The paths to power: How to grow your influence and advance your career | Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford)

1. 0:00 – 2:54

   Jeffrey’s background

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky0:00

      We're going to be talking about how to grow your power.

   2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer0:02

      The reason why you should pay attention to this is 'cause it leads to a lot of good things: salary, getting promoted, being happy in your career, being less stressed.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky0:11

      You're not describing how the world should work. It's... This is just how it is.

   4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer0:15

      Not only is, but how it was and how it will be.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky0:20

      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, what you did to get there will be forgiven, forgotten, or both.

   6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer0:32

      This is not about personality. These are skills that can be mastered.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky0:35

      People might be hearing this and they're like, "I don't want to be this person."

   8. JPJeffrey Pfeffer0:38

      Well, you already have done a fabulous job of illustrating principle one. That is one way in which we get in our own way. 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.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky0:52

      The opening quote to your book that I have here, "If you want power to be used for good, more good people need to have power."

   10. JPJeffrey Pfeffer0:58

       That's exactly right.

   11. NANarrator0:59

       (instrumental music)

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03

       Today my guest is Jeffrey Pfeffer. Jeffrey is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and teaches one of the two most popular and oversubscribed courses in all of the MBA 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, get things done and advance in your career. As one student described the class, "It's the cod liver oil 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 in action and the impact it has had on people's lives, why it isn't as cringey or scary as you may think. I was actually nervous to have this conversation and I ended up being a huge fan of Jeffrey and 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 Pfeffer. Jeffrey, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

   13. JPJeffrey Pfeffer2:36

       Thank you, Lenny. I am honored that you invited me on.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky2:40

       I am even more honored that you decided to come on. We're gonna be talking about something that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I think it's gonna make me uncomfortable. We're gonna be talking about how to grow your power, in life and in business.

2. 2:54 – 4:56

   Understanding discomfort with power

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky2:54

      Let me just start by asking, why does this stuff make people uncomfortable and why is it still important for people to learn how to do this well?

   2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer3:02

      Well, it's important because a guy named Gerald Ferris, uh, de- developed a scale of kind of political skill and a bunch of... He, he and a bunch of his colleagues over the years did a lot of empirical research that demonstrates 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 'cause it leads to a lot of good things. The w- 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?

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky3:44

      There's a lot of things here that are probably not, uh, how people wanna, wanna live their life necessarily or want other people to act.

   4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer3:51

      Yeah. So I th- I think it makes people uncomfortable because the realities of what it takes to get power bear almost no resemblance to what you're taught in Sunday school or the mosque or wherever, how your parents raised you. They bear almost no resemblance to how we think the world ought to be. Um, and then they bear little resemblance, you know, to, to our aspirations. And I think we look around the world and we see people who have acquired enormous amounts of power and have 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, you can take a screwdriver and stab it into somebody's belly. I, I have a very dear friend who we'll probably talk about later in the podcast, Laura Esserman, who's a breast cancer surgeon, and I tell people, "Laura has a knife. She uses it to, uh, to cure cancer. Muggers have knives. They use it to rob people." So, so the i- so I think we have confused the tool for how it has been used.

3. 4:56 – 7:51

   Power skills for underrepresented groups

   1. JPJeffrey Pfeffer4:56

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky4:56

      You also have this quote that "the people who need to understand power and build their power skills are people who come from backgrounds or characteristics who would normally put them at a disadvantage."

   3. JPJeffrey Pfeffer5:04

      I think that's exactly right. You know, I, I, I will go... I will go this Sunday, uh, to Nashville, Tennessee to talk, uh, to a bunch of people of color in the NFL who are trying to rise up the ranks. And I... You know, the Stanford runs a program 'cause the NFL is serious, I think, about trying to ma- make more opportunity for people, underrepresented minorities, and... But it, but th- these are folks who will not succeed unless they learn power skills because the world is stacked against them in lots of ways.

   4. NANarrator5:39

      (instrumental music)

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky5:41

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4. 7:51 – 12:21

   The popularity and challenges of Jeffrey’s class at Stanford

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky7:51

      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 talk, you also have this whole huge bold phrase, "This class is not for everyone." Can you just talk a bit about maybe why it's not for everyone, and then why that being less judgmental is important?

