, I will be brought low. They have the myth of Echorus in their head, you know, you fly too close to the sun, your wings are going to melt. You're going to be brought down. And so I try to convince them partly through a lecture and partly through Rule 7 and some of the principles that I talk about rule seven. That in fact, life is not only ecstatic at all. That life is actually self -fulfill. If I believe you're powerful, you will become more powerful. If I believe you have no power, you will end up with almost no power. And that therefore, it is all forgotten and forgiven.

1:00:34And I'd begin, I believe I begin, but if the story of the South Carolina Senator who says nasty things about Trump and that Lindsey Graham and becomes Trump's biggest acolyte. And the New York Times of course is fascinating about this. How can you call, how can you say all these horrible things about Trump and now be his you know basically have your lips attached to some part of his anatomy? And Lindsey's answer is I want to be relevant. He's the president of the United States. If I may not, you know, this goes back to the judgment. I mean, I like all my mad just that the other thing. He's the president.

1:01:17If I want to get legislation passed, he by the way has taken over the Republican Party. If I want to get stuff done, I need to have him on my side. And like many narcissists and he go many acts, it is not a good way to get him on your side by saying nasty things about them. So this is this is the pragmatics, you know, people forget. The Bill Gates stole the code of which Microsoft has built. People forget that Jeffrey Epstein, after being convicted of sex offenses was still having dinners with members of the royal family and members of the New Ark Media elite. People forget that Martha Stewart, who served time in jail, has a brand that's never been more valuable.

1:02:13People forget all this stuff. You know, I still remember sitting in the office of someone whose name I won't use, but I'll use them instead of somebody wanting to search it out, you could. So I am sitting in this guy's office, and he's got, he's by the way a Jewish man, he's got pictures of him with the Pope. He's got pictures of him with Ronald Reagan. He's got pictures of him with all these people.

1:02:45What is the secret? He by the way took a company at the bankruptcy. People lost literally billions of dollars. He was five. He lost money. But he walked away with about $700 million. So it turns out $700 million makes you a big deal. There's the biggest house in Los Angeles. So one of the biggest houses in Los Angeles. I can't keep up with the construction of the big houses. People want to be close to money power and success. And they will overlook your flaws to be close to you. Yeah. And again, you talk about this in the book. This doesn't, you're not describing how the world should work. It's, this is just how it is.

1:03:25And this is how you can be successful in the world that we live in. And by the way, this is how the world not only is, but how it was and how it will be. Because these ideas are not something that I sat down one day and made up or something. These ideas, everything that I talk about, including this last one, has social science and logic behind it. So you can explain not only what is, but why is? So let's talk about Trump for a bit. At the beginning of your book, you say that basically you're going to write a book about why Trump is so successful and what he's done so well. And your realization is no one's going to pay attention if like, here's how to be like Trump.

1:04:11And essentially if you think about all these rules, it's clear he is very good at all of these things. That's correct. By the way, now because he read the book, because he doesn't, you know, if you trial and error or something. So when people hear that, they're like, I don't want to be Trump. I don't like how Trump is. I don't want to be seen that way. Do you have any thoughts on just how to make people feel comfortable following some of these powers and building power, knowing that, oh, wow, maybe he's the epitome of some of this stuff? I will tell you a story. In 1993, a woman named Laura Serman, who's a doctor, took my class.

1:04:49She claims publicly that this is the only class at Stanford for which she did all the reading. By the way, while she was getting her MBA at Stanford, she was having her first child and practicing medicine full -time. I, Laura Esterman said to me one day, you have a case. You have cases on all these people doing evil things. Why don't you ever write a case about somebody doing good things? And of course, I wrote a case about her. So she comes to the class. Case was published in probably 2003 -2004. She comes to the class and the students are what is the right word? Hard on her that would be a modest thing.

