Book summary “Power”: summary

Introduction

You likely watch less capable colleagues rise through organizations while you remain stuck despite working harder. You struggle because you believe merit alone determines success, leaving you vulnerable to workplace politics.

Jeffrey Pfeffer argues that power requires abandoning the naive belief in a just world and adopting pragmatic strategies to gain influence. To succeed, you must stop self-sabotaging, break conventional rules, project strength, and build robust networks.

This text answers several core questions about organizational influence:

• Why do talented professionals fail while mediocre peers achieve leadership roles?
• How do you overcome the moral aversion to playing organizational politics?
• What specific behaviors project authority and command attention?
• How do you build and leverage a network that accelerates your career?
• Why does successful power acquisition excuse past misdeeds?

1. Get Out of Your Own Way

The single biggest barrier to having power is oneself, and the first rule of power is to stop self-sabotaging through excessive modesty and disempowering self-descriptions.

You internalize demographic disadvantages or self-deprecating narratives. These beliefs negatively project onto others and limit your career prospects. Self-perception theory posits that you infer your attitudes and internal states from your own overt behavior. Acting confidently and describing yourself powerfully actively builds an internal sense of power.

Christine, a management consultant and marketing analyst with a prestigious MBA and a $4 million project impact, initially focused on her status as the only young woman of Asian origin among male peers. Her professor helped her reframe her self-descriptors around her high status and elite credentials.

Imposter syndrome creates a vicious cycle of self-doubt and reduced productivity. You can overcome it by pushing past discomfort and focusing on the equal or lesser qualifications of those already in high-level positions. Imposter syndrome leads you to doubt your abilities and fear exposure as a fraud. This causes procrastination and reluctance to pitch ideas or self-promote. Because people respond more positively to confidence than doubt, mastering this syndrome and self-advocating is critical. Failing to make positive assertions about yourself is interpreted as a negative signal.

Refusing to engage in political tactics, networking, or self-promotion out of moral aversion puts you at a competitive disadvantage against rivals who are willing to do whatever it takes to win. Many people opt out of the quest for power because they view political machinations as dirty or evil. However, political skill correlates strongly with career success and happiness. Refusing to use standard competitive tactics, such as gamesmanship or self-promotion, surrenders influence to those who embrace them. Professional soccer players and stars like Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Suárez exaggerate contact to draw fouls and win free kicks, illustrating how gamesmanship increases the odds of winning.

Individuals from lower social-class origins are often less willing to use political power-seeking strategies due to a more collective orientation. This reluctance disappears when quests for power are framed around helping others. Peter Belmi and Kristin Laurin tested Stanford MBAs during their first week and found that childhood social class did not predict interest in electives except for Paths to Power, where lower-class students initially showed less inclination until framing was adjusted. Across 7 studies, researchers showed that lower-class individuals become comfortable pursuing power when the goal is framed in a prosocial fashion.

Groups facing systemic barriers such as women, minorities, and Asian professionals must actively transcend cultural or gender-role expectations that discourage self-advocacy and executive presence. Studies by organizations like the Ascend Foundation and researchers like Sylvia Ann Hewlett reveal that demographic groups constrained by model minority stereotypes or collaborative gender expectations face significant glass ceilings. To succeed, you must adopt agentic behaviors, reject restrictive role limitations, and project power through voice and body language. Buck Gee and Wes Hom quantified Silicon Valley data showing that race was 3.7 times as significant as gender in affecting a glass ceiling. White men are 42 percent more likely than white women, 149 percent more likely than Asian men, and 260 percent more likely than Asian women to be an executive.

The popular concept of authentic leadership is scientifically bogus and harmful. Adhering strictly to your unvarnished true self traps you in rigid behaviors and damages your professional influence. Research demonstrates that while disclosing personal vulnerabilities can foster intimacy in personal relationships, high-status leaders who self-disclose weaknesses suffer a loss of influence, increased perceived conflict, and decreased liking. Learning new professional skills inherently feels unnatural and calculating rather than spontaneous, but adapting is essential for growth. Author A. J. Jacobs spent a few weeks trying to be totally authentic by telling his in-laws their conversations were boring and his nanny he wanted a date, proving that complete deceit and tact make social and organizational life work.

Because people are terrible at detecting deceit and are driven by motivated cognition to believe what they desire, inauthentic behaviors like flattery or strategic alignment are rarely uncovered or punished. Lie-truth discrimination averages 55 percent, which is barely above chance. Motivated cognition leads people to assume interaction partners are honest and supportive. Instead of focusing on self-referential authenticity, you should study the needs, hopes, and fears of potential allies to secure support. Lyndon Johnson mastered the detailed personalities, wants, and needs of every colleague in the United States Senate and adjusted his persona to build relationships and persuade them to act.