   2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer8:07

      I mean, the class is extremely popular. I have a long waiting list. It's kind of mythical. And because of the principle of social influence, you know, we, we are influenced by what other people do. We're influencing our choices of restaurants, we're influencing our choices of music. You know, I'm not sure I like Taylor Swift, but I certainly want to go see Taylor Swift because everybody else is. Um, you know, and many people sign up for the class. And one year in particular, there were some people who sat in 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 go 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, so I'm trying to get the class, given the huge waiting list, I'm trying to get the class to have people in it who are in fact going to benefit from it, rather than sit there and look like, um, look, uh, look like they're in pain. And the judgmental thing, you know, if... Matthew 7, "Judge not that ye be not judged." The Quran says only Allah can judge people. The American poet Walt Whitman said, "Be curious, not judgmental." Mother Teresa said, "If you judge people, you have no time to love them." Judgment... If I, if I need to build a positive relationship with Lenny, because you are on my critical path in my job, and jobs n- 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, d- dumb, incompetent, immoral, whatever, my ability to build a positive relationship with you and you are, you remain on my critical path, becomes almost zero, unless you're a better actor or I'm a better actor than I think most people are. So therefore, you should suspend judgment in, 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- they have a skill that you cannot tell what they think of you. And, and that's important because, because I, I, I need your collaboration. I need your cooperation. And, and if I leak out, you know, in ways that say, "I don't respect you," 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 the judgmental story. Does that make sense?

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky11:21

      Absolutely. And I have a quote from your syllabus along these lines. "Not everyone we encounter in Paths to Power is someone you're going to want to emulate. This is a class about how to get things done, how to build and wield influence. And there are multiple ways to accomplish these objectives."

   4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer11:35

      Yeah.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky11:35

      Yeah. So I've had two friends actually go through the course. One, I asked about- 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 sugar- sugarcoat life. It told her how the world really works and it is helping her succeed with her startup right now.

   6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer12:00

      ... I'm- thank you. That's- there is no higher praise than that. I mean- I mean, you know, I actually don't read, I shouldn't probably say this in public, but I don't actually read my course evaluations, because the impact I wanna have is not to have people like me, but to have that kind of impact, to make people more successful, more effective in their lives.

5. 12:21 – 13:03

   The seven rules of power

   1. JPJeffrey Pfeffer12:22

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky12:22

      I, uh... That is a- is a good segue to one of your rules of power, so let's just talk about your seven rules of power. Uh, I actually have your book right here and if folks were 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, 'cause 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 gonna dive into a few of them. Does that sound good?

   3. JPJeffrey Pfeffer12:44

      That sounds perfect.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky12:45

      Okay, so the seven rules. One, get out of your own way.

   5. JPJeffrey Pfeffer12:47

      Absolutely.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky12:48

      Two, break the rules. Three, appear powerful. Four, build a powerful brand. Network relentlessly. Use your power. And success excuses almost.

   7. JPJeffrey Pfeffer13:01

      Everything, correct.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky13:02

      Oh, okay.

6. 13:03 – 15:43

   Success stories from his course

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky13:03

      Succ- success excuses everything almost. Got it. Okay, so let me start with power four, which is around personal brand, and the reason I wanna start here is I have a friend that's actually in your class right now, Raf, and I saw that he started a podcast and he told me that he did it because it was, uh, part of the homework that you give students. You call it, um, Doing Power? Is that the name of the homework assignments?

   2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer13:25

      Yeah. I- I have... So we give them a bunch of assignments throughout the class, which are self-reflective assignments, but their big thing for the class is they have to do power. They have to do something during the quarter to take the principles of the class and what they're learning and put them into practice, and that is because, you know, everything I do, I 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, in about, uh, 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, uh, to do something with it.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky14:06

      While we're on this tangent, 'cause I wanted to talk about this whole... You have a book, The Doing-Knowing Gap, right?

   4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer14:11

      The Knowing-Doing Gap, yep.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky14:13

      The Knowing-Doing Gap. So let's just spend a little time there, 'cause I think that's really important. What are some examples of things that have come out of people doing these homework assignments, things that maybe led to something interesting?

   6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer14:22

      Let me take my most extreme example. My most extreme example is probably Derrick Kan, K-A-N, and Derrick Kan 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... It was Mitt Romney who was running for president, to be head of economic policy for the Romney campaign.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky14:51

      Wow.

   8. JPJeffrey Pfeffer14:52

      Believe it or not, he was offered the job. Believe it or 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 Elaine Chao. 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 $6 trillion US budget. This is six years out of business school.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky15:35

      I- I was thinking whether he got that during his class. Uh, amazing. Um, okay, so this is a- a success story of doing power.

7. 15:43 – 21:11

   Building a personal brand

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky15:43

      Let's talk about this first power of building brand, and I think this is where people start to feel uncomfortable. They're gonna be like, "Oh, no, I don't want to be doing this. Why?"

   2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer15:50

      Why?

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky15:50

      "This doesn't feel good to me." So let's- let's talk about it.

   4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer15:53

      Okay.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky15:54

      Let's see. So talk about this power of building a personal brand.

