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)

Podcast: Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
Source: whisper-tiny
URL: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/145262506/a527ad4680c844a7f176893cbc24bbca.mp3
Fetched: 2026-03-05 00:18:13

We're gonna be talking about how to grow your power. The reason why you should pay attention to this is because it leads to a lot of good fit. So, getting promoted, being happy in your career, being less stressed. You're not describing how the world should work. It's, this is just how it is. Not only is, but how it was, and how it opened. 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 relentlessly, use your power, and understand that once you've acquired power, and what you did to get there, will be forgiven, forgotten, or, but. It's not about personnel, these are skills that can be masked. People might be hearing masks, and they're like, I don't want to be this person. Well, you already have done a fabulous job of illustrating principal one. That is one way to get, you know. If I think power is dirty, the first thing that's gonna happen is I'm not gonna do what I need to do to be successful in my career. 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. Today, my guest is Jeffrey Feffer, Jeffery is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and teaches one of the two most popular in oversubscribed courses in all of the NBA program, called The Paths to Power. The other class, by the way, is Touchy Feely, which we dove into last month. In his class, and in his recent book, The Seven Rules of Power, Jeffrey teaches the things that you can do in your life and in your work to build your power. And through that, you have things done and advance in your career. As one student described the class, it's the quad-liberal of the Graduate School of Business. You know, it's good for you, but you feel a little nervous about it. In our conversation, we dig into each of the seven powers. Why it's important to build these skills, even if you feel uncomfortable? We talk through a bunch of examples of the power and action, and the impact it has had on people's lives. Why it isn't as cringing or scary as you may think? I was actually nervous to have this conversation and ended up being a huge fan of Jeffrey in the work that he does. We end the conversation with what you can start doing today to start building your own power. This podcast is basically for anyone that wants to advance in their career, whether you're an IC or a CEO, and I'm really excited to bring it to you. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube it's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Jeffrey Feffer. Jeffrey, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Lenny, I am honored that you invited me on. I'm even more honored that you decided to come on. We're going to be talking about something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I think it's going to make me uncomfortable. We're going to be talking about how to grow your power in life and in business. Let me just start asking why does this stuff make people uncomfortable? And why is it still important for people to learn how to do this well? Well, it's important because a guy named Gerald Ferris developed a scale of kind of political skill and a bunch of he and a bunch of his colleagues over the years did a lot of empirical research to demonstrate that political skill is associated with a lot of positive outcomes. Salary, getting promoted, being happy in your career, being happy in your job, being less stressed. So the reason why you should pay attention to this is because it leads to a lot of good things. The reason why it makes people uncomfortable, you said it made you uncomfortable. Maybe I should ask you the question. Why does it make you uncomfortable? There's a lot of things here that are probably not how people want to live their life necessarily or want other people to act. Yeah. So I think it makes people uncomfortable because the realities of what it takes to get power they are almost no resemblance to what you're taught in Sunday school or the mosque or ever. How your parents raise you. They bear almost no resemblance to how we think the world ought to be. And then they bear a little resemblance to our aspirations. And I think we look around the world and we see people who have acquired enormous amounts of power. And I've used it for bad. You know, but I tell people, you know, I see people with hammers hitting other people on the head that does not mean that a hammer is not a useful tool. You can take a screwdriver and stab into somebody's belly. I have a very dear friend who will probably talk about later in the podcast, Laura Esserman is a breast cancer surgeon. And I tell people, Laura has a knife. She uses it to cure cancer. Muggers have knives that use it to rob people. So, so the eye, so I think we have confused the tool for how it has been used. You know, I'll tell this quote that the people who need to understand power and build their power skills are people come from backgrounds or characteristics who would normally put them at a disadvantage. I think that's exactly right. You know, I will go this Sunday to Nashville, Tennessee, to talk to a bunch of people of color and the NFL who are trying to rise up the ranks. And I, you know, this Stanford runs a program. Because the NFL is serious. I think about trying to make more opportunity for people underrepresented minorities. And, but these are folks who will not succeed unless they learn power skills. Because the world is stacked against them in lots of ways. This episode is brought to you by Wizard. I'm powering product leaders to ideate and iterate faster than ever before with the power of AI. As a product manager, I often spend hours taking screenshots and then annotating them with feedback for my team. With Wizard, I can simply upload my screenshot and Wizard's AI will turn them into a fully editable UI design that I can then take make tweaks to and then share with my team's in minutes. And when I want to get really creative and explore totally new ways to improve our product experience, Wizard's AI to generate new design concepts from simple text problems and turn them into interactive prototypes effortlessly. There's a reason that over 2.6 million people have trusted Wizard to accelerate every phase of their product life cycle and speed up time to market. Developers can even export UI components to react and CSS to speed up their development. Wizard's Dragon Drop Editor, a super easy to use, and you can collaborate in real time with your entire team, even your CEO and customer service teams can contribute. Unlock all of Wizard's game-changing AI-powered features and more with 25% off Wizard's Pro Annual Plan. Visit ui-z-a-r-d.io-slash-lany and use code-lany to check out today that's ui-z-a-r-d.io-slash-lany. This episode is brought to you by Webflow. We're all friends here, so let's be real for a second. We all know that your website shouldn't be a static asset. It should be a dynamic part of your strategy that drives conversions. That's business 101. But here's a number for you. 54% of leaders say web updates take too long. That's over half of you listening right now. That's where Webflow comes in. Their visual first platform allows you to build, launch and optimize web pages fast. That means you can sit ambitious business goals and your site can rise to the challenge. Learn how teams like Dropbox, Ideo, and Orange Theory. Trust Webflow to