Prioritizing likability and agreeableness over competence and results impedes your career advancement. People tend to perceive warmth and competence as negatively related. Psychological research shows that individuals who prioritize social harmony and agreeableness sacrifice career momentum and negotiation outcomes. Moreover, negative reviewers are frequently perceived as more competent and expert than positive reviewers, proving that power requires prioritizing organizational results and competence over being liked. Gary Loveman, former CEO of Caesars Entertainment, had to lay off thousands of workers during the 2008-2009 recession to protect the company's financial viability, accepting that those affected would not like him.

Evaluate your self-presentation using these practices:

• Write down the adjectives you use to describe yourself, both to yourself and to others, and check with friends to see if the list is correct.
• Ask yourself what descriptors you need to get rid of in order to project yourself in a more powerful way.
• Record yourself as you interact in professional settings across a day or week to analyze how many times you apologize for intruding, interrupting, or offering ideas.
• Examine whether your career narrative highlights your accomplishments and credentials or attempts to downplay your achievements to appear modest.

2. Break the Rules

Conventional rules and norms are designed by those in power primarily to perpetuate their own dominance, meaning underdogs must use unconventional strategies to win.

Analysis of asymmetric warfare shows that sticking strictly to conventional rules heavily favors the incumbent. Weaker forces won only 28.5 percent of wars between 1800 and 2003 when using conventional tactics. When underdogs used unconventional strategies, their winning percentage increased to 63.6 percent.

Violating rules and social norms creates a heuristic association in the minds of others that the rule breaker is powerful.

A series of studies by Gerben van Kleef and colleagues showed that actors who stole coffee, bent financial reporting rules, or put their feet on furniture were rated as significantly more powerful than control subjects. Taking coffee in an empty waiting room produced a 21 percent increase in perceived power. Putting feet on a chair and smoking in an open-air cafeteria generated a 29 percent higher perceived power rating.

Surprise causes humans to physically freeze for 1/25th of a second, disrupting normal cognitive processing and focusing intense attention on the rule breaker. Jason Calacanis used a tae kwon do class at Fordham to drop in unannounced on the head of admissions, securing a letter of recommendation. He later walked straight into the dean's office to successfully negotiate a higher-paying computer lab job.

It is frequently more effective to complete an action without permission and deal with the consequences afterward than to ask beforehand. Robert Moses systematically built parks like Hecksher State Park before obtaining all necessary permits and funding, knowing officials would not tear down completed public spaces.

You face a constant double-bind dilemma between the desire to conform for safety and the necessity of standing out to achieve power. Jerry Salancik demonstrated the severe discomfort students felt when he sat among them as an instructor on the first day of class. Reginald Lewis bypassed the 148-year history of Harvard by confronting administrators directly to gain admission to a summer legal program before submitting a standard application.

You also frequently overestimate the social friction of asking others for help. Keith Ferrazzi secured annual dinner access to the top leadership of Deloitte Consulting by making it a direct condition of his employment acceptance.

• Get used to asking for what you want directly
• Accept being turned down without taking it personally
• Ask different things from different people repeatedly

3. Appear Powerful

To attain and maintain power, you must deliberately project strength from the start using nonverbal cues, expansive posture, forceful speech, and displays of anger or overconfidence rather than apology and vulnerability.

People make rapid, durable first impressions based on thin slices of behavior. Due to confirmation bias, initial impressions persist and shape how others treat you. If people perceive you as incompetent, they will limit opportunities for you to demonstrate otherwise.

When BP CEO Tony Hayward and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein testified before congressional committees, their contrasting demeanors shaped their trajectories. Hayward spent 9 hours before his committee, delivered a 900-word opening statement taking 6 minutes, and appeared apologetic, hunched, and restrained. He was replaced shortly after. Blankfein spent 3 hours before his committee, was confrontational, forceful, and comfortable, and served until 2018.

When pitching or testifying, recognize that your most important audience may not be the people directly in front of you. Your true audience is the constituents looking for signals of strength and reassurance. Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America for thirty-eight years, never brought written notes to Capitol Hill to ensure he appeared in command of the facts and could engage directly.

Nonverbal appearance and facial traits are reliable predictors of professional ratings, company performance, earnings, and career outcomes. Highly attractive individuals earn a 20 percent wage premium compared to average individuals. In a study of thirteen college teachers, short silent video clips rated by undergraduates correlated .82 with real student ratings for confidence, .79 for dominance, .76 for enthusiasm, and .84 for optimism. A study of Fortune 500 CEOs showed facial ratings of power were linked to company profits.