   6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer15:58

      There are, by definition, fewer positions at the top than at the bottom. The world, we might not like this, and I know people, you know, the late Tony Hsieh at Zappos tried to do, you know, Holacracy 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 than- than 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 gonna promote Lenny if they don't know who the hell you are. So it is- it is not sufficient for them to know who you are. They have to know that you're smart and personable and have whatever skills 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 do. 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, the 25 billion podcasts. You know, when I- when I think of somebody in McKinsey or Bain or BCG, one of the consulting firms, a gazillion people start off as fron- frontline consultants. What are you gonna do so that somebody knows who you are? What are you gonna do that creates value for the firm and for you? So my friend Keith Ferrazzi, when he started at Deloitte Consulting, did not do the spreadsheet stuff that 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 Deloitte's brand recognition from about 1 or 2% to 30%. He was appointed, though he left before he actually took the job, to the position of partner and the first chief market- marketing officer at Deloitte. I have another friend, Tristan Walker, who wanted to get hired at Foursquare...... you know, he, he, he sent emails to the founder. The found- 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, "Holy God, he's signed with Starbucks. Maybe I oughta hire this guy." So, so you have to do something that causes people to, to know who you are, and that is what building a brand is about.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky18:36

      It sounds very benign, uh, put that way. When people hear, "I need to build a personal brand," it sounds like, "I need to post on LinkedIn. I need to post on Twitter, start a newsletter, start a podcast," which I know is a kind of a part of it, but what are some examples you've seen of ways to build a personal brand that are effective?

   8. JPJeffrey Pfeffer18:50

      So I have a friend who I bring to the class, uh, a lovely, tall, Asian woman named Laura Chow, who made partner at a venture capital firm after four years, which is fast. Laura we- works for Canaan Partners, C-A-N-A-A-N. Laura said, "I do not work for Andreessen 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 gonna have to know who Laura Chow is." Because again, you're not gonna get the deal if nobody knows who you are. And so she basically did everything you talked about. She wro- she would, she did writing. She started a podcast in which she invited influential people on. 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 Laura Chow.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky20:04

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JPJeffrey Pfeffer20:04

       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, the tallest Asian woman they'd ever seen. She wears heels. In her heels, she's six feet one inches tall. She also, when she comes to my class, many people come to my class in hoodies and God knows what. She has style and it's a unique style. So she thinks about very strategically, "How am I gonna dress? How am I gonna look? How am I gonna show up? How am I gonna do what I need to do so that people know who I am?" Sh- obviously, there's 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've got.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky20:56

       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, pointing people to it.

   12. JPJeffrey Pfeffer21:10

       Absolutely. Absolutely.

8. 21:11 – 26:04

   Getting out of your own way

   1. JPJeffrey Pfeffer21:11

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky21:11

      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.

   3. JPJeffrey Pfeffer21:20

      Well, you already have done a fabulous job of illustrating principle one by talking about how this is the topic that makes people uncomfortable, and wh- when something makes people uncomfortable, in general, they're gonna shy away from it. So if I think power is dirty, if I think power is evil, if I think power is something I want noth- I want nothing to do with, the first thing that's gonna happen is I'm not gonna do what I need to do to be successful in my career. So that is one way in which we get I- in our own way. Another way in which we get in our own way, many people suffer from what is called, in the psychology literature, imposter syndrome. They believe that they were the admissions mistake at Stanford. They were the hiring mistake at whatever company they're working for, that somehow they got to this job but they don't really deserve to be there because they're surrounded by people who are smarter and better, and therefore, they will do things which I can't even believe that just goes on. And so I will have students, not many but a few, they'll raise their hand. I will call them, and the first things out of their mouth will be, "I don't know if this comment is gonna be useful." This is called peremptory apology. Don't... You know, if the comment's not gonna be useful, don't say it. That 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, the... Stop all this apologizing. If you got the job you're in, you well probably are not only qualified, you're probably overqualified. So don't use descriptors of yourself that disempower you. Don't think of yourself as 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 deserved the job, then maybe I shouldn't think he deserves the job either."

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky23:19

      So basically, the first power is you're shooting yourself in the foot by worrying too much about whether people like you. This, uh, friend of mine who's now the founder that I read some quotes from, she said her number one takeaway from your class is, "If you wanna be liked, get a dog."

   5. JPJeffrey Pfeffer23:32

      That's correct. That, that is a quote from my dear friend Gary Loveman, who for many years ran, uh, Harrah's which then became Caesars, the casino company.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky23:43

      You also talk about this, yeah, there's this quote I have, "Acknowledge that others are often no better than you."

   7. JPJeffrey Pfeffer23:48

      Yep.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky23:49

      'Cause that makes you feel better about this So for people that actually want to be liked, I like being liked, like a, I don't know if it's a flaw in my, in my upbringing. Is there, is the lesson you can't, you, there's you're capped on your power if you worry about if you want to be liked?