achieve their most ambitious goals today at Webflow.com. Another element of your course that you try to make clear in your syllabus is to teach people not to be as judgmental. You also have this whole huge bold phrase. This class is not for everyone. Can you just talk a bit about maybe whites now for everyone and then why that being less judgmental is important? I mean, the class is extremely popular along waiting list. It's kind of mythical. And because of the principle of social influence, we are influenced by one other people do. We're influenced in our choices of restaurants. We're influenced in our choices of music. I'm not sure I like Taylor Swift, but I certainly want to go see Taylor Swift because everybody else is just, you know, and many people sign up for the class. And one year in particular, there were some people who sat and about the third row up directly in front of me. And they looked every day like they were having some terrible thing put up some horrible orifice or something. They looked literally in pain. And so I decided, and of course they learned nothing. If you come to the class and you're in that much psychological discomfort, you're not going to learn anything. And so what I try to do is tell people that in order to benefit from this class, you have to be open to learning the material. And if you're not, and by the way, this would be true for any class. If you're going to physics, and you say, I don't like physics, I hate physics. I don't believe in physics, I don't believe in the theory of physics, whatever. You're not going to learn anything. And so I'm trying to get the class, given the huge waiting list, I'm trying to get the class to have people in who are in fact going to benefit from it, rather than sit there and look like they're in pain. And the judgmental thing, you know, if Matthew 7, Judge, not the E.B. not judged. The Quran says only Allah can judge people. The American poet, well-written, said, be curious, not judgmental. Mother Teresa said, if you judge people, you have no time to love them. Judgment, if I need to build a positive relationship with Lenny, because you are on my critical path in my job. And jobs necessarily entail a reasonable amount of interdependence. I get things done through and with other people. If I decide that Lenny is whatever set of bad adjectives you want to use, the dumb and competent, immoral, whatever. My ability to build a positive relationship with you. And you are, you are made on my critical path, becomes almost zero unless you're a better actor. I'm a better actor than I think most people are. So therefore, you should suspend judgment. In the sense that if somebody is on your critical path, the only judgment you should make is, they're on my critical path. If I want to get something done, I need their collaboration and cooperation. And the fact that I may not like them is in fact irrelevant. And as I have taught senior executives over the years, it is absolutely clear to me that one of the skills that they have mastered is they never skill that you cannot tell what they think of you. And that's important because I need your collaboration. I need your cooperation. And if I leak down, you know, in ways that say, I don't respect or I don't like you. I don't admire you. Whatever, my odds of getting you to work productively with me goes essentially to zero. So that's a judgmental story. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And I have a quote from your syllabus along these lines. Not everyone we encounter in paths to power someone you're going to want to emulate. This is a class about how to get things done, how to build and build influence, and their multiple ways to accomplish these objectives. Yeah. So I've had two friends actually go through the course. One asked about what about the course and the impact it had on her. She's actually a founder now. And she told me that your class was her single most favorite class at all of Stanford Business School because it was realistic and applicable to life as a founder. Because it didn't sugarcoat business. It didn't sugarcoat life. It's older. How the world really works and that is helping her succeed with her startup right now. I'm thank you. There's no higher praise than that. I mean, I mean, you know, I actually don't read. I shouldn't probably say this on the public. But I'll actually read my course evaluations. Because the impact I want to have. It's not to have people like me. But to have that kind of impact. To make people more successful. More effective in their lives. Yeah. That is a good segue to when your rules of power. So let's just talk about your seven rules of power. Actually, I have your book right here. And it folks want to learn more. Here it is. Seven rules of power. You've had this is your fourth book about power. And this is your best book about power. Because it basically summarizes everything you've learned in a really cohesive way. So let me first share the seven rules of power. And then I'm going to dive into a few of them. That sounds perfect. Okay. So the seven rules. One get out of your own way. Two. Break the rules. Three. A peer powerful. Four. Build a powerful brand. Network relentlessly. Use your power. And success excuses almost. Everything. Correct. Okay. Success excuses. Everything almost got it. Okay. So let me start with power four, which is around personal brand. And the reason I want to start here is I have a friend that's actually in your class right now. And I saw that he started a podcast. And he told me that it did it because it was part of the homework that you give students. You call it doing power. Is that the name of the homework assignments? I have. So when you have a bunch of assignments throughout the class, which are self-reflective assignments. But they're big saying for the class is they have to do power. They have to do something during the quarter to take the principles of the class, to what they're learning and put them in the practice. And that is because, you know, everything I do I have to do for a reason. That is because if you don't use what you learn, the learning will disappear. So if I, if you go to a French class and you learn French and you never speak French, and about relatively short period of time, you'll forget everything you learn. And I want the learning to stick with them. So I try to get them to do something with it. While we're in this tangent, because I wanted to talk about this whole, you have a book that is going to be doing, knowing that. The knowing doing gap. So let's just spend a little time there, because I think that's really important. What are some examples of things that have come out of people doing these homework assignments, things that may be led to something interesting? Let me take my most extreme example. My most extreme example is probably Derek Khan. Hey, and Derek Khan was a little bit older when he went through the MBA program. And in 2012, his doing power project was to get appointed, to be Mitt Romney's, Mitt Romney was running for president to be head of economic policy for the Romney campaign. Well, even though not he was offered the job, but even though not he turned it down for reasons which we could go into if you want but aren't that interesting. He wound up relatively soon thereafter as number three in the transportation department, working for a laying child. And I have a picture of him when he comes to the class, I introduce him. I tell students, I give them a trigger warning, and I introduce him. He wound up at the end