1:05:42The students eviscerate her because she is incredibly smart, incredibly well -intentioned, but she will not know work. She says I don't have time for She will not do almost any of the stuff that we talk about today. So, she and her husband, Michael Indicat, do my closest friends in the world. And I go out to lunch afterwards. And smoke is coming out of her ears. And she is pissed off. And this is a very accomplished woman and a very smart woman.

1:06:21And she's pissed. I said to a lot, you have boundless energy and boundless intelligence. You're a force of nature. Let me discuss something from the past, something from physics. You are creating friction. With enough force, you can overcome the friction. If you reduce friction just think how much more you could accomplish. And she looked at me and changed. And I will tell you, and I've said this publicly, because I get to introduce her for all the awards she's won and she's now won a ton of them, including Time Magazine 2016 list of 100 most influential people in the world. And I say to people, and I say it with pride, that of all all the things I've done in my life.

1:07:15The thing I'm most proud of, the most proudest of, is creating more harassment. That is an awesome story. And a really good way of thinking about this from a different angle. Yeah, no, I mean, and she, you know, I said the basic, I said the law. I said, you wanna make profound changes in the drug development process. You wanna make profound changes in whether or not we learn from the treatments that are being given to people. You want to make profound changes in the connection between research and teaching, you know, research and practice. You want to do all these things. If you're going to accomplish any of these things, you need to cross the bridge.

1:07:57And she hasn't crossed the bridge completely and she and I joke about it. But she crossed the bridge a lot. And she has accomplished incredible things. She's won every cancer award that can be given and by the way, she's won all these awards for the American Cancer Society Who she fought with? She's won these awards for the Susan Cohen Foundation who she fought with This is an incredible example of the opening quotes your book that I have here if you want power to be used for good more good people Need to have power. That's exactly right And I like that. It's like a quote a tribute attributed to me is how you yeah I don't remember saying it, but somebody said, I said, it's all they credit for it.

1:08:39I said, the law, you want to change the medicine? Medicine is not going to change without the application of power and influence. If change was going to happen, what would happen already? I mean, you have to take on entrenched interests. She has a whole thing which we need not go into because it's pretty technical on screening. You know, she said, everybody's getting a mammogram every year, a Beyond the Certain Age, which is stupid for a variety of reasons. You can read, she was on the PBS news hour about this. You know, this is what got her in trouble with the radiologists. The radiologists of course, sell her selling screening.

1:09:13She said there's some people that need to be screened every month and there's some people that need to be screened never because of their genetics. And so you know, she wants custom tailored screening or precision screening. Anyway, you can, she's, she's fine to everybody. Richard Blum, Diane Feinstein's husband, both Diane and Richard Blum and Al deceased, was at a thing where she launched the Athena project. The Athena project, she is now with her collaborators collecting data on the diagnosis and treatment and outcome for 150 ,000 patients in the University of California the healthcare system.

1:09:53So I'm supposed to give some opening talk to be providing entertainment and Dick Gormas there. Dick Gorma, of course, is wealthy. He's diet fine, fine, husband. I said to him, Dick, how did Laura get you here? And I still remember, I think this is a quote in one of the books I wrote. He said to me, he said, look, he said, I've learned that at the end of the day, when Laura asked you to do something, you may say no, but at the end of the day, you're going to do it anyway. Say it yourself, the aggregation. Oh man, I feel like you're just an endlessly full of good stories that we could just keep going on and on.

1:10:26Let me try to summarize the rules of power real quick and see if anything else emerges and then I have just a couple more questions. So the seven rules of power, get out of your own way, break the rules, show up in a powerful fashion, create a powerful brand network, or letlessly use your power and understand that once you've acquired power that what you did to get there will be forgiven, forgotten, or but. Let me ask you a question, maybe half -injust. You teach people how to acquire power. Why aren't you the most powerful man in the world? Ah, that's a very good question to which I have a very good answer.