Displaying anger conveys competence, dominance, and higher status, whereas expressing sadness, remorse, or apologizing signals weakness and should be avoided in high-stakes situations.

Anger is associated with coercion and intimidation, and since powerful individuals are permitted to violate social norms, displays of anger create perceptions of high status. Larissa Tiedens found that employees who expressed anger more frequently earned more and received more promotions. Donald Trump's typical move when confronted with scandals was to go on the attack rather than apologize.

Apologizing or expressing remorse is only effective when the entity has zero agency or responsibility for the negative outcome. In September 1982, after cyanide-laced Tylenol killed seven people, Johnson & Johnson quickly recalled the product. Because the tampering occurred on store shelves and the initial death toll involved three people before reaching seven, the company had no agency in the tragedy, and their quick action restored their market share.

Projecting self-confidence, even when unwarranted by objective reality, increases social status because emotions are contagious and overconfidence signals competence. Cameron Anderson and colleagues tested geography knowledge in a study involving a two-minute simulated job interview speech, finding that overconfidence predicted higher partner ratings of competence and status over a seven-week period. While vulnerability can foster closeness among friends, higher-status individuals should avoid self-disclosing weaknesses in task-oriented settings.

Power, status, and dominance can be reliably signaled through specific universal nonverbal body language behaviors that transcend gender and culture. Dana Carney's 2020 review of nonverbal behaviors confirmed that PSDom cues do not systematically interact with gender or culture.

Powerful speech relies on simplicity, vivid words, declarations rather than questions, and message repetition to drive the illusory truth effect. An analysis of Donald Trump's interview on Jimmy Kimmel showed that 78 percent of his words were single syllables, pitched at a fourth-grade reading level, utilizing heavy repetition. Frank Abagnale successfully impersonated an airline pilot, teaching assistant, physician, and attorney because people are fundamentally trusting and commitment bias prevents them from admitting judgment errors.

• Do not use notes or props when speaking to avoid breaking eye contact with your audience.
• Avoid apologizing or expressing sadness and remorse when you need to project power and competence.
• Adopt an expansive, high-power pose prior to high-stakes presentations or job interviews.
• Maintain a calm and relaxed demeanor, speak frequently, use a confident tone, and offer direct answers.
• Keep insecurities and vulnerabilities to yourself when you hold a high-status or task-relevant leadership position.
• Use more gestures and a more open body posture.
• Decrease interpersonal distance by placing yourself closer to others.
• Employ controlled arm and hand gestures and a louder voice.
• Successfully interrupt others and secure more speaking time.
• Maintain longer gazing time and a higher visual dominance ratio.
• Emit more disinhibited laughs.
• Use simple, mostly one-syllable words and avoid complex subordinate clauses.
• Eliminate hedging words, hesitations, and polite forms.
• Make declarations instead of asking questions and end sentences strongly.
• Use pauses and variations in pacing for emphasis.
• Repeat key ideas and themes frequently.

4. Build a Powerful Brand

You must actively construct your personal brand by taking credit for your accomplishments, cultivating the media, leveraging prestigious affiliations, and telling your story before someone else does.

Building a powerful personal brand is essential for increasing visibility, securing better opportunities, and standing out in competitive fields. By creating multiple content channels and marketing efforts, professionals can stay top of mind for key decision-makers and expand their networks.

Laura Chau was promoted to partner at Canaan Partners by systematically building her personal brand through a podcast called WoVen, a newsletter called Taking Stock, blogging, hosting panels, and launching a Clubhouse show. Canaan Partners has raised 6 billion dollars over its history and invested in 30 companies that went public, and Chau's panels featured up to 20 people.

You can apply this personal branding framework through several steps:

• Think of a short, two- or three-sentence way of describing yourself and your accomplishments that integrates expertise, experience, and a personal story.
• Get feedback on your brand statement from professional colleagues and friends.
• Determine how you will disseminate that message out into the world.

Status and prestige rub off on others, making association with prominent people and organizations a powerful branding tool. Associating with high-status figures enhances an individual's own perceived reputation, performance, and attractiveness to others.

Baron de Rothschild stated he would not give a loan himself, but would walk arm-in-arm across the Stock Exchange floor with an acquaintance to ensure willing lenders appeared.

It is critical to craft your narrative and tell your side of the story before others can define it for you. Embarrassment or silence after a personal setback allows damaging false narratives to take hold, which are much harder to reverse later.

In 1997, Emory business professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld was accused of vandalizing the business school. Because he remained silent initially, his deanship offer at Georgia Tech was revoked before he fought back and won a multi-million dollar settlement, including 1.2 million dollars paid by Georgia Tech in 2009 for withdrawing its offer and an overall Emory settlement in 2000 for multiple millions of dollars.

