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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
Unlock the door to personal power, happiness, achievement, and strength in any situation
In The Science of Personal Power, renowned professor and persuasion expert Chris Lipp reveals how to bridge the science of inner well-being with the science of outer achievement by developing personal power—a concept that, when put into practice, is a panacea for both happiness and success. Unlike formal power, which focuses on authority and control, personal power is about how we feel about our own capability to create impact. When we feel big, we show up big, and when we show up big, we can change the world. This book offers a transformative approach to completely revamp every aspect of your life, starting with your present mindset and extending to long-term career advancement, financial success, and beyond.
- Enhanced Self-Confidence: Learn how to feel more capable and impactful in your daily life.
- Practical Tools for Success: Gain actionable strategies and tips to improve your personal and professional life.
- Increased Influence: Discover how to effectively influence others and drive positive change.
The Science of Personal Power combines research, data, and storytelling to help you understand foundational concepts related to psychology and business. It highlights counter-intuitive discoveries and reconciles conflicting findings to provide practical tips, strategies, and approaches to enhance personal power and influence others. This book is designed for anyone looking to rise above personal obstacles and societal barriers to become the most powerful version of themselves.
Ready to transform your life from the inside out? Tap into your personal power and start your journey towards happiness and success with The Science of Personal Power today.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PART I: The Roots
1 See the Water
The Aura of Power
Notes
2 Practice Courage
Own Up
Don't React
Just Do It
Domain of the Powerless
Courageous Action
Feeling Free
Notes
PART II: Giving
3 Add Value
Down and Dirty
Moving Up
Speak Value
Speak Action
Give and Be Seen
Value Over Posture
Notes
4 Zoom Out
Flying High
The Big Picture
Share Your View
Make New Meaning
Light the Path
Bring Others into the Light
Carry the Torch Forward
Make a Million‐Dollar Pitch
Notes
5 Ringlead
Status Roles in Teams
Be a Ringleader
Shine the Spotlight
The Greater Good is Ratified
Empower Others
Build Trust
No One is Off the Hook
Engage the Group
Notes
PART III: Asserting
6 Set Boundaries
Fairness
Respond (Don’t React) to Threats
Honor Your Resources
How to Say No
Voice Your Needs
Notes
7 Find Your Bedrock
Anchor In
How We See Ourselves
How We See Others
Captains and Players
Set Your Goal
Stay the Course
When to Walk Away
Notes
8 Speak Up
Be Visible
Be Authentic
Be Certain and Decisive
Be Firm and Direct
Dominance
Don't Wait to be Seen
Notes
9 Epilogue
Power Today
Asserting Ourselves
Acknowledgments
Notes
Chapter 1
Additional Reading
Chapter 2
Additional Reading
Chapter 3
Additional Reading
Chapter 4
Additional Reading
Chapter 5
Additional Reading
Chapter 6
Additional Reading
Chapter 7
Additional Reading
Chapter 8
Additional Reading
Chapter 9
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
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THE SCIENCE OF PERSONAL POWER
HOW TO BUILD CONFIDENCE, CREATE SUCCESS, AND OBTAIN FREEDOM
CHRIS LIPP
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Lipp, Chris, author.
Title: the science of personal power : how to build confidence, create success, and obtain freedom / Chris Lipp.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2025] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024015729 (print) | LCCN 2024015730 (ebook) | ISBN
9781394273645 (hardback) | ISBN 9781394273669 (adobe pdf) | ISBN
9781394273652 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Self‐actualization (Psychology) | Success.
Classification: LCC BF637.S4 L5658 2025 (print) | LCC BF637.S4 (ebook) |
DDC 158.1—dc23/eng/20240502
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024015729
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024015730
Cover Design: Wiley
To JD Schramm,
my mentor and friend
PART IThe Roots
1See the Water
The CEO's feedback on my latest project was true to his nature – “this is utter (obscenity).” The project would go on to be a huge success. But the boss was the alpha dog. He wanted everyone to know who was in charge, and he did this by pushing everyone down. I walked back to my office, passing a VP in the company. She was fraying around the edges. It wasn’t the healthiest workplace.