of the Trump administration as the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. And since typical of the Trump administration by that time there was no director, he essentially ran the six trillion dollar US budget. This is six years out of business. I was thinking whether he got that during his class, amazing. Okay, so this is a success story of doing power. Let's talk about this first power of building brand. And I think this is where people start to feel comfortable. They're going to be like, oh, no, I don't want to be doing this. Why this doesn't feel good to me. So let's talk about it. Okay, let's see. So talk about this power of building a personal brand. There are, by definition, fewer positions at the top at the bottom. The world, we may not like this. And I know people, you know, the late Tony Shae, it's apples, tried to do, you know, wholeocracy or whatever. But the world is essentially hierarchical. The animal kingdom is hierarchical. It is better to be at the top than at the bottom. For a number of reasons. Okay. If that is true. If there are fewer positions at the top and get at the bottom. Then your job to advance your career is to figure out how to get promoted. There are many ways to get promoted. But I will guarantee you one thing. No one is going to promote Lenny if they don't know who the hell you are. So it is not sufficient for them to know who you are. They have to know that you're smart and personal and have whatever skill you've got. But they have to know you. If they don't know you, you cannot choose what is not in your head. You know that better than I. So, therefore, you have to do something to differentiate yourself. You have to build a brand. So when I think of Lenny in your podcast, I think of something. You know, not just, you know, 25 billion podcasts. You know, when I think of somebody in McKinsey, or Bay of BCG, one of the consulting firms, a gazillion people start off as front line consultants. What are you going to do? So that's somebody knows who you are. What are you going to do that creates value for the firm and for you? So my friend Keith Forazzi, when he started a delight consulting, did not do this breadsheet stuff. He was by the way not very good at and didn't like. He started the Lincoln Quality Award. He decided to try to take the Lloyd's brand recognition from about one or two percent to 30 percent. He was appointed, though he left before he actually took the job, to position a partner and the first chief marketing officer at the Lloyd. I have another friend, Tristan Walker, who wanted to get hired in forceware. You know, he, he, he sent emails to the founder, the final, the founder ignored him. So Tristan Walker did something, I think, very bold. Tristan Walker began signing up partnerships. So one day, the founder says, oh, we got, he signed up Starbucks. Maybe I don't hire this guy. So, so you have to do something that causes people to know who you are. And that is what building a brand is about. It sounds very benign, put that way. When people hear, I need to build a personal brand. It sounds like I need a post on LinkedIn. I need to post on Twitter, certain newsletters to our podcast, which I know is a kind of a part of it. But we're some examples you've seen of ways to build a personal brand that are effective. So I have a friend who I bring to the class, a lovely tall Asian woman named Laura Chow, who made partner at Adventure Capital firm after four years, which is fast. Laura, what works for Cain and Parker. C-A-N-A. Laura said, I do not work for Andrewson Horowitz. I do not work for Sequoia. I don't work for Greylock. I don't work for any of these very visible large, you know, VC firms. So if I am going to get deals in the consumer space, that's her domain of expertise, is consumer and consumer tech. Somebody is going to have to know who our challenge because again, you're not going to get to deal if nobody knows who you are. And so she basically did everything you talked about. She did write it. She started a podcast in which she invited influential people. She contributed to a book. She helped people out. She did networking dinners. She did everything she could so that people would recognize and know our child. And one of the things she did was she's tall. In general, Asian women are not tall. She decided to play up the fact that she was in the words of some people with tall, Asian women they never seen. She wears heels. In her heels, she's 61 inches tall. She also, which she comes to my class. Many people come to my classroom. But he's gotten those one. She has style. And it's a unique style. So she thinks about very strategically how am I going to dress? How am I going to look? How am I going to show up? How am I going to do what I need to do? So the people know who I am. Obviously, they're substance. If you have visibility without substance, people will know you're like useless. But if you have substance without visibility, no one will know the substance that you got. You also talk about how you can reframe this idea of being not being self-promotional. But it's amplifying the impact of the team that I work with. Or it's me scaling myself by sharing things I know and pointing people to it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Awesome. Okay. So let's move on to a different power. Let's talk about power one, which is getting out of your own way. Talk about what that means and how someone can work on that. Well, you already have done a fabulous job of illustrating principal one by talking about how this is the topic that makes people uncomfortable. And when something makes people uncomfortable, in general, they're going to shy away from us. So if I think power is dirty, if I think power is evil, if I think power is something I want nothing to do with. The first thing that's going to happen is I'm not going to do what I need to do to be successful in my career. So that is one way in which we get a general way. Another way in which we get in our own way. Many people suffer from what is called and the psychology literature imposter syndrome. They believe that they were the admissions which they could stand for. They were the hiring mistake and whatever company they're working for. It's somehow they got to this job, but they don't really deserve to be there because that's around them by people who are smarter and better. And therefore, they will do things that I can't even believe. It just goes on. So I will have students, not many, but a few. Now raise their head. I will call them. And the first things out of their mouth will be, I don't know if this comment is going to be useful. This is called preemptory apology. Don't, you know, have to come as that way useful. Don't say it. Bad number one. But number two, don't apologize. You know, pardon me for interrupting. Pardon me for, you know, taking up your time. Pardon, you know, stop all this apologizing. If you got the job, you're in. You will probably, are not only qualified. You're probably overqualified. So don't use descriptors of yourself. Get disempowering. Don't think of yourself is not deserving of the job that you hold because that attitude will leak out. And other people will say, you know, if Lenny doesn't think he deserves the job, then maybe I shouldn't think he deserves the job. So basically the first power is you're shooting yourself in the foot by wearing too much about whether people like you. This friend of mine who's now the founder that I read some quotes from. She said, her number one take away from your