   9. JPJeffrey Pfeffer24:05

      At the end of the day, you don't wanna be, you don't wanna be intentionally disliked. You don't wanna violate my dear friend Bob Sutton's book, The No Asshole Rule, and gratuitously be an asshole. But you are hired...... to do, to get a job done. You know, it's interesting. I unfortunately am now too old. In the words of my chiropractor, I'm suffering from too many birthdays. So I, I, I, I have a lot of doctors who are doing a great job. Trust me, when I choose a doctor, I... you know, I have a... unfortunately he retired, a neurosurgeon who did two, did two surgeries on my spine. He's considered to be one of the top 20 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 microsurgery on my spine. I can wind up 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 get appointed to be a head coach, if you... if we make you a quarterback on an NFL team or we make you, you know, center on a Na- National Basketball Association team, you know, you would... you did not get that job because people thought you had a cute 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.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky25:46

       So one simple way of thinking about this which makes me feel better about... like, as we talk through this, I'm becoming less uncomfortable with these, which is a good sign. It's don't actively try to be disliked. It's don't prioritize being liked. Prioritize competence and respect-

   11. JPJeffrey Pfeffer25:59

       Correct. Absolutely.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky26:00

       ... and getting... and doing the thing that needs to be done.

   13. JPJeffrey Pfeffer26:03

       Absolutely.

9. 26:04 – 30:34

   Breaking the rules to gain power

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky26:04

      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, what that looks like.

   2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer26:18

      Ah, well, for many reasons. 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, uh, 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 incumbents. In Southwest 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, but you optimize on suit- on fitting local taste, whatever. You would be a disruptor. You would do things that are different. The same principle holds for you, that if you're going to be successful, you have to do what, number one, plays to your strengths, to use the title of a Gallup book. Number two, you have to do... you have to do things again that cause you to stand out, and you have to do things that basically, you know, will make you more successful. One of the conventional wisdoms that people, I think, adhere 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 overestimate how many people they're gonna have to ask to get help, and it turns out asking for help makes people uncomfortable. But when you... you know, I was married, you know, and so if you, if you read the acknowledgments in, um, uh, Seven Rules of Power, for more than 35 years, I was married to Kathleen Frances Fowler, who I could send you a picture. I mean, she looked literally like a supermodel, and I didn't... I never have been any particularly better looking than I am now. So somebody said to me, "How'd you get her to go out with you?" And the answer, of course, is, "I asked."

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky28:28

      Power.

   4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer28:29

      I asked. 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 that could happen? If you ask and they say no, you are no worse off than had you not asked in the first place, 'cause if you don't ask, you're not going to get it. If you ask and they say no, you're not gonna get it. Get over your ego, ask.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky28:59

      Is there another example that comes to mind of someone breaking the rules, say, in business that ended up being really successful as a result, or just someone that is really good at this in business?

   6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer29:07

      I c- I can give you many examples. One of my favorite examples would be Jason Calacanis. I don't know if you know Jason.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky29:14

      Oh, yeah. I know you did a case study on him.

   8. JPJeffrey Pfeffer29:16

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky29:16

      I know him well. Yeah, yeah.

   10. JPJeffrey Pfeffer29:17

       Yeah, yeah, and so, and so I think Jason... Jason, I think, consistently breaks all kinds of rules. First of all, when he comes to my class, nobody likes him, but that's, uh, that's okay. Almost nobody likes him. But, you know, I-

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky29:30

       He's... that's power number one. He's not worried about that.

   12. JPJeffrey Pfeffer29:32

       Yeah, that's... that's number one. But, but also, I think there's a conventional wisdom in the venture capital industry, uh, which he defies almost completely. You know, he makes a lot of little bets, not a few big bets. He is, um... 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, being a journalist is 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 gonna wind up incredibly smart and incredibly insightful, and he wound up incredibly smart and insightful around aspects of the internet industry.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky30:23

       And he definitely has a lot of power. It is, I think that... I'm gonna link to the case study in our show notes where you basically walk through how he went from nothing to a very powerful person.

   14. JPJeffrey Pfeffer30:31

       And by the way, a very rich person as well.

10. 30:34 – 40:10

    Networking relentlessly

    1. JPJeffrey Pfeffer30:34

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky30:34

       Let's talk about another power, power five, networking relentlessly. What does that look like and how do you get better at this?

    3. JPJeffrey Pfeffer30:42

       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, um, uh, which is a book about how to put on events that people want to come to, a- and is a fabulous human being, will tell you that the first principle of networking is in fact generosity. It is 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 gonna 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 your 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.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky31:53

       It's funny to hear this where it's like, yes, this, like, obviously this is right, but connecting it to if you want to become more 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.