Every morning I entered the office with the thought, “Why am I not as rich as Mark Zuckerberg? I need to work harder.” I had ludicrous self‐standards back then. Perhaps that was why I accepted the brunt of the CEO's bullying – I saw it as a step along my career path, and the money wasn’t bad. But the stress was building. I suffered stomach pains and backaches. I sought out physical and mental therapy. Eventually I turned to more primal coping mechanisms. When I used the office restroom, I’d write the CEO's name on a sticky‐note, toss it in the toilet, and relieve myself over it. That helped.
The CEO's behavior was contagious. One afternoon I watched an employee wave his hand at his colleague and call him “stupid” with such condescension that I thought it deserved an Academy Award. The other employee had the wherewithal to stay calm and explain his ideas, although I had no idea how. I took the scene in stride because it wasn’t unique. My manager left the company shortly after, replaced by a friend of the CEO and one of the sleaziest people I ever knew. He bragged about the crazy things he’d done in racecars, the money he dropped on glitzy entertainment. Ironically, he was eventually fired by the CEO as well.
Perhaps the pivotal moment for me occurred after I participated in a speech contest. That was how I spent my free time back then. One thousand people competed, and a handful of us made it to the final round. I won the contest. I shared the news with my team the following Monday. Word must have gotten around because when I met with the CEO later that day, he casually mentioned that his cofounder was the best public speaker in the company. He made pointed eye‐contact to see whether I would challenge him. Instead, I decided it was time to pack my bags and move on.
The CEO wielded his authority like an iron fist and purposely disempowered his employees. This was a very clear power dynamic. Had I understood power back then, I might have been able to protect myself and reduce my stress. But if anything, I rejected power because of the way I saw it used. I had no desire to act like that CEO. What I did not see were the many ways other powerful people behaved.
Take Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel.1 Pat literally started from the bottom of the Intel hierarchy as a technician. It's a straight forward role that doesn’t require a college degree. Pat earned his degree while employed and worked his way into leading the design team for the 486 microprocessor. Then he became the youngest Intel VP at 32 years old. How did he do that?
What's fascinating about Pat is that he's a strong Christian and intensely focused on the values of his faith. This means that his modus operandi is not alpha dog. Pat's values include generosity and serving others. He is often invited to mentor employees, a task which he gladly accepts. Pat inspires a high level of trust.
There are few greater successes than rising from the bottom of a hierarchy at a multi‐billion‐dollar company to the very top. That is exactly what Pat did. Pat's behavior appears to be the polar opposite of the CEO I worked with, and this is what makes the discussion of power so confusing.
When many of us hear the word power, we associate it with power over others. We think of bullies, dominators, and those who enjoy flaunting their authority. We think about the Harvey Weinsteins of the world, the powerful executives who lead organizations with a whip. Power equals being the alpha dog. And there are many cases where intimidation created exceptional results. Andy Grove, another Intel CEO prior to Pat, had the catchphrase “only the paranoid survive.”2 Sounds like a fun place to work, right? When employees shared ideas Andy didn’t like, he shouted them down and berated them in front of others. Andy also took Intel's market capitalization from $4 billion to $197 billion during his tenure. That is unqualified financial success.
Anyone with a shred of ambition wants to get ahead. Power is the primary vehicle to that end. But it leaves an unpleasant aftertaste in the mind. Mixed in with the possibility of success is a shadow of discomfort. The desire to be strong colliding with the desire to be good. We win on the outside, but we lose on the inside. So instead many of us seek ways to level up on the inside. We learn to be joyful and happy. But joy and happiness do not magically lead to results. We feel great on the inside, but we are still stuck in our jobs on the outside. We spend nearly a third of our lives working. Work is how we support our family. Work is our self‐expression in the world. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could win on both the inside and the outside?