classes. If you want to be like, get a dog. That's correct. Yeah, that is the quote from my dear friend, Gary Loveman, who for many years ran Harris, which then became Caesar's, the casino company. You also talk about this. Yeah, there's this quote. I have a acknowledge that others are often no better than you. Yeah. Because that makes you feel better about this. So for people that actually want to be like, I like being liked. Like, I don't know if it's a flaw in my upbringing. Is there, is there the lesson you can't, there's your cap on your power if you worry about if you want to be liked? At the end of the day, you don't want to, but you don't want to be intentionally disliked. You don't want to violate my dear friend Bob Sutton's book for the OASO rule and gratuitously be an asshole. But you are high to do it to get a job done. You know, it's interesting. I unfortunately am now too old. In the words of my current practice, I'm suffering from too many birthdays. So I have a lot of doctors who are doing a great job. Trust me, when I choose a doctor, I'm unfortunately retired in neurosurgeon who did two surgeries on my spine. He's considered to be one of the top coining in the country. If you go on yelp, you read about his personality and his office furniture. You know, as I said to somebody, he's doing micro surgery on my spine. I can like that permanently paralyzed. I really don't care about his personality. I don't care about his office furniture. You, that's an extreme example, but it makes the point. When you are put in a role, you are put in a role because presumably, you are supposed to perform in that role. If you, if you would get appointed to be a head coach, if you, if we make you a quarterback on an NFL team, when we make you, you know, center on a national basketball association team, you know, you were, you did not get that job because people thought you had a two personality. You got that job because you have the skills to make your organization successful. And if you do not use those skills, because you're worried about what everybody else is thinking, you are not only harming yourself, but you're harming them, because you are not doing what you were hired to do. So, in simple way of thinking about this, which makes me feel better about, like as we talk through this time, becoming less uncomfortable with these, which is a good sign. It's don't actively try to be dislike. It's don't prioritize being like, prioritize competence and respect. Absolutely. And getting and doing the thing that needs to be done. Absolutely. Okay, great. Let's talk about rule number two, which is break the rules. So, basically, again, these powers are ways to grow power, and you're saying that if you break the rules, you get more power. Talk about why that's the case. That looks like the model from anyways. Number one, when you break the rules, you stand out. You become memorable. When you do something that's unexpected, and being memorable is of course important, as we've already discussed. That's number one. Number two, the rules were made mostly by the people who are favored by the rules in place. So, if we were talking about business strategy, we would talk about a word that is probably now overused. We 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 in companies. In South West 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, which you optimize on suit on, depending local place. 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. Use the title of a Gallup book. Number two, 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, Francis Flynn, Frank Flynn, wrote an article with Vanessa Lake entitled If you need help, just ask. And it turns out people over estimated how many people are going to have to ask to get help. And it turns out that it's asking for help makes people uncomfortable. But when you, and you know, I was married to, you know, and so if you read the acknowledgements about seven rules of power, for the more than 35 years, I was married to Kathleen Francis Fowler, who I could send you a picture. I mean, she looked literally like a super mom, and I didn't, I never have been any particularly better looking than I am now. So somebody said to me, Hi, you get her to go out with you. And the answer, of course is, 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, few people are going to do anything if you don't ask. And what is the worst thing going to 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, and they say no, you're not going to get it. Get over here, go ask. Is there another example that comes to mind if someone breaking the rules saying business that ended up being really successful? It's 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 Calacanas. I don't know if you know Jason. Oh, yeah, I know you did a case study on him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think Jason, I think consistently, brings all kinds of rules. First of all, when he comes to my class, nobody likes him. But that's a joke. I don't always know what he likes him. But you know, he's got to cover number one. Yeah, that's number one. But also, I think there's a conventional wisdom in the venture capital in the street, 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. He doesn't have actually any partners. So he can't be fired by his partners. He began his career in journalism. And which is interesting. You know, it's a wonderful job because you get to ask people all kinds of questions. And 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 in the street. 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 it's basically walk through how he went from nothing to a very powerful person. And by the way, a rich person as well. Let's talk about another power, power 5 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 has written a fabulous book, you're invited, which is a book about how to put on events or people want to come to. And as a fabulous human being, we'll tell you that the first principle of networking is in fact generosity. In generosity. What can I do for you? How can I be helpful? Who can I introduce you to? Either a company or a product or a person who can be helpful to you in your career? But in order to be able to introduce you to someone who's going 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 you say I need to know somebody in X, I will know that person. So the broader 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. It's funny to hear this where it's like, yes, this is like obviously this is right, but connecting it to if you want to become or powerful, more successful. Like you need to do this. Like 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 networking. So. We have a thing in Sanford called View from the top in which he's 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 extraordinarily wealthy person. His name is Omey Kordestati. And so I said, I reach out to him. I said, Omey, let's have breakfast. So I can understand because during the thing, when somebody asked him with class with the most important in his success, he said, mine. So I said, well, tell me your story. So 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 Jason. Oh, yeah. Okay, so I found myself in Netscape in marketing and business development. I 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 all, people inside of Netscape 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 over one. Number two, he said, you know, oftentimes I could find other people to do the work I was given. So instead of