To solidify a brand, you must continuously and widely disseminate your narrative through books, podcasts, events, and articles. Consistency and constancy over time turn ordinary outreach efforts into massive audiences and established credibility.

Jason Calacanis built an audience of over 400000 people by producing his podcast This Week in Start-ups twice a week consistently for years. Prior to the pandemic, his Launch event attracted 15000 attendees, and he turned 100000 dollars into 100000000 dollars as noted in his book.

Cultivating the media by providing immediate access and being a helpful source bypasses the social penalties of direct self-promotion. Because reporters operate under tight deadlines, providing them with ready access, data, and sources activates reciprocity and earns favorable coverage.

Nuria Chinchilla gained widespread media attention for her work on work-family conciliation by immediately taking journalists' calls, sharing research data, and inviting them to campus events following her 2001 meeting for women human resource managers.

Being appropriately controversial and taking bold, non-obvious positions generates attention and makes an individual newsworthy. Safe or neutral choices fail to capture eyeballs in a crowded media landscape, whereas well-calculated rankings or direct opinions spark debate.

Jason Calacanis launched the Silicon Alley 100 and intentionally ranked Esther Dyson as number one to make people talk and lobby for their placement on the list, drawing from his Cyber Surfer publication started in the 1980s and the Silicon Alley Reporter generating 12 million dollars a year.

Holding a position at a prestigious organization should be actively leveraged to build broader networks, board memberships, and personal exposure. High-status corporate platforms provide instant credibility that can unlock invitations to exclusive forums, speaking engagements, and media spotlights.

Sadiq Gillani was appointed senior vice president at Lufthansa at age 32 and leveraged his role to join the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leader community, co-teach at Stanford, and deliver a TED talk generating 135000 views. He later joined the supervisory board of Condor in 2022 and earned a 40 under 40 list designation by Capital magazine.

Never assume your work speaks for itself; you must actively tell the story of your accomplishments to ensure you and your team receive proper recognition. Busy colleagues and bosses will not notice your achievements unless you repeatedly communicate them, frame them around organizational needs, and align them with a hero's journey narrative.

Deborah Liu worked at Facebook for 11 years, where she spearheaded Facebook Credits and mobile app install ads in 2012, with the games business and credits representing 15 percent of total revenue. She only gained recognition and inspired others after she actively pitched Mark Zuckerberg, posted updates internally, and repeatedly told the narrative of her team's work.

You can reframe your outreach approach with specific mental shifts:

• Reframe self-promotion as helping your manager understand the impact you have.
• Reframe self-promotion as helping your team get the recognition it deserves.

5. Network Relentlessly and Use Power

Professional networking is the most robust predictor of career success, yet many people fail to spend enough time on it.

People avoid networking because they experience it as morally suspect, making them feel dirty since it is done for personal instrumental advancement. However, research demonstrates that networking ability correlates heavily with salary growth, promotions, and career satisfaction. Successful professionals spend 6.3 hours per week networking compared to 2 hours or less by others.

Omid Kordestani shifted his focus from technical tasks to building relationships at Netscape, which directly led to him becoming Google employee number 11 and a billionaire.

Casual acquaintances, or weak ties, are significantly more valuable for finding jobs and new information than strong ties with close friends and family. Strong ties share redundant information and identical social circles, whereas weak ties bridge different social worlds and provide novel perspectives, ideas, and opportunities. Mark Granovetter examined 282 people in his Boston job-finding study and showed that most jobs were secured through informal information supplied by casual weak ties.

Individuals whose networks bridge structural holes between disconnected groups accumulate massive social capital and career advancement. Ronald Burt found in an electronics firm study that compensation, positive performance evaluations, promotions, and good ideas accrued to people whose networks bridged structural holes. Occupying a central network position maximizes your visibility and provides direct access to critical information and career-boosting opportunities. Zia Yusuf became head of strategy at SAP and operated from a central communication hub, leading to massive organizational influence and a direct path to executive prominence.

Leaders must use their power vigorously and quickly upon entering a role because opposition accumulates over time and tenures are short.

Power is not a scarce resource depleted by use. Using power signals you have it, attracts allies, and prevents opponents from coalescing during the initial honeymoon period. Over the 2010s, CEO tenure averaged five years, and 17.5 percent of CEOs of the world's largest 2,500 companies left posts in a single year. Lyndon B. Johnson immediately outlined the Great Society on Air Force One after taking office, declaring his intent to pass major legislation right away.