The result of this conflict has led to the exploration of empathic power, of servant leadership. Herb Kelleher, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, is a shining exemplar of this approach. “I’d rather have a company bound by love than a company bound by fear,” said Herb.3 He arm‐wrestled colleagues and asked employees about their families.4 Not too different in some respects to Pat Gelsinger. Herb not only grew Southwest Airlines to a major airline competitor, but he maintained consistent profits in an industry where every other company went through ups and downs. Just like Andy Grove, Herb was an unqualified success.
On the surface then, there appears to be a contradiction of what it means to be powerful. At the very least, we see two different types of power. On one hand, we have power through intimidation. Alpha‐dog power and the desire to dominate. On the other hand, we have power through connection. Collaborative power that honors others. A conundrum only until we understand the truth, which is that these are not two different types of power. There is only one type of power here expressed in two different ways.
The challenge with trying to understand power is that we view it as a set of behaviors. A great deal of research has gone into observing how powerful people act. Some leaders act dominant and some leaders act sensitive. So we make categories – dominant power, sensitive power, and so on. But if power is a set of behaviors, how can the behaviors be so different? Viewing power as a set of behaviors also contradicts our common sense. We all know empathizers and dominators who are weak.
A colleague of mine went to lunch with a group of friends, the youngest of whom was the star basketball player at the local university. Mr. Basketball stood easily 6′7″ and was all about “power.” In fact, he had just finished reading a book on getting what you want through intimidation. As if he needed it. When the group arrived at the restaurant, the lunch line was out the door. Mr. Basketball ignored everyone and strode to the front of the line. He cut in front of the person there and demanded a table, much to the embarrassment of his friends. The maître d’ was about to politely engage when an elderly lady in line spoke up curtly, “Young man, what do you think you’re doing?” Everyone turned to stare. Abashed by her words and facing the onslaught of negative attention, Mr. Basketball slunk to the back of the line. Nobody mistook his behavior for power.
We’ve all seen someone take action that wins our respect. Likewise, we’ve all seen someone emulate those same behaviors but only convey insecurity and garner disrespect. Power is not something purely external. There is something else going on underneath that we attribute to the person. A powerful person will walk into a room and own it. They radiate an aura that is larger than life. It's not a quality that is easily emulated.
Logically the solution is to associate power with an internal trait like personality. Nelson Mandela is an exceptional example because he maintained his internal power despite being imprisoned for nearly thirty years. All his external power was eliminated. And yet almost overnight Mandela went from being a prisoner to being the President of South Africa. There was something about the man himself.
Many studies have explored the relationship between power and personality. Cameron Anderson and his colleagues at UC Berkeley measured the personality of seventy‐four dormitory students to figure out whether personality influenced social status on the dormitory floor.5 The students were a mix of freshman and sophomores, most of whom had come together for the first time at the beginning of the academic year. Cameron measured personality using the Big Five test, arguably the most famous personality test in the field of psychology. The Big Five measures Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and Openness. Cameron then measured the status of each student by gathering peer ratings at two weeks into the start of the semester and four months later at the end of the semester.
The first interesting finding from Cameron's research was the impact of Agreeableness. Agreeableness is about being kind, friendly, and polite to others. Agreeableness had zero correlation to status. Zero. Power is not about being kind, friendly, nor polite. To be clear, power is not about being cold and hostile either. There is no connection between power and hostility, otherwise we would see a negative correlation with Agreeableness. Power simply has nothing to do with kindness nor coldness. You can be a Pat Gelsinger or an Andy Grove and still be the CEO of Intel. These traits don’t matter.*
Cameron's results showed that only Extraversion played a significant role in status across both men and women. Extraversion measures “sociability, activity, assertiveness, and positive emotionality.”6 Extraverts generally achieved more status in Cameron's research. That's a compelling finding. Nelson Mandela is commonly viewed as an extravert. But this finding is only a correlation, meaning it's far from the rule. Bill Gates is an introvert. So are Warren Buffett and Rosa Parks.7 And we all know Extraversion is not a guarantee that someone is powerful. You might be extraverted and yet you don’t feel powerful. Understanding that Extraversion has a correlation to status puts us no closer to understanding power because it does not explain why Extraversion is sometimes powerful and sometimes not.