basically spending time doing my job, I now worked first within Netscape, but Netscape 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 and business tail. He decided to basically drive to the Silicon Valley talking to people. And this is, you know, the browser's or 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, he now knows 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 that wants to work for a company around a company. I had 26 people. He didn't have one sales in marketing personally. Every company is now as 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 day that appears on every list. It is only court of study. Who becomes employee number 11 at Google? And makes two and a half billion dollars. Create success from networking. Well, then when people hear about networking, it just feels like you said, like very cringe. Like I don't want to go to these networking events and try to like pretend to talk and care about people. Do you have any advice for you just how to make networking feel? Let's cringy. One of the exercises I give my students is, you know, I say, right a list of 10 people who, if you knew them, and I think of 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 in seconds of biotech or whatever. Make a list of 10 people. Then for each person, figure out how you're going to meet them. You know, by the way, not necessarily in a network event. Maybe you want to do a John Levy does, which is whole dinners, in which, by the way, to guess through the cookie. Which is a very interesting idea. 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 of lunch. Maybe you want to reach out to them and say, here's an article. I think you'd be interested. Here is somebody who I think you benefit from meeting. You know, so recently, I mean, I'm not a particularly good networker, but I'm better, I guess, than some people. I recently met Esther Wozinski. I'm trying to, you know, filter them. She's considered the grandmother of Silicon Valley. She's Susan Wozinski's mother. And she is interested in depression, particularly depression among teenagers. And I said, you should know Lee Ann 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 said it, you may all, I think you ought to know each other. They got together. I get credit for knowing people and connecting them, but I also benefit them. Lee Ann needs to raise money. Esther's got money. Esther needs to understand the cutting edge, research and depression, and biomarkers of depression, which is what Lee Ann specialty is. So they benefit. So this is not, this is not some achy thing. This is connecting people who benefit from being connected. It's such as on something you teach in the book as in your networking. You want to become a broker. You want to be central. That's kind of what you want to work on. Can you talk a bit about what that means? Well, that means you want to connect people. So many people would benefit. And then groups would be, would benefit from being connected. And they're not connected. What is the venture capitalist? Can I ask people with ideas for people with money? And takes a fee for doing it? What is an investment banker? Can people try to sell businesses or raise capital with people trying to buy businesses or who have capital? What's the real estate agent? Can have buyers and sellers of houses? I mean, there are all kinds of examples where persons with a person's entire job is connecting people. But even for the people whose job it is, you know, 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, how would you will is getting things done to other people. It 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 a large network as a result of this podcast newsletter, I can tell you a thousand percent of 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 Keep the Product Analytics solution that shows you everything. Users do on your digital product, website, mobile product or other digital services. We all know the great digital experience when we see it. It's intuitive and anticipates your needs and it makes it easy for you to do your job. If you're trying to build that kind of experience for your users, you need up-to-date, reliable information about what your users do in your product and why they do it. Want to know how your users behave across platforms? What keeps them coming back? What they're doing, that you're not even aware of? Well, I have some great news for you. Keep captures all of this user activity or you automatically. And then gives you definitive answers to all your questions about user behavior. In seconds, not weeks. With heap, it's easy to prioritize the product investments that improve conversion, engagement, and retention. Visit Keep.io slash Lenny to get started with a jump. That's h-e-h-e.io slash Lenny. Another lesson I guess you teach us to pursue weekties. Talk a bit about what that means, what do you mean by that? Well, the people to home your strongly tied, your family, your spouse, significant other, your friends, your work with the people who work with you and work. We'll 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, not redundant information, and coming contact with people that you don't already know. This again seems common sense. There's a lot of research behind it. Mark Manavetter, a sociologist who still teaches at Stanford, wrote a book entitled, The Strength of Weekties. And that's, and basically, no, actually, pardon me. He wrote an article called The Strength of Weekties. His book was called Getting a Job. And he did a study, I guess he 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 through more formal means. And then he looked at people who got jobs through referrals from their network. And 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, they had a view. That's the way I was looking for. A view into the echo system of the Boston 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 builds more power, that's not intuitive. You talk about how it creates this like self-perpetuating growth of power, the more you practice power. Can you talk a bit about that? Sure. So when you were, you know, it's interesting. My friend Deborah Gunfeld, who wrote a book, called Acting With Power, talks a lot about people's ambivalence, the power. So sometimes people are put in a job. Her many of Barra who teaches now at London Business School at 1.30 in Seattle, 1.30 in Harvard, has an article in the Harvard Business Review. And when she talks about a woman in a drug company, who gets a promotion and says to her colleagues, who, to whom she's now overseeing, that she's not sure she, why she got to job. She's not sure she deserves a job. He was to say, hey, she didn't do very well in the job because she got in her own way. But part of this is, you are a put in a position of power. You're put in 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 that. So the more you're able to do, which, often times, 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, creates more power. People see that you have this power, and they start to follow your lead more, right? That's a part of this. 