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Appear powerful. Pfeffer makes the case that displaying anger and not apologizing are effective tools for building power. And when it comes to speaking, he advises avoiding using notes when you speak and using simple words, strong declarations, and repeating themes. “Master how to appear confident, attractive, and powerful,” he says, in summary. (p. 84) Stacy Brown-Philpot, former CEO, TaskRabbit, Board member, HP, Inc., and Nordstrom, Forbes 40 under 40; former head of Google’s online sales and operations in India Break the rules. “Violating norms, rules, and social conventions can make rule breakers seem more powerful and thereby create power for them,” Pfeffer writes. (p. 48) Rule-breaking surprises people, which causes them to pay more attention to you. And, as is often said, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, as Moses did in starting work on New York City development projects before having the permits for them. Even Robert Greene seems to have realized at some point that promoting gangster values was maybe a bad thing and wrote a success book to help people who have useful talents: Mastery. A brilliant and provocative book mapping out the true nature of power rather than what we normally "want" it to be. Pfeffer (an authority on the topic) goes against conventional wisdom saying that leaders should exhibit confidence over authenticity and anger over vulnerability. "People want to be aligned with someone who they think is going to win, to prevail, so doing anything that disabuses them of that belief is probably a mistake.
Melvin Lerner, the social psychologist, years ago wrote about the just-world effect, or the just-world hypothesis, where people want to believe that the world is just and fair, which gives them a sense of control. Unfortunately, the world is not just and fair, and we know that. The author is a professor of Organizational Behavior at the Standford Graduate of Business and he writes about 7 rules that have given life-changing results. I don’t think you need to bring your whole self to work. I think you need to bring the parts of yourself to work that will help you get the job done.
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Ideas from 7 Rules of Power helped me design and live my dream career as a digital health expert. This book is a must-have for minorities and people seeking to have social impact, because we tend to shy away from the concept of power. 7 Rules reframes power and provides tactical, practical tools to actually change the world!” Understand that once you have acquired power, what you did to get it will be forgiven, forgotten, or both. IN A NUTSHELL: 7 Rules of Power is a great book on ‘Power’ that will tell you why you should choose the path to power and how to do it, and also, if you have acquired it, how to use and not lose it. Having just finished Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything, coincidentally also from a Stanford professor, the 7 Rules of Power presents an interesting dichotomy of utilizing our behaviours to improve ourselves. Unlike Fogg's message of spreading positive habits to your group and then to the wider community, Pfeffer instead, convincingly (to me) advocates for a more mercenary outlook where becoming powerful can be a virtuous goal if you want to make an impact in your community and improve your station in life; though he warns that we should not use these lessons to do bad deeds.
Rule of Power is an extraordinary book that talks about, of course, Power, how to acquire it, how to use it, how to build a powerful personal brand, and more. There are a number of sources of power. One obvious—or maybe not-so-obvious—source of power is control over resources. Do you have budget control? Do you control real-estate assets? Do you control a physical plant? Resources are very important. I've tried for many years other to be "overly kind", and that has resulted in bad results both professionally and psychologically, resentment and really didn't make anything good out of it except temporarily relief for both parties. Surprise your competitors and advance yourself in the hierarchy by asking for things that others would hesitate to ask. Often, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission These rules won’t just work by reading them but we have to reread this book and these rules to understand them better and implement them in our lives. The author provides us with ample practical tips and advice.
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stars rounded up. It's definitely not a bad book, but it exemplifies several things I'm wary of in this genre (e.g. talking about people who do X and succeed and thus generalizing the principle of 'you should do X', but never talking about all the people who do X and don't succeed, or who don't do X and succeed; doing the song and dance of 'I'm not saying this is right or wrong, I'm saying this is how it is - act accordingly'; attributing certain outcomes to oversimplified factors such as Trump winning in 2016 because he was perceived as powerful. Like, sure, for some people that was enough for them to cast their vote in his favor...but that's reaaaaally just scratching the surface of all the reasons why Trump won; etc). The title says it all. People don't like Jeffrey Pfeffer's books on power because they think the world shouldn't work that way, or that the power tactics won't work for them. This book lays out what works, and he takes pains to include stories from people without privilege or advantages using these tactics successfully. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and CEO of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute; Lester Crown Professor at Yale School of Management and Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies
Gender, race, years of service, and educational credentials all have nothing to do with performance. Yes, job performance matters, but there are other things that matter as well, so you need to understand the game. Don’t opt out of the game before you’ve even started playing—don’t place yourself at a disadvantage. Dr. Pfeffer received his BS and MS degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University and his PhD from Stanford. He began his career at the business school at the University of Illinois and then taught for six years at the University of California, Berkeley. Pfeffer has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, Singapore Management University, London Business School, Copenhagen Business School, and for the past 14 years a visitor at IESE in Barcelona.
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Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University where he has taught since 1979. Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers 50 #1 Executive Coach and New York Times Bestselling Author of Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There If fully understood and harnessed effectively, power skills and understanding become the keys to increasing salaries, job satisfaction, career advancement, organizational change, and, happiness. In 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, provides the insights that have made both his online and on-campus classes incredibly popular—with life-changing results often achieved in 8 or 10 weeks.
Dr. Pfeffer has written the ultimate book on power that avoids the traps of conventional theories on leadership . . . Beautifully written and full of poignant stories and examples, 7 Rules of Power is my recommended read for anyone looking to radically change the trajectory of their life for good.” Similar to Tiny Habits, I listened to the audiobook version of this powerful (lol) and short book about both the how-to for individuals to attain power and the fact that the world, as much as we don't like to admit it, rewards those with power. Though his examples of the less scrupulous types does contain the warning that even the most powerful can sometimes be taken down if their crimes are so egregious and frequent that it attracts notice of dedicated individuals such as Holmes, Weinstein, and Epstein. The research is also very good, and I appreciate someone telling the hard truth. This author seems to truly have wanted to deliver truth and helpful advice, rather than being liked (which, if you have read the book, will get the non-irony of that). I have studied by annotated, highlighted and rewritten sentences from the book. I have already recommended books about power to my female friends who have been taken advantage of and experienced things no people on this planet deserve to encounter. This book might be the most helpful one yet of those.No one is hired to win a popularity contest—you’re hired to get things done. You’re hired to make things happen, so when you show up to lead a group of people, those people want many things from you. What they don’t necessarily want from you is your authentic self. Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University where he has taught since 1979. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books including The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First; Managing with Power; The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action; Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People; Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management; and What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom About Management, as well as more than 150 articles and book chapters. Pfeffer’s latest book, entitled Power: Why Some People Have It—And Others Don’t was published in 2010 by Harper Business.
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