    5. JPJeffrey Pfeffer32:10

       Of course. I have a funny story about networking. So, we have a thing at Stanford called View from the Top in which these fancy people come in and give a talk, and one of the people who came in and gave a talk and made my class instantly popular, 'cause he's a extraordinarily wealthy person, his name is Omid Kordestani. And so I said, I reached out to him, I said, "Omid, let's have breakfast so I can understand," 'cause the, during the thing when he, somebody asked him what class was the most important in his success, he said, "Mine." So I said, "Well, so tell, tell me your story." He said, "Well, you know, I, I graduated from Stanford, I'm Persian in background, immigrant background, an 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," uh, the browser company, big deal. Anyway, Marc Andreessen.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky33:07

       Yeah. Oh, yeah.

    7. JPJeffrey Pfeffer33:08

       "Okay, so I, I found myself at 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, 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 networking, first with 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 number 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 networked first within Netscape." But Netscape was not that big a company. So after a while, he decided to go through, which is by the way his job anyway in marketing and biz dev, he decided to basically drive through the Silicon Valley talking to people. And this is, you know, the brow- so browsers are just beginning. Nobody knows what a browser is, nobody knows what the internet is gonna 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 who went to work for a company, ran a company had 26 people, he didn't have one sales and marketing person. Anyway, the company's now has 10 engineers, they decide they need to hire their first business person. Being an analytically oriented company, they say, "We're gonna do this very analytically. We are basically gonna ask everybody we can think of, and a few people we can't, give us a list of the best technically oriented business people that you know." And there is of course one name that appears on every list. It is Omid Kordestani, who becomes employee number 11 at Google and makes two and a half billion dollars.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky35:12

       Great, great success from networking. Uh, well done. 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 just how to make networking feel less cringy?

    9. JPJeffrey Pfeffer35:28

       One of the exercises I give my students is, you know, I say, "Write a list of 10 people who, if you knew them, and if they knew 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 executives in biotech or whatever. Make a list of 10 people. Then for each person, figure out how you're going to meet them. You know, and by the way, not necessarily at a networking event. Maybe, maybe you want to do what John Levy does, which is hold dinners, in which, by the way, the guests do the cooking, which is a very interesting idea. That, of course, taps into the IKEA effect, you always like something better if you participated in creating it. Maybe you want to hold dinners. Maybe you want to hold, um, maybe you want to try, try to reach out to them at lunch. Maybe you want to reach out to them and say, "Here's an article I think you'd be interested in. Here is, here is somebody who I think you'd benefit from meeting."You know, so recently, I mean, I'm not a particularly good networker, though I'm better, I guess, than some people. I recently met Esther Wojcicki. I'm sure I, you know, killed her name. She's considered the grandmother of Silicon Valley. She's Susan Wojcicki's, uh, mother. And she is interested in depression, uh, particularly depression among teenagers. And I said, "You should know Leanne Williams, who's in the psychiatry and 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, uh, I just sent an email. "I think you ought to know each other." They got together. I get, I get credit for knowing people and connecting them, but I also benefit then. Uh, Leanne needs to raise money. Esther's got money. Uh, Esther needs to understand the cutting edge research in, in depression and the biomarkers of depression, which is what Leanne's specialty is. So, they benefit. So, this is not, this is not some icky thing. This is connecting people who benefit from being connected.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky37:38

        That touches on something you teach in the book, is 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, what that means?

    11. JPJeffrey Pfeffer37:47

        Well, yeah. Well, that means you want to connect people. So, many people would benefit and many groups would being, would being, would benefit from being connected and they're not connecting. What does a venture capitalist do? Connects people with ideas to people with money-

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky38:01

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JPJeffrey Pfeffer38:01

        ... and takes a fee for doing it. What does an investment banker do? Connects people trying to sell businesses or raise capital with people trying to buy businesses or who have capital. What's a real estate agent do? Connects buyers and sellers of houses. I mean, there are all kinds of examples where persons in the, where the person's entire job is connecting people. But even for the people whose job it isn't, you know, you, you, 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, call it what you will, is getting things done through other people, it seems like common sense that the more other people you know, the more you'll be able to get done.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky38:44

        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, uh, 1,000% this, uh, creates a lot of opportunity and "power," you could say, in, in quotes. So, I've seen it happen.

    15. JPJeffrey Pfeffer39:01

        Of course.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky39:03

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11. 40:10 – 42:00

    Why Jeffrey says to “pursue weak ties”

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky40:10

       Another lesson, I guess, you teach is to pursue weak ties. Talk a bit about what that means. What do you mean by that?

    2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer40:14

       Well, the people to whom you are strongly tied, your family, your spouse, significant other, your friends, your work, the people who work with you at work, will 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 in every dimension, you are more likely to learn non-redundant information and come in contact with people that you don't already know. This, again, seems common sense. There's a lot of research behind it. Uh, Mark Granovetter, a sociologist who still teaches at Stanford, wrote a book entitled The Strength of Weak Ties, a-and that's... And, and basically... Uh, no, actually, pardon. He wrote an article called The Strength of Weak Ties. His book was called Getting a Job, and he did a study, I guess it 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, um, and 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 th- that people got were referred to them by people that were not particularly close to them, because they had... They had... They, they had a... A view. That's the word I was looking for. A view into the ecosystem of the Boston labor market that the other people didn't have because they weren't in the same place as the other people.