1:11:03I have a colleague who's unfortunately now deceased by the name of James G. March, who was a very, very distinguished scholar. And James March said to me many, many years ago, something which is completely true. You can have power or you can have autonomy, but you can't have both. And I have chosen to live a life of freedom, a ton of. I mean, I could tell you stories. There were bring tears to your eyes. I'll tell you what. We had a dean of the business school whose wife was dying of cancer and she was projected to die in the fall. So the business goal goes to Heaven says, we'll give you the falloff to be with your wife.

1:11:41She lives until June. It's now winter. You have responsibilities at the Dean of the Business School. You have to be with alumni. You have to go around and raise money. You have to show up at events, university events. I do not necessarily think that is how he wanted to spend the winter and spring quarters, but that's what you have to do. When I wanted Jack Filini to come to my class, I did not call Jack Filini. I called Judy Dickie. Judy Dickie was his assistant. Judy Dickie controlled his schedule. I need Jack on such and such a day. He can't make it on that day. Fine, I can adjust the schedule.

1:12:24Can he make it on this day? When I wondered my friend Gary Lubin, who ran Harris and Seasiers, and then was the number two executive at Atman. I wouldn't become to my class. I Called Reggie Kirk. I didn't call Gary moment and that's all you need to know I do not have an assistant who controls my schedule. I Control my schedule You will not find my ala calendar on any website or on any computer I want autonomy If I set you learning I will give you one billion dollars or for that matter ten billion dollars If you can buy, if you can have last week again, you can't. You can't. Time goes in only one direction.

1:13:16I want control of my time. It is much more important to me being a dean or an associate dean, a job that I was asked to do. I took one academic administrative job. I'm actually memorialized, believe it or not, in the Stanford record is having learned, and this is according to my expenses. And they'll go private, but who is dean at the time that I let the biggest and most successful transformation in the history of higher education? I did it. I did it once. I didn't like it. Life is too short. I wanna do what I like. That's a really profound point that I think people don't think about is there's always this drive to acquire power.

1:13:57And your point is that there's a big downside, which is a lock of autonomy. Yeah, you think about the, like I was trying to get Satya Nadella on the podcast and I talked to his comps people and they're like, every hour for the next three months is booked already. We know what he's doing. He's extremely booked. And you know, you think about the president, obviously, at Elon, I totally get what you're saying. It's true with that. I don't know. I don't want to do that. And by the way, power also comes with enormous visibility. Donald Trump has done for 40 years what he's now being accused of doing.

1:14:30You know, the tax stuff, all this stuff. He's been a grifter all his life. But when you become president, people are going to look at things that in the past they would not have looked at. You become president of a university. You're going to have scrutiny. It's the president of Harvard, or the president of Stanford, when they both had to resign. In one case, got the plagiarism in another case because of research with Honda. Nobody power comes. You're going to be put under a microscope. People are going to look at a car you drive. They're going to look at who you go out with. They're going to look at how you spend your time.

1:15:06They're going to look at how you associate with. They're going to, you will have no privacy. You'll have no very little control over your life. Everybody will feel completely free to dissect you in public, in private, whatever. and you will face the trust dilemma. When you are rich and powerful, the question will be, are people praising you, are people associating with you because of you? Or because of the position you hold? Yeah. Do you spend any time just to follow this thread in your class convincing people, stopping so obsessed with power, stopping so obsessed with becoming the top of everything.

1:15:50Is that a part of the class? Or is it just... No. I teach them, you know, they see we have a class on the price of power. I bring out Rudy Cruz. Rudy Cruz was in New York schools, Chancellor, on the Rudy Giuliani. By the way, he tells many interesting stories about Rudy Giuliani. Did not just become at the joke that he is over night. He's he's worked hard to become that. But I don't know. He tells me he tell you. You know, he will and one One year, one year because his daughter at that time was living in the Bay Area. He, when I asked him about, you know, the effect of the positions he held, had a Miami -Dade County schools, had a New York City schools, and Hillary ever won, he would have been Secretary of Education.