We are now stuck in how to understand power. If we look at behavior, the myriad styles of powerful people provide contradictory results. Power is not something that is simply external. But we are no better off measuring an internal trait like personality. There is no clear trait we can point to that consistently tells us who is powerful and who is not. Power is neither something we can easily emulate nor is power a trait that some people have and some don’t. The good news is that while the former may feel frustrating, the latter is most certainly an opportunity.
The key to understanding power came from a breakthrough analysis published by researchers from UC Berkeley and Stanford University.8 This analysis set the foundation for the idea of personal power. Personal power is our perceived ability to influence the world. Unlike formal power, which focuses on external acquisitions such as money and resources, personal power is how we feel about our own capability to create impact.9 How we feel about ourselves is how we show up. When we feel big, we show up big. And when we show up big, we change the world. Personal power is an inward experience that radiates outward, influencing our feelings, our behaviors, and ultimately the way others see us.
Although intangible like emotions, personal power has a very real impact on our lives. Joris Lammers and his colleagues invited undergraduate students to take part in mock interviews for entrance into business school.10 The interviews were part of an experiment, but they were conducted by expert interviewers who evaluated students as if they were real candidates. Before entering the interview, Joris was able to subtly influence some of the students to feel a greater sense of personal power in themselves. We will explore how he did this later. Those who went into the interview radiating power were on average 81% more likely to be accepted into the program. These results had nothing to do with interview skills nor building a better resume. Radiating personal power nearly doubled the chance that students succeeded in the interview. I have never encountered a single force that has a greater and more rapid impact on success than personal power.
Aside from the outward success, personal power is a panacea for our inward mental and emotional health.11 Those who experience higher personal power have greater self‐esteem and resilience. Power fosters creativity. Power helps us feel more authentic and believe in ourselves. Power even buffers us from physical stress. In one unique experiment, researchers observed that people who felt powerful were able to keep their hands submerged in ice‐cold water longer and with less physical reaction than everyone else.11 Personal power makes us both figuratively and literally stronger. We show up big.
Conversely, disempowerment causes an almost incalculable cost in our everyday lives.12 We show up small. Those who experience low personal power are more often the victims of bullying and violence. They negotiate worse outcomes in business. Inwardly, people who experience low power feel greater anxiety and depression. Low power impairs our mental functioning and makes us more prone to choke under pressure.
Personal power is such a basic psychological need that people who lack personal power are driven to restore it by whatever means possible. Those who feel powerless are more likely to buy designer clothing that display expensive brand logos in order to reaffirm their status.*,13 The powerless turn to addictions or chronic gambling to experience the next win.12 Some individuals even turn to violence. Ironically, it's often the behaviors of those who feel powerless on the inside that model the worst associations we have with power on the outside.
Truly powerful people are those we respect regardless of their personality. We feel their presence when they walk into a room. We trust them to guide us through challenges. We honor their strength and capability, and we admire their self‐drive. Powerful people do not depend on the outside world, they themselves are a source of power that radiates out and energizes those around them. After nearly two decades examining research in psychology, I am convinced that personal power is the most important social concept of our lives. But where does personal power come from? And how does our power radiate out so that we show up big?
The Aura of Power
After writing The Startup Pitch, which outlines the de facto formula for raising investment, I coached entrepreneurs to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. I sat in investor meetings and watched these pitches take place many times exactly as planned – great structure, great words, great results. But occasionally even perfect words and stellar delivery led to lackluster outcomes. Honestly, I couldn’t explain it back then. There was simply a feeling in the room. If you watch Shark Tank, you’ve observed this invisible dynamic. Sometimes investors drool over a startup and compete with each other to invest, other times investors are critical or disinterested despite the great product.