12. 42:00 – 44:34

    Using your power to build more power

    1. JPJeffrey Pfeffer42:00

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky42:00

       I love that lesson. Let's talk about another power, which is using your power. So, when some people think of using your power builds more power, I would... 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?

    3. JPJeffrey Pfeffer42:16

       Sure. Um, so when you are given... You know, it's interesting. My friend, Deborah Gruenfeld, who wrote a book called Acting with Power, talks a lot about people's ambivalence to power. So, sometimes people are put in a job. Herminia Ibarra, who teaches now at London Business School, at one point taught at INSEAD, at one point taught at Harvard,... has an article in the Harvard Business Review in which he talks about a woman in a drug company who gets a promotion and says to her colleagues, who, to whom she's now o- overseeing, uh, that she's not sure she, why she got the job. She's not sure she deserves the job. Needless to say, she didn't do very well in the job because she got in her own way. But part of this is, you are put in a position of, 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, 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 gonna give you a, a job to do if the last five jobs like that they gave you, you couldn't get done.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky43:33

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JPJeffrey Pfeffer43:33

       So the more you're able to do, which of course, oftentimes 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.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky43:48

       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-

    7. JPJeffrey Pfeffer43:55

       Yep.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky43:55

       ... follow your lead more, right? That's a part of this.

    9. JPJeffrey Pfeffer43:57

       Yep. I just saw over the weekend the, uh, movie, uh, the latest, the movie in the franchise of the Planet of the Apes. It's, you know... When Jim Collins left Stanford, he gave me a book called Chimpanzee Politics, which is of course not based on the Planet of the Apes, but it's based upon the study of chimpanzees. We are the same.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky44:17

        Ah, hmm.

    11. JPJeffrey Pfeffer44:17

        People are, people are attracted to power. You know that.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky44:20

        Yep.

    13. JPJeffrey Pfeffer44:21

        By the way, that will account for a lot of what is gonna happen in the presidential election.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky44:26

        Let's save that for the end, 'cause I think that's an interesting piece of your book of the connection to Trump. So let's save that for a bit. And I think that'll be really interesting.

13. 44:34 – 47:15

    The importance of appearance and body language

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky44:34

       Kind of along the same lines of the area we were just talking about, and one other, another rule of power is to show up in a powerful fashion. So look powerful. Talk about what that looks like.

    2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer44:43

       So my colleague at, uh, Berkeley, Dana Carney, C-A-R-N-E-Y, is writing a book called Tell, which is about the importance of body language and how to master body language. There is some evidence that suggests we respond mostly to how people look, secondarily to how they sound, and by far the least important to the content of what they say. You can see this by turning on your TV and turning off the sound. Uh, watch the presidential debates with the sound off. They'll be much better. I have another colleague in marketing by the name of Baba Shiv, um, who talks about people's freaky mind or, you know, the i- 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 affectively to other people. We respond, we respond to how they look. You know, there's evidence in economics that suggests tall people earn more salaries, control, earn more money, controlling for a bunch of things. Attractive people, as long as you're not too attractive, you earn more money. There's an optimal level of attractiveness. Because, because people respond subconsciously to how people look, how they sound, um, how they show up, how they present themselves. In my class, I take the example of Tony Hayward of BP and Macondo oil spill and Lloyd Blankfein, 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, in Lloyd's case, 34 seconds, with no sound. And even if you did not know who these people were and I asked you to make a bet who's gonna keep their job and who's gonna lose it, you would know just from their physical appearance.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky46:37

       I love that.

    4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer46:39

       And by, and by the way, what Dana Carney will tell you and what common sense will tell you is that these are skills that can be mastered. Robert De Niro was not born Robert De Niro, in the sense of a- you know, acting skills are learned, how you show up, how you command the room. There's a guy named Regis McKenna who is older than God, 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 made Steve Jobs Steve Jobs.

14. 47:15 – 55:12

    Mastering the art of presentation

    1. JPJeffrey Pfeffer47:15

       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 McKenna 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, you know, undergoing some kind of cosmetic surgery or whatever. This is so, these are skills, everything we've talked about, networking, showing up, all these things, these are skills that can be learned.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky47:55

       I have a list of some of the stuff you actually recommend for, uh, 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. Uh, don't apologize. It's kind of the opposite. More gestures, which is interesting, open body posture, lou- louder voice. Okay, I'm gonna speak louder now. I like this. Okay. Uh, what else, what else comes to mind as ways to appear powerful?