1:16:32Literally. There's one in the room. He said to the class, Jeffrey asked me the question, why don't we allow Lauren Hansen At the time she was finished, there was not a dry eye in the room. What is it like to be the child? What is it like to be the significant other of these people? And you know the answer to that because you can see the suicides, the divorce rates. There was a price that not only you pay, but a price that your family pays. I think that's a really good balance to the entire conversation. Maybe just as a last question, what if we give the audience a homework assignment to work on these power roles?

1:17:20What's something that you'd recommend someone try to do? I know it's probably dependent on what they're good at and not good at. What's something that they could do to start moving towards one of these roles? So what I would say, and it comes from something that you talked about in our conversation at several times, which is, this is uncomfortable. Okay, so if I want you to do something uncomfortable, I can say, Lenny, go do this uncomfortable thing on your own, or I can say, Lenny, I want you to do this with help, with social support. And so the first thing I would say to someone is, if you think this is uncomfortable, or if you think you're not skilled at this, get coaching, get a coach.

1:18:03I send out regularly the list of the coaches who work with my online and on -campus classes, happy to do it. And they're happy to have the business. Get a coach. Get a personal board of directors, like they talk about in the Wall Street Journal. In other words, get people who will give you advice, give you social support, and hold you accountable. That's the very first thing I would tell people that though. And it's hard to do anything on your own. If I said to you, Lenny, I want you to start an extraordinarily successful podcast. I want you to do it without any help. You would not be where you are today.

1:18:44So that's simple principle. Yet, help. It feels like a part of rule number one, get out of your own way. Ask for help. Jeffrey, I was nervous for this podcast because I thought this was going to be super uncomfortable stuff. It turns out all of this makes so much sense. And there's a really nice way of framing all of these roles. And there's so much reason to actually invest in these skills. So I really appreciate you putting in the time being here, sharing all these stories and insights. Is there anything else you want to share as a kind of a final note or something to leave listeners with before we wrap up?

1:19:17We did it. We covered everything. I'm happy. I'm happy you're a very good interviewer, which is why your podcast is so successful. And I'm happy to spend the time with you. And I hope whoever listens to this, I hope first of all, there'll be a lot of listeners. but I also hope that they will find the use. I know they will. Two final questions. Working folks find you online if they will find your book, I guess, if they want to learn more, and then how can listeners be useful to you? So you can find my book anywhere where books are sold, and don't look at a physical bookstore because nobody carries it, including a stay -affirc bookstore, where they run out of it with people kind of.

1:19:51You can find it on Amazon, seven rules of power, so you can find the book. By the way, if the end of the book I talk about I have a personal website Jeffreyfeffer .com if you go to that website you can find my course outline You can take the course on your own if you want or get somebody or take it into a group of people You can find research you can find articles you can find columns you can follow me on LinkedIn or I don't do Twitter anymore But you can follow me on LinkedIn So so there are a lot of resources available for this The company was once thinking of hiring me to give a talk in their organization.

1:20:34The woman who wound up hiring me said to what I was discussing, a you and a arguing that we should hire you for this presentation. One of the people in the committee said, is he a good presenter? Her answer, I love this time, I remember this. Her answer was, he's a fabulous educator. My job is to educate. That is why I have done what I have done for now more than 50 years. Holy moly. I didn't realize that. For more than 50 years, I have been in the business of education. Not just about power, but about many other things as well. But, you know, I'm in the education business. So I am happy to provide people with the resources, with the readings, The 7 rules of power is well foot noted.

1:21:25It tops at the end about, you know, we could reach out for the coaches. You can go to the website and get the book, you know, I think, but I think consistent with what you and I have talked about. If all you do is read, you're not going to make very much progress. You have to do it. You cannot learn tennis by reading about tennis, or by watching a movie about Serena or Venus Williams. You have to actually get out on the court and do it. Which is a good plug for your other book, The Knowing Doing Gap, which actually helps you with the skill. Which you can also find all your finer retails, retailers.

1:22:00Jeffrey Faffer, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me on your show. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or a leaving review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'sPodcast .com. See you in the next episode!