How is it that sometimes when we speak we own the room but other times when we speak nobody takes us seriously?
To understand how we radiate power, I turned to popular books on the subject. Many books on power offer long‐term strategies that help us get ahead in the professional world. But these strategies don’t play out easily in daily situations. Few if any of these books focus on conveying power through conversation. We relate most frequently to each other through language. Some great books cover body language. Imagine you strategically maneuver yourself onto a high‐visibility project. You step into a meeting and strike your power pose. But when you open your mouth, what do you say? And when someone inevitably challenges you, how do you respond? I am a big proponent of executive posture and presence, but no perfect posture is going to protect your power once you start speaking. Language conveys our power to those listening.
But what language conveys personal power? Watching startups pitch, I found that clarity, storytelling, engagement, and all the traditional ways we think about communication aren’t necessarily powerful. These skills are effective at conveying messages, but not at conveying power. If traditional communication conveyed power, it would make more sense for future executives to get a degree in communication than business. Persuasion is certainly powerful. My book, Magnetic: How Great Leaders Persuade and Inspire, covers a model of persuasion used by leaders, politicians, and the like. But persuasion is not nearly enough. To explore the elusive language of power, I combed through decades of modern psychology research. Combined with my background coaching startup founders and corporate leadership, a tapestry of the language of power emerged.
Power is happening around us all the time. Our personal power is the invisible currency that guides our relationships at work and at home. We experience power among both friends and strangers. We feel it in our community and on spiritual retreat. Power is like water to a fish, we can’t divorce ourselves from it. Underlying every social interaction is a power dynamic. Communication augments this dynamic. Before I understood personal power, I could only accept for unknown reasons that I sometimes showed up big and sometimes showed up small. When I began to understand the psychology that created those feelings and the language that radiated those feelings, I was able to deliberately shift my thoughts and words to show up big.
We are a nation of strivers who honor the American Dream and idolize success, and yet today we feel disengaged from work in record numbers.14 It's mind‐bending that our desire for achievement is so disconnected from our professional life. And the reason is we’re exhausted. We’re disillusioned. We feel our opinions don’t matter and our prospects for growth are limited. Simply put, we lack power. And it hurts. If we don’t consciously understand the relationship between our psychology and our power, we remain powerless to change it. We cannot see the power dynamic at play between ourselves and others.
Often we wait for someone else to empower us. We turn to our manager. We cajole our colleagues. We await organizational change. Today many organizations aim to create equitable and inclusive environments. But waiting for organizational change only places our power into the hands of others.
If you want to have an impact on the world and support the people you love, you must take the responsibility to empower yourself. You have power, whether you believe it or not. Nobody can force you to feel powerful or powerless, it is a way of being that comes from you. With the right practices, you can develop your personal power without waiting for the world to change and without the need to dominate others. You can become great.
As you read this book, the goal of this journey is for you to become aware of your personal power and be able to harness your language and behavior deliberately to convey that power. Personal power is fundamental to both your inner experience of life and outer behavior. When you understand personal power, you can take control of your life in a way that you always felt was possible but never understood before. The invisible force becomes visible.
Notes
*
This was true of both men and women. Do not get caught in the myth that you must lead with likeability. Your power to influence others is not through being liked, as you will discover in this book.
*
This is particularly tragic given that people in lower economic status often experience less personal power and are therefore more prone to spend money on expensive brand luxury goods they cannot afford. Conversely, high power consumers are more likely to spend money on high‐quality goods and performance rather than displays of status.
2Practice Courage
Roone Arledge was furious. He burst into the conference room where his staff waited. Everyone flinched. It was early morning and ABC Sports had just missed broadcasting a world record for the mile at a track event. What kind of sports network misses broadcasting a world record? Roone strode to the center table and threw himself into a chair. He seared his gaze across those present.