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 to give him a book called chimpanzee politics, which is, of course, not based on the planet of the apes, but it's based upon the state of chimpanzees. We are the same. People are attracted to power. You know that. Yeah. By the way, that will be a count for a lot of what is going to happen in the presidential election. Let's say 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 will be really interesting. Kind of along the same lines of the area we're just talking about. And one of the other real powers to show up in a powerful fashion. So look powerful. Talk about what that looks like. So my colleague at Berkeley, Dana Carney, I see her anyways writing a book called Tell, which is about the importance of body language, how to master body language. There is some evidence that suggests we respond mostly to how people look. Secondly, to how they sound. And by the way, the least important to the content of what they say. And you can see this by turning on your TV and turning off the sound. Watch the presidential debates with the sound off. It'll be much better. I have another colleague I'm marketing by the name of Babishiv. Who talks about people's freaky mind. Or, you know, the idea that we are in fact descended from primates that, and that we are controlled in lots of ways by our emotions. And so we respond effectively to other people. We respond. We respond to how they look. You know, there's evidence in economics that suggests how people earn more salaries. Control earn more money. Control improve lots of things. Attractive people. So I'm sure not to attract. You earn more money. 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 McConnell 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. And even if you did not know, who were 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 Connie will tell you, and what common sense will tell you, as if these are skills that can be mastered. Robert DeNuro was not born. Robert DeNuro. In the sense of acting skills are learned. How do you show up? How do you command the rule? There's a guy named Regis McKemba, who is old as a guy. Who's famous for running a very, very, very fancy public relations firm in the Silicon Valley. And 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 McKemba 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. Now work. Showing up. All these things. These are skills that can be learned. I 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. Loud or voice. Okay. I'm going to speak louder now. I like this. Okay. What else comes to mind is ways to appear powerful. Invading people's personal space. So gentle touching. Standing close to someone. We're not talking about sexual touch. We're talking about touch on the arm of the shoulder. You know, shaking people's hands. That's a way of I think being more powerful. But you covered the main ones. I mean, I contact one of the problems with Tony Hayward of the B.P. 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 in sincere. You know, so I, you know, so Jack Colony, 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, D.C., said to my class when he came to my class, which he did. I never appeared before Congress with notes. I 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 assistance around me to help me. That I is the head of the M.P.A. I understood the motion of picture industry and then he would give you a little side about how it was the one industry that consistently had a bunch of surplus in trade. He would talk about how many jobs he created and yet all the stuff in his fingertips. But basically his command of the material made him more powerful. It's interesting. Jack Colony was five foot two inches tall. And he came to my class and the next class I said to people, what are your reactions? What are your thoughts? And a woman raised her hand and said, he feels taller than he is. And I thought that was an assessment that was both true and insightful. When the five foot two jackfully 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 five foot two. You read a couple more because this is like an 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. One of the way that was a humor humor. The famous author Salmon Rushdie said, and I called Salmon Rushdie. It's a fabulous quote. If you can hear people go laugh, you can tell them anything. That's a 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 open posture. Is the advice here just, you don't need to do all these things. Just know this is makes people more powerful. Though necessarily judge people. Do some of these things maybe because it'll add to your power. How do you think about just people that are turned off by this sort of thing? It's a wonderful question. So I say to my class on the very first day of class. Yeah, we will go through four stages. We will go through the stage of denial. Doesn't work in my culture, doesn't like in my organization. Doesn't work for me, doesn't work in my religion, whatever. Then we'll go through anger. You know, angry at me, how can you teach us this stuff? They don't go to sadness. I actually believe this and I'm depressed. And if we're successful, they will go through acceptance. And the process I have, I'm giving, 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. It's Stanford or anything else. I am strategic about thinking about if I, 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? Why would the easiest way to do that? If I said, Lenny, I want you to become a better tennis player. Our better rollerblader, our better ice skater, whatever. A better panel player in 10 weeks. What will 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. And 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. It's fabulous. And 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 now work like Keith Forazzi or John Levy or you're not going to be as bold as Jason Calicanas who trust me as he's extraordinarily bold. You're not going to necessarily do what I did. You'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 end the ten weeks, lift a hundred pounds. I can't do that by the last day saying, lift a hundred 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. Push 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 that 15% rule where you push yourself 15% beyond your comfort zone. We're just a little bit, but it's not too far. And it feels like you try to do a similar thing. Yeah, absolutely. So 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 of homework assignments you give ready. We'll find ten people. Think of ten people. You want to meet that'll help you their career and then try to meet them. And then there's this like, I guess my friend, Sir, podcast. I don't know which homework was. What other homework assignments do you give? So we begin. There's a literature on goal setting that 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 homework assignment is, which is, by the way, on the very first day of class, why are you there? Why are you here? It is now the end of this class. What would successful collect to you? What would you like to accomplish in our ten weeks together? Second 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 write you on these or write yourself. You set for yourself a development plan. Energy, focus, being willing to tolerate conflict, all these qualities. What are you strong on? What are you weak 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. One of these assignments I give them, which is the class that Jason comes through. What resources can you create? You're at Stanford Business School. It leads, fancy, Stanford. What can you do in your ten weeks here? I have people who create an awards. A woman who created an award. I gave it to Carly Clause, the model. Got in trouble with the school. It turns out it's easier to ask 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 show them the videos. And I call it in advance of the class. And