    3. JPJeffrey Pfeffer48:26

       Invading people's personal space. So gentle touching, standing close to someone.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky48:31

       Oh, yeah.

    5. JPJeffrey Pfeffer48:32

       We're not talking about sexual touching. We're talking a-

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky48:34

       Right.

    7. JPJeffrey Pfeffer48:34

       ... touch on the arm or the shoulder. You know, shaking people's hands, um, that's a, that's a way of, I think, being more powerful. But, uh, you covered the main ones. I mean, eye contact-... a- one of the problems with Tony Hayward of, uh, BP is that they, 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 insincere. Y- you know, so I, you know, so I... Jack Valenti, 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 assistants around me to help me, that I, as the head of the MPAA, understood the motion picture industry..." And then he would give you a little aside about how it was the one industry that consistently had a budget surplus in trade, and he would talk about how many jobs it created, and he had all this stuff at his, his fingertips. But basically, his command of the material made him more powerful. It's interesting. Jack Valenti was five foot two inches tall. And he came, talked 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 as- an- an- an assessment that was both true and insightful. When- when- when the five-foot-two Jack Valenti appeared, because of his presence, because of his body language, because of his Texas drawl, because of his, how he moved on the stage, he felt bigger. You would not say he f- he did not feel five foot two.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky50:54

       Let me read a couple more, 'cause th- that's, this is a good example of stuff he did. Uh, 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-

    9. JPJeffrey Pfeffer51:08

       Well, the way, the way-

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky51:08

        ... you're just pumped up?

    11. JPJeffrey Pfeffer51:09

        Oh, humor. Humor. The-

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky51:10

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JPJeffrey Pfeffer51:10

        ... famous author Salman Rushdie said, and I quote Salman Rushdie, it's a fabulous quote, "If you can get people to laugh, you can tell them anything."

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky51:19

        That's a, yeah, standup comedy is a great example of that. So, again, I think here people might be hearing this, and they're like, "I don't wanna be this person. I don't wanna be talking all the time. I don't wanna be pretending, like open posture." Is, is the advice here just you don't need to do all these things? Just know this is, makes people more powerful? Don't necessarily judge people. Do some of these things maybe, 'cause it'll add to your power. How do you think about just people that are, like turned off by this sort of thing?

    15. JPJeffrey Pfeffer51:44

        It's a wonderful question. So I say to my class on the very first day of class that we will go through four stages. We will go through the stage of denial, "Doesn't work in my culture, doesn't work in my organization, doesn't work for me, doesn't work in my religion," whatever. Then we'll go through anger, where they get angry at me, "How can you teach us this stuff?" Then they'll go through sadness, "I actually believe this, and I'm depressed." And if we're successful, uh, they will go through acceptance. And the process I have, again, you know, I am not, I do not have the most popular class at Stanford Business School because I am good-looking, because I'm the smartest person at Stanford, or anything else. I am strategic about thinking about if I, if I have someone who's gonna come into this class, I have to get them from denial to acceptance in 10 weeks. And how are we gonna do that? And the way, well, the easiest way to do that, if I said, "Lenny, I want you to become a better tennis player or a better rollerblader or a better ice skater, whatever, a better piano player in 10 weeks," what would we do? We'd 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 and 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 a dinner the other night, this Israeli woman who's like, "I've done amazing stuff, amazing, just fabulous." And she said, at the dinner, 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 gonna swim the English Channel tomorrow." If I want you to swim the English Channel, we're gonna 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 gonna network like Keith Ferrazzi or John Levy, or you're not gonna be as bold as Jason Calacanis," who trust me is extraordinarily bold. "You're not gonna necessarily do what..." You're gonna begin where you can begin and push yourself out of your comfort zone, because, and again, this is common sense. There's also a ton of research behind it. If you 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, at the end of 10 weeks lift 100 pounds," I can't do that by, on the last day saying, "Lift 100 pounds." We have to work up to it. And that is ex- it's 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.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky54:49

        There's an interesting connection here to what some say is kind of the opposite of your class at Stanford, which is touchy-feely. We had Carole Robin on the podcast, and she has a framework, the 15%, uh, rule, where you push yourself 15% beyond your comfort zone, where it's just a little bit, but it's not too far. And it feels like you try to do a similar thing.

    17. JPJeffrey Pfeffer55:07

        Yeah, absolutely. So you, you, you, you begin by doing what you don't think you can do.

15. 55:12 – 59:11

    Examples of homework assignments that Jeffrey gives students

    1. JPJeffrey Pfeffer55:12

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky55:12

       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 shared a couple homework assignments you give already. Find 10 people, think of 10 people you want to meet that are helping with their career and then try to meet them, and then there's this, like, "I guess my friends started a podcast." I don't know which homework assignment that was. What other homework assignments do you give?