The head of ABC Sports, Roone was a perfectionist. Everyone wanted to please Roone, some out of inspiration but most out of fear. Back in the 1970s, sports broadcasting consisted of setting up cameras at a distance from the field to record the action. It was a dry affair with little engagement. Roone came in with an entirely new vision to transport the viewer to the game. He brought in close‐up cameras that put the viewer directly into the action. He introduced instant replays. One of Roone's most famous creations was Monday Night Football.
Roone also viewed his work as more important than the people he worked with. When employees underperformed, he tore into them. If the setup didn't meet his exacting standards, he forced everyone to work through the night redoing the production.
In the early‐morning meeting, Roone launched into a scathing rebuke for missing the world‐record event. The force of his words rattled the window shades. You can imagine how everyone in that room felt. Here was a lion on the lookout for its next kill. The scent of blood hung in the air. Roone demanded to know who was at fault for missing the world record.
There's an old adage about getting ahead in life – associate yourself with wins and distance yourself from failures. No one made eye contact with Roone. Some senior staff turned to face away. The room swelled with silence. Then from the furthest corner, a single hand rose up. The hand belonged to a junior 20‐something‐year‐old boy responsible for securing broadcasting rights. The boy's name was Bob Iger, the future CEO of The Walt Disney Company.1
Own Up
If success is about associating with wins and distancing from failures, why did Bob Iger take the blame for missing the world record? And how did Roone react? My first thought was that Bob had strong morals. In America we're taught the story of George Washington. When George was no more than six years old, he received a hatchet as a gift. Little George promptly used the hatchet to cut down his father's cherry tree. After his father confronted him, George confessed that he cut down the tree. His father was proud of George for his honesty.2
Many children grow up with the belief that if we're good, we'll be rewarded just as George Washington was rewarded with his father's pride. We take this mindset into business where we expect our good deeds to promote us to powerful positions. But if we're truly honest, few of us associate power with being good little boys and girls. Often we hear idioms about power such as the weak are meat; the strong do eat. The path to power is a Machiavellian climb that shuns morality and crushes those in the way. But reputation matters. In a world that depends on collaboration, no one trusts self‐serving egotists. Neither the illusion of gain through goodness nor the screw‐your‐neighbor ethos offers us insight into personal power.
To understand personal power, first we must explore how powerful people relate to the world. What is their power rooted in? Only by understanding the roots can we understand the fruit. This led me to my first counterintuitive discovery.
Let's say you manage a team of employees and your company just issued a salary freeze. You can't give anyone on your team a raise. A group of managers explained how each of them would share the news of a hypothetical salary freeze to their teams.3 Their responses fell into two categories. Some managers attributed the cause of the salary freeze to something external like the environment. For example, some managers blamed a weak consumer market. Other managers attributed the cause to something within their control. For example, some managers said they could have highlighted the team's accomplishments better to senior leadership. Overall, those who blamed the environment dodged the bullet, while those who blamed themselves took the hit.
How would you break the bad news to your subordinates?
Responses from the group were collected, and then a second group of managers was invited to rate the perceived power of the first group's responses. What explanations received the highest ratings? When the data were analyzed, the results were surprising. Managers who attributed the cause of the salary freeze to themselves were rated more positive than those who placed the blame on something external. Managers who blamed the freeze on something outside their control were seen as less powerful, were rated as less believable, and ultimately were less liked. These results were replicated in two follow‐up studies. For example, when people read a scenario in which two consultants lost a client, the consultant who said they did not work hard enough was rated significantly more powerful than the consultant who blamed the failure on the client's excessive demands. It pays to take the hit.