I tell them they need to become Tony Hayward. They need to do a better job, which is by the way, a little part. Representing BP. And 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 on the class. And in other words, for every idea, I try to think of something. And this is all by the way, this is all from 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 it. Find people, oh, for branding. Write a personal brain statement. Get some feedback on it. Then write it again. How do you want to be known? Which is by the way useful to you because you're a second year MBA. You're going to go in the damn job market. What do you want people to think about you? How do you 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. He was 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 just took a couple years ago and said to me, it is not that I got more feedback and more useful feedback from your class than any other class. I got more useful feedback in your class that I did on every other class I took. Come by. I can see why. Let's talk about the last power. So we've talked 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 forget what you did to get there. Talk about what that looks like. And is that a power or is it more just like this is what you should know about? So, and I put in rule 7 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, you know, people believe that the world is homostatic and is not, you know, that it's going to be just whatever. You know, at the end, you know, at the end, I will be brought low. They have the myth of echoers in their head. You know, you're flying to close to the sun. Your wings are going to melt. You're going to be brought down. And so I tried to convince them, partly through a lecture and partly through rule 7. And some of the principles that I talk about at rule 7. Yet, in fact, life is not homostatic at all. Yet life is actually self-fulfilled. If I believe you're powerful, you will become more powerful. If I believe you have no power, you will wind up with almost no power. And therefore, it is all for God and infregulated. And I begin, I believe, I begin, but if not, I could begin. With the story of the South Carolina Senator, who says nasty things about Trump, and then Lindsey Graham, and becomes Trump's biggest act of light. And then New York Times, of course, is fascinated by this. How can you call, how can you say all these horrible things about Trump? And now, he is, 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, you know, this goes back to the judgment. I mean, I like how in my mouth that's not the other thing. He's the president. If I want to get the 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 maniacs. It is not a good way to get him on your side by saying nasty things about him. So, this is the pragmatics. You know, people forget the Bill Gates stole the code on which Microsoft is built. People forget the Jeffrey Epstein after being convicted of sex offenses was still having dinners with members of the royal family and members of the New York media. People forget the Martha Stewart who served time in jail. As a brand, it's never been more valuable. People 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 that said if somebody wanted to search it out, you could. So, I am sitting in this guy's office. And he's got, he's by the way, 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. What is the secret? He, by the way, took the company into bankruptcy. People lost literally billions of dollars. He was fine. He lost money. But he walked away with about seven hundred million dollars. It turns out seven hundred million dollars 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 instances. And they will overlook your flaws to be close to you. Yeah, and again, you talk about this in the book. It doesn't, you're not describing how the world should work. It's, this is just how it is. And 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 talked about, including this last one, has social science and logic behind it. So, you can explain not only what he 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. And 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, not because he read the book, but because he doesn't, you know, if you trial an 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, and I 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, well, maybe he's the epitome of some of the stuff. I will tell you a story. In 1993, a woman, they've law-asservant, who's a doctor. Took my class. She claims publicly that this is the only class at Stanford for which she did all the reading. By the way, while she was taking, getting her MBA at Stanford, she was having her first child and practicing medicine full-time. All right. I, law-asservant 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. The students see this a rate her because she is in incredibly smart, incredibly well-intentioned. But she will not know her. She says, I don't have time for schmoozing. She will not do almost any other stuff that we talk about today. So, she at her husband, Michael Endica, two of my closest friends in the world. And I go out to lunch afterwards. And his smoke is coming out of her ears. And she is pissed off. And this is a very accomplished woman and a very smart woman. And she's pissed. I said to her a lot, you have a balanced energy and balanced intelligence. You're a force of nature. Let me discuss something from the top of the physics. You are creating friction. Within that force, you can overcome the friction. If you reduce the 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 a hundred, most influential people in the world. And I say to people, and I say it with pride, that all the things I've done in my life, the thing I'm most proud of, the most proud of stuff, is creating more effort. That is an awesome story. And I'm really good with thinking about this from a different angle. Yeah. No, I mean, and she, you know, I said to her, I said to her, I said, you want to make profound changes in the drug development process. You want to 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, you want to do all these things. If you're going to accomplish any of these things, you need to cross the bridge. And she hasn't crossed the bridge completely and she and I joke about it. But she crossed the bridge a lot. And she is accomplished in credible things. She's one 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 here 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 attributed to me. Yeah, well, I don't remember saying it. But somebody said, I said, it's all taken credit for it. Yeah, I said to Lauren, you want to change medicine? Medicine is not going to change without the application of power in phones. If change was going to happen, it wouldn't happen already. I mean, you have to take on entrenched interest. She has a whole thing which we need not go into because it's pretty technical on screening. You know, she says, everybody's getting a mammogram every year. And beyond the certain age, which is stupid for a variety of reasons, you can read. She was on the CBS news hour about this. Yeah, this is what got her in trouble with the radiologists. The radiologists, of course, saw her selling screening. She said there's some people who need to be screened every month. And there's some people who need to be screened never because of their genetics. You know, she wants custom tailored screening or precision screening. Anyway, you can, she's, she's five to everybody. Richard Blum. Diane finds Diane's husband, both Diane and Richard Blumman now deceased. Was that 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 and the University of California healthcare system. So I'm supposed to give some opening talk to be provided entertainment and decorum is there. Dick Blum, of course, it's wealthy. Diane finds Diane's husband. I said to him, Dick, how did Laura get you here? And I still remember, I think this is a quoted 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 asks you to do something, you may say, no, but at the end of the day, you're going to do it anyway. Save yourself the aggravation. Oh, man, I feel like you're just an endlessly full of good stories that we could just keep going on and on. Let 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 relentlessly. Use your power. And understand that once you've acquired power, that what you did to get there will be forgiven for gotten or book. Let me ask you a question, maybe half in just. 