Note from Art: no ethics or morals were harmed in the making of this post.
Power and influence are not dirty words. Both are components of every organization’s environment and both must be carefully cultivated to succeed as a formal or informal leader.
Power and influence provide the motive power behind organizations and initiatives and the lubrication that keeps the parts and people from binding and grinding and self-destructing.
Nothing happens without the application of power and influence wielded by those that have carefully cultivated these qualities. And while the notion of someone actively pursuing power might seem reprehensible or dirty or immoral to some, I’m not sure why.
Frequently Overheard:
“I don’t want to play the games.”
“I’m sick and tired of politics”
And the always colorful and image evoking, “He must have pictures…”
We’ve all heard those statements and perhaps nodded in agreement. Yet the presence of humans in the working environment guarantees that there will be those that are more effective at connecting, engaging, motivating, and ultimately getting things done through others. And these aren’t necessarily the smartest people or the hardest workers, but they are more than likely the smartest workers.
Intelligence is More than I.Q.
Those that cultivate power and influence work hard on managing themselves. They are emotionally intelligent. These power-pursuers also are innately aware of the impact that they have on others, and they draw upon well-honed skills to manage external perceptions and to adapt to changing situations. They are socially intelligent.
Personal Branding & Building Respectful Relationships:
Those with power and influence have carefully thought through their own personal brand and value proposition, and work hard reinforcing this brand through their actions and behaviors. Their focus is on getting work done through others and asserting their agenda, and to do that, they must forge respectful relationships, build strong social networks and guiding coalitions and they must support others more often than they ask for support.
And my informal observation on those that successfully cultivate organizational power and influence is that they are masters at managing upwards. This is different than sucking up. It’s understanding your boss’s agenda and priorities and helping her succeed, and it’s leveraging those priorities to grow visibility, get involved with key projects and to curry support.
Backroom Dealers and Dirty Politicians Need Not Apply:
While the bad eggs in the corporate world grab the headlines and the cool orange prison garb that’s been so executive fashionable for the past decade, the gross majority of people in organizations do not resemble those characters.
I’ve worked in and around companies with hundreds to hundreds of thousands of employees and while there have been some blog post worthy lousy leaders, they are the exception not the rule.
From top executives to truly powerful individual contributors that serve as influencers on key strategic choices and projects to those leading from the middle, there are great collectors and noble users of powers almost everywhere.
The abusers and the abusive exist and their tactics are reprehensible. I don’t have an easy answer if you are victimized by one of those creatures, other than to indicate that if you improve your cultivation of power and influence, you will be better able to deal with or avoid the situation and person the next time.
6 Reasons Why Pursuing Power and Influence is a Good Career Move:
1. Productivity. Those with power and influence get more done. You can print this and put it on a bumper sticker!
2. It’s honest, hard work. The pursuit of power and influence in an organization involves figuring out how to stand out from the crowd. This is generally best accomplished by some combination of darned hard work, great ideas, building good social networks and helping your boss succeed. Nothing wrong with those pursuits!
3, It’s about supporting your brand authenticity. The act of pursuing power is in large part a personal branding activity. You have to decide what you stand for and you need to communicate and substantiate your value proposition through your actions. Professionals should take responsibility for their personal branding, and the pursuit of power and influence requires that you live up to your stated value proposition. People are generally not naïve and can smell a hollow value proposition and an inauthentic leader a few miles away.
4. You cultivate critical growth skills. Gaining power and influence requires great people skills…great social intelligence. Part of cultivating great people skills involves understanding how you are perceived by those around you, and this means that you must be alert and open to feedback and to making the effort to improve based on the feedback. This growing power and influence stuff is honest, hard work!
5. You create a multiplier effect. As you cultivate power, you have the ability to extend your good across the organization. It’s easy to talk about how you wish things would work. Those with power and influence are able to define how things truly work and extend their vision across teams and entire organizations.
6. You create demand for you. Your senior leaders want to see people with ambition, commitment and an interest in doing more. As long as your approach to growth doesn’t involve stepping on the heads and hands of those that you are scrambling over, we really like aggressive people that are willing to help in the good fight.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The pursuit of power and influence is noble. Given the choice between an individual self-confident enough to cultivate power and one not interested in “playing the game,” I know where I’m going every time. The real “game” is about winning by serving customers and stakeholders and legally beating the snot out of competitors.
What’s your strategy to grow your power?
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Coming Tuesday: the latest episode of the Management Excellence Book Series, featuring a podcast interview with Jocelyn Davis, co-author of Strategic Speed. Also, in case you missed it, check out the prior episode with Bob Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss.
Art,
great post. It’s actually a great complimentary piece to Steve Blank’s post this morning (http://bit.ly/93B2M0)
Thanks for the morning mental exercise.
Thanks, Andy! I am on my way to check out Steve’s post. Cheers, -Art
the paradox of power is the more you give away, the more you increase your own power. the worst thing you can do is to hoard power and treat it like a zero sum game. Bret
Bret, I love the theme “the more you give away…the more you get.” Without being as articulate, I learned and lived that in the corporate arena. Ironically and sadly, so many people never get that memo and “hoarding and increasing” become the goals…instead of leveraging and using the power. -Art
Thanks for the boost around “good power”. I’m tired of hearing of the abuse of power, but understand that this is what gets headlines. While the Bernie Madoffs and Kenneth Lays of the world spoil the good name of power and influence, millions of well intentioned leaders go about their day using it for good, often quietly, morally, and ethically, and without the headlines.