When we think of someone who holds power, they control people and resources. Their relationship with the world is one in which they have control. This feeling of control is fundamental to personal power. For example, powerful people are more likely to believe they can influence the flip of a coin or the roll of a die, even though these outcomes are pure chance.4 Voters who feel personal power are more likely to believe their vote counts, whereas voters who lack personal power feel that their vote is irrelevant. Because what happens feels like it's within their control, powerful people take responsibility for the outcome of events. Taking responsibility is the natural response of someone with power. We don't need to have formal power to feel in control. Personal power represents our relationship to the world regardless of whether we have real control or not.
When I sat down to speak with ExxonMobil Vice President Bill Colton, he said that getting promoted at his company requires more than technical competence. The most important quality is responsibility – did that person do what they said they would do, and did they own up to their mistakes? Taking responsibility is common practice among ExxonMobil leadership. The presidents of each division start senior staff presentations with current issues, highlighting the worst things that happened recently. The executives know that to earn the room's respect, they must lead with what they did wrong before they discuss what they did right.
Blaming and making excuses are the opposite behaviors of control. Blame implies a lack of control over the environment, which in turn implies a lack of power. In blaming, blamers acknowledge their impotence over the situation. We lack respect for people who blame not because of their values, but because they subconsciously communicate their lack of control. Dodging the bullet comes at the cost of losing one's power.
Another interesting finding from the salary freeze research is that the higher managers were in the hierarchy, the more negatively they were viewed when blaming. When we're at the bottom of the hierarchy, it's assumed we lack power and so we suffer less consequence when blaming outside forces. But expectations go up for leaders as they rise in status. When we're at the top, the expectation is we are responsible for all that occurs.
Tesla's Model X was the first electric SUV to hit the streets, and the release was a big step forward for the company. The launch was a success, but several mistakes were made, including too many customizable features that slowed deliveries. Elon Musk addressed the launch later, saying “The big mistake we made with the X, which primarily was my responsibility, was having way too much complexity right at the beginning. That was very foolish.”5
After ABC Sports failed to broadcast the world record, Roone Arledge was furious. When Roone demanded to know whose fault it was, Bob Iger raised his hand. As Bob explained it, after he owned up to the mistake that morning, his words were followed by silence. A deep silence during which Roone stared at him. And then … the conversation moved on. Afterwards no one could believe Bob took credit for the mistake. But one thing did change. After that morning, Bob said Roone treated him differently. With more respect.
Was Roone impressed because Bob was a good honest boy? Of course not. Roone valued results. Bob conveyed that he had the power to deliver them. Bob might have failed in this instance, but by accepting responsibility he conveyed that the failure was within his control to correct.
Part of what contributes to feeling in control is what psychologists call an internal Locus of Control.6 The Locus of Control is not about formal control over the world per se, it's about control over ourselves. Those with an internal Locus of Control feel in control of their behavior and free to act as they choose. This feeling is deeply personal and arises internally.
Conversely, those with an external Locus of Control believe that their actions are influenced by the outside world. They see the outcomes of their actions as resulting from external forces such as chance, luck, or the pressure of others. Because those with an external Locus of Control feel what happens is out of their control, they naturally blame. People who blame do not have worse values than those who take responsibility, they simply have a different relationship with the world from the absence of experiencing control. Thus, blaming not only diminishes our personal power in the eyes of others, it diminishes our power in our own eyes because we concede a lack of control over our lives.
There are other ways than blame that people deal with the feeling of not being in control. Sometimes those who feel out of control try to overly‐control things. They become dominators or micromanagers. Peter Belmi and Jeff Pfeffer explored how different people react to being reminded of their own mortality.7 Being reminded of impending and inevitable death can make us feel out of control and bring up anxiety. In order to manage that anxiety, Peter and Jeff observed that men were more likely to manipulate others in order to regain a feeling of control.* In follow‐up research, Peter and Jeff found that people with greater personal power felt less anxiety when reminded of death, making them less likely to act out.
When we are thirsty, we anxiously grasp for water. When we are abundantly hydrated, there is no thirst. The same perspective applies to control. A sense of control is not a need for control. Those who thirst for control are precisely those who feel it the least.*