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. I 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. They 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 school goes to heaven says, We'll give you the fall off. To be with your wife. She lives until June. It's now winter. You have responsibilities at the dean of the business school. You have to be with her online. 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. But I want to jack for money to come to my class. I did not call jack for money. I called Judy Dickie. Judy Dickie was his assistant. Judy Dickie controls the schedule. I need jack on such and such a day. He can't make it on that day. Fine. I can adjust the schedule. Can he make it on this day? What I wondered my friend Gary Loveman who ran Harris and Seasers. And then was the number to executive it at now. I wanted him to come to my class. I call Reggie Kirk. I didn't call Gary Loveman. 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 owl calendar on any website or on any computer. I want autonomy. If I set you money, I will give you $1 billion. Or for that matter, $10 billion. If you can have last week again, you can't. You can't. Time goes and only one direction. I want control my time. It is much more important to me. Being a dean or an associate dean. 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 lunch. This is according to my expenses. And they'll probably put her with dean at the time. 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 want to do what I like. That's a really profound point that I think people don't think about. There's always this drive to a choir power. And your point is that there's a big downside. Which is a lock of autonomy. Yeah, you think about. Like I was trying to get side to you in the dell on the podcast. And I talked to his comes people. And they're like, his 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. I don't want to do that. And by the way, power also comes with enormous visibility. Donald Trump is done for 40 years. What he's now being accused of doing. You 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 Law, the president of Stanford Law. When they both had to resign in one case, that's a plagiarism in another case, because a research was conduct. Nobody. Power counts. You're going to be put on your 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. They're going to look at how you associate with. They're going to have no privacy. You'll have no and 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, our people praising you, our people associating with you. Because of you, because of the position you are. Yeah. Do you spend any time just to follow us through it in your class, convincing people, stopping so obsessed with power, stopping so obsessed with becoming the top of everything. Is that a part of the class? No. 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 Crew. Rudy Crew was in New York Schools, Chancellor on the Rudy Giuliani. By the way, he could tell us many interesting stories about Rudy Giuliani. He did not just become the joke that he is so overnight. He's, he's worked hard to become that. But in a minute, he tells you, you know, he will, and 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 it, the positions he held, ahead of Miami Day County Schools, ahead of New York City Schools, and Hillary never won. He would have been Secretary of Education. Literally. There's one in the room. He sent to the class. Jeffrey asked me the question, why don't we let Lord answer it? By the time she was finished, it was not a dry eye in the room. What does it like to be the child? What does 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 rules? What's something that you'd recommend someone try to do? I know it's probably dependent on what they're good at, not good at. What's something that they could do to start moving towards one of these rules? 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, let me go do this uncomfortable thing on your own. Or I can say, let me, 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 skill with this, get coaching, get a coach. I said that regularly, the list of the coaches who work with my online or 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 let's do a countable. That's the very first thing I would tell people to do. It is hard to do anything on your own. If I said to you, let me, I don't want you to start. And extraordinarily successful podcasts. I don't want you to do it without any help. You would not be where you are today. So that simple principle, yet help. It feels like a part of a 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 rules. 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. There's anything else you want to share as a kind of a final note or something to leave listeners with before we wrap up. We 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 appreciate it. I'm happy to spend the time with you. And I hope whoever listens to this book. I hope first of all, there'll be a lot of listeners. But I also hope that they will find the news. I know they will. Two final questions. Working folks, fine. You'll line if they 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 in a physical bookstore. Because nobody carries it. Including a Stanford bookstore. They run out of it if people kind of use it. And you 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. So you can take the course on your own if you want. Or get somebody or take it in 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 there are a lot of resources available for this. Company was once thinking of hiring me to give a talk in their organization. And the woman who wound up hiring me said what I was discussing. Are you? And are you going to wish it hire you for this presentation? One of the people in the committee said, It's here good presenter. And her answer, I love this time. Remember this. Her answer was, he's a fabulous educator. My job is to educate. And it's why I have done what I have done for now more than 50 years. Holy moly. I didn't really like that. For more than 50 years. I have been in the business of education. Not just about power, but about many other things. Well, but you know, I'm in the education business. So I am happy to provide people with the resources, with the readings. The severals of power is well-foot noted. It 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. Jeffrey Feffer. 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 lenniespodcast.com. See you in the next episode.