Mary Jo, Kevin and Chip, thanks all for reading and commenting! It’s a controversial issue that is most often associated with all of the negatives and abuses. Chip, I think the formula that you and Bret espouse is right on! Best, -Art
Right on, Art. More and more research is showing that developing emotional and social intelligence is where quality long-term “power and influence” derive — leading self and others with empathy and integrity — and creating collaborative and competitive advantage. Without it you’re left with short-term control, toxic power plays and scandal after scandal after scandal.
I agree with Brett. Power, freely given to others, is returned to you in equal measure. I have found that the quickest, most direct route to expanding my circle of influence (which is, to me, the mechanism through which I can exert power) is to be of maximum service to my co-workers, supervisors and friends. As soon as I start taking the focus off of what I can attain and put it on helping others achieve their goals, I am on the road to personal power. -Chip
Art,
I agree with you that power and influence are not dirty words, but I disagree that the pursuit of power and influence is noble. It is how one uses power and influence that is either noble or not.
One of my favorite leadership mentors, a former Fortune 500 CEO, put it best. He says it is about “doing what is right, not trying to be right”.
Unfortunately, those in power sometimes have to much of it and the line between doing right and being right gets blurred. A recent HBR blog post discussed how people in power tend to convince themselves that they deserve to play by different rules, and they do. Yes, there are several people in power who use it to do the right thing. But, the more leaders who use power to do something other than the right thing the more it becomes culturally acceptable to do so. One only need look at our recent financial crisis to see how doing something other than the “right thing” became culturally acceptable behavior and brought the world economy to its knees.
My advice to those who seek power is always ask yourself are you doing what is right. Not just for yourself, but for your employees, your followers, those you influence, those you serve, and the mission of your organization.
My advice to those who follow is evaluate your leader(s) based on how their actions align with the “right objective” vs. “their objective”. And, run as fast as you can from anyone who’s actions advance their objectives more often then the right objectives.
CorDell Larkin
http://www.linkedin.com/in/cordelllarkin
http://twitter.com/cordellco
Cordel, thanks for sharing. Some wise perspectives. We’ll agree to disagree on the “noble” part. My issue was specifically one of those that choose not to “play the games” and opt out of the development of their own influence. Of course, I could never disagree with your “use” statement…it is the use ultimately that counts. Much appreciated! -Art
Thank you for such a bright and honest post. Often people cringe when they hear “power” coupled with authenticity. Yet you raise very valid points about the positive side of power. I keep thinking of the line that not everyone actually wants to be a leader – some want to follow. So why not use power in a constructive way to authentically lead?
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
Winston Churchill
Jessi, you are welcome and thanks for sharing. -Art
The key here is in the defining phrase “the noble use of power.” If the goal or purpose for seeking power and influence is lost, the pursuit of power is a negative characteristic. When people seek power for its own sake, it becomes a canker and a curse. They can only reassure themselves of their power and importance by exercising it. Like people who justify seeking great wealth so that they can “do good and give to the needy,” the rich tend to find there is never enough riches, and the powerful feel there is never enough power to shield themselves for others with the same power goals.
The word Power tends to imply force and control, while the word Influence is better suited to beneficial interests. If I need power to direct you, I have never connected with your mind and emotions, whereas if I can influence you, I don’t need a title or budget control to gain your full efforts. Words like Lead and Influence should be the goals of effective managers, not power or control.
Neil, great and thoughtful comments. My purpose was to bring the realities and the positives of power and influence out into the open. Like breathing, they are part of organizational life. I’ve got half a million words in this blog on lead. It’s time to bring “power” out of the closet IMO.
To everyone responding, I knew that this post would generate some thoughtful disagreement. The “P” word is a lightning rod. Keep the comments and thoughts coming…and whether we agree or not, I am thrilled to have you here. -Art
Spot-on post Art. Some believe it more “noble” to puruse their goals and aspirations without deliberate thought as to how. They misinterpret being authentic, with expecting others to accept their natural and unedited behaviors. As you state, ” power-pursuers” are innately aware of the impact that they have on others, and they draw upon well-honed skills to manage external perceptions”. Like it or not, there are certain “rules of engagement”. Those willing to learn them will have unlimited success potential, those that refuse to “play the game”, will likely see success limitations.
Sara, thank you for sharing your well-developed thoughts! -Art
Great post, Art. It reminds me of the same mis-perception we create around emotions, how having certain ones are “bad” while other ones are “good”. The reality, though, is as humans we’ll all experience a myriad of emotions some which we’ll openly display, like happiness and surprise and others we’ll understandably want to hide, like jealousy or even hate.
But just like power, emotions aren’t bad or good, they just are what makes us human. It’s what we choose to do with them that really defines whether it’s of benefit to us/others or not. As your piece shows, the very same thing can be said about power in that it’s not how much a person has, but what they choose to do with it that defines its worth to others.
Tanveer, thanks for putting a truly human perspective into the topic! -Art
Hi Art, Very insightful. It is amaing how something that can be shameful on one hand can be something to be proud of depending on how the same thing is framed. I see it as “don’t forget about yourself” while you’re working.
Great stuff by Art and very thoughtful comments by the posters here. We’re all in the influence business, whether we choose to admit it or not. I urge you to check out http://www.plays2run.com/table. Think of this as the first periodic table of Influence Strategy, a way to advance ideas, seed marketplace discussions, position products, de-position competitors, embrace allies, and move your programs forward. Judging by your interest in Influence as a business necessity, you may find it interesting.
Dan, thanks for reading and for sharing. I like your concept of “Periodic Table of Influence Strategy.” -Art
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