Effective leaders replace underperforming staff with aligned allies who share their operational style to execute transformations successfully. Amir Dan Rubin replaced almost all senior leadership and department heads down to several levels within a couple of years of taking over Stanford Healthcare, producing a 300 percent increase in operating profit over four years.

Leaders can institutionalize and protect their power indefinitely by creating specific organizational structures that prevent removal. In 2017, 19 percent of companies going public on US exchanges used dual-class voting structures. As of 2018, 45.6 percent of companies featured one person holding both CEO and chair roles. Robert Moses held twelve public positions simultaneously, including parks commissioner and bridge authority chairman, rendering himself nearly impossible to remove.

6. Success Excuses Everything

Power and its associated prestige, wealth, and status excuse almost everything once achieved, making it unnecessary to excessively fear the path to power.

While people worry about the consequences of breaking rules to gain power, social processes and the desire of others to be close to powerful people ensure that misdeeds are largely forgotten or forgiven once success is attained. Sociologist Robert Merton observed the Matthew Effect, where initial comparative advantages lead to successive increments of advantage. Observers use motivated cognition to see and believe what they want, aligning their perception of a powerful person's morality with their success. Moral decoupling allows individuals to acknowledge a perpetrator's wrongdoing while selectively dissociating judgments of morality from judgments of performance.

Gary Winnick avoided criminal charges and SEC sanctions after Global Crossing went bankrupt and he sold 738 million dollars in stock, later remaining a major philanthropist surrounded by photos with dignitaries. In the process, Winnick voluntarily contributed 55 million dollars to a 324 million dollar settlement and 25 million dollars to a 79 million dollar pension settlement fund.

Powerful individuals use philanthropy and charitable donations as a penance mechanism to purchase social status, legitimacy, and respectability. Michael Milken donated more than 1 billion dollars to medical research and education, and Martha Stewart made a 5 million dollar donation to open a center for living at Mount Sinai Hospital. Those in power also use their financial and social capital to write and rewrite history, whitewashing past misdeeds and establishing favorable official narratives.

The book outlines seven core rules for acquiring and maintaining power:

• Get out of your own way.
• Break the rules.
• Appear powerful.
• Build a powerful brand.
• Network relentlessly.
• Use your power.
• Success excuses almost everything you may have done to acquire power.

People typically experience four psychological stages when learning about power: denial, anger, sadness, and finally acceptance.

• Become less judgmental to reach the acceptance stage more quickly and easily.

Outsiders can convert perceived disadvantages into strengths by positioning themselves at the center of communication networks. Rukaiyah Adams faced a terrible job market as a Black woman in asset management, where women and people of color manage less than 1.3 percent of global financial assets. By 2012, Adams managed 6.5 billion dollars across six trading desks for a Portland financial services company. On May 10, 2019, Adams received the Tapestry Award from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and she later oversaw 100 billion dollars in public pensions and other assets in Oregon before managing 750 million dollars in assets as chief investment officer for the Meyer Memorial Trust.

The rules of power apply across demographics, and mastering them is particularly crucial for women and minorities facing systemic obstacles.

• Do not expect a just or fair world; make your own rules and play your own game.
• Position yourself centrally in communication networks.
• Reframe visibility as an 'only' to leverage difference to your advantage.
• Ensure reciprocity and be strategic about relationships when networking.
• Remember to advocate for yourself and your own interests alongside advocating for the collective.

10 Key Ideas

1. The single biggest barrier to having power is oneself, and the first rule of power is to stop self-sabotaging through excessive modesty and disempowering self-descriptions.
2. Conventional rules and norms are designed by those in power primarily to perpetuate their own dominance, meaning underdogs must use unconventional strategies to win.
3. To attain and maintain power, you must deliberately project strength from the start using nonverbal cues, expansive posture, forceful speech, and displays of anger or overconfidence rather than apology and vulnerability.
4. You must actively construct your personal brand by taking credit for your accomplishments, cultivating the media, leveraging prestigious affiliations, and telling your story before someone else does.
5. Professional networking is the most robust predictor of career success, yet many people fail to spend enough time on it.
6. Leaders must use their power vigorously and quickly upon entering a role because opposition accumulates over time and tenures are short.
7. Power and its associated prestige, wealth, and status excuse almost everything once achieved, making it unnecessary to excessively fear the path to power.
8. Sociologist Robert Merton observed the Matthew Effect, where initial comparative advantages lead to successive increments of advantage.
9. Refusing to engage in political tactics, networking, or self-promotion out of moral aversion puts you at a competitive disadvantage against rivals who are willing to do whatever it takes to win.
10. People typically experience four psychological stages when learning about power: denial, anger, sadness, and finally acceptance.