    3. JPJeffrey Pfeffer55:30

       Uh, so we begin, there's a literature on goal setting that says if you set goals, you're 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 here? Why are you here? It is now the end of this class. What would success look like to you? What would you like to accomplish in our 10 weeks together?" Second assignment, I give them a reading from the b- uh, Power book, which is the book before Seven Rules, which talks about the seven attributes of power. Go out and get people to rate you on these or rate yourself. You set for yourself a development plan. Energy, focus, being willing to tolerate conflict, all the- 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 gonna do it? So we begin with goal setting. One of the assignments I give them, which is the class that Jason comes to, "What resources can you create? You're at Stanford Business School. Elite, fancy, Stanford. What can you do in your 10 weeks here?" I have people who created awards. A woman who created an award. Gave it to, uh, Karlie Kloss to model. Got in trouble with the school. It turns out it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. So, you know, what, what can you do to create resources that will give you some leverage? That would be a third assignment. Then networking is a fourth assignment. The acting with power, I show them the videos and I tell, uh, 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 low bar, uh, th- uh, representing BP, and then, you know, uh, give me a 60 to 90 second video and then share it with colleagues and get feedback on it, and then we're gonna call on people in the class. In other words, for every idea, I try to think of something, and this is, uh, by the way, this is all front-loaded, 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 brand 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 'cause you're a second-year MBA. You're gonna go in the damn job market. What do you want people to think about you? How do they want p- how do you want people to respond to you? How do you want to be known? So I basically take for every topic and have them, have them do it. And then the coach, their person, their coach, who is responsible for 23 of these people, give them feedback on this.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky58:46

       I could see how this, uh, makes a big impact on someone's life.

    5. JPJeffrey Pfeffer58:49

       Yeah, and so at the end, I, I had a student a couple years ago who said to me, "It is not that I got more feedback and more useful feedback from your class than I did in any other class. I got more useful feedback in your class than I did on every other class I took combined."

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky59:09

       I can see why.

16. 59:11 – 1:03:58

    People will forget how you acquired power

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky59:11

       Let's talk about the last power. So we've talked it through six 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 will forget what you did to get there. Talk about what that looks like and, and h- is that, is that a power or is that more just, like, this is what you should know about?

    2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer59:28

       So, and I d- I put in Rule 7 for the following reason. In spite of everything that 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 homeostatic. It is not. You know that it's gonna adjust, but whatever. You know, at the end, you know, at the end, I will be brought low. They have the myth of Icarus in their head. You know, you fly too close to the sun, your wings are gonna melt. You're gonna be brought down. And so I try to convince them partly through a lecture and partly through Rule 7 and some of the principles that I talk about in Rule 7 that, in fact, life is not homeostatic at all, that life is actually self-fulfilling. If I believe you're powerful, you will become more powerful. If I believe you have no power, you will, uh, wind up with almost no power. And that therefore, it is all forgotten and forgiven. 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 acolyte. And The 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, be his, you know, basically have your lips affixed 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, I may not ... You know, this goes back to the judgment. I mean, I like him, I mean, this, that or the other thing. He's the president. If I want to get 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 egomaniacs, it is not a good way to get him on your side, by saying nasty things about him. So, this is, this is the pragmatics. You know, people forget that Bill Gates stole the code on which Microsoft is built. People forget that 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 elite. People forget that Martha Stewart, who served time in jail, has a brand that's never been more valuable. People forget all this stuff. You know, I still remem- remember sitting in the office of someone, whose name I won't use, but I'll use it instead of ... 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, a Jewish man. He's got pictures of him with the Pope. He's got pictures of him with Ronald Reagan. He's got pictures with him with all these people. What is his secret? He, by the way, took a company into bankruptcy. People lost literally billions of dollars. He was fined, he lost money, but he walked away with about $700 million. It turns out $700 million makes you a big deal. Lives in the biggest house in Los Angeles, or 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 and success, and they will overlook your flaws to be close to you.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:18

       Yeah, and again, you talk about this in the book. This 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-

    4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:03:27

       Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:27

       ... in the world that we live in.

    6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:03:28

       A- and, and by the way, this is how the world not only is, but how it was-

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:34

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:03:34

       ... and how it will be.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:36

       Mm-hmm.

    10. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:03:36

        Because these ideas are not something that I sat down one day and made up or something. These ideas, everything that I talk about, including this last one, has social science and logic behind it. So you can explain not only what is, but why it is.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:57

        Mm-hmm.

17. 1:03:58 – 1:10:49

    More good people need to have power

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:58

       So let's talk about Trump for a bit. At the beginning of your book, you say that basically you were 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.

    2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:04:16

       That's correct. By the way, not 'cause he read the book, but because he does it, you know, through trial and error or something.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:22

       So when people hear that, they're like, "I don't want to be Trump. I don't like how Trump is. I don't want to be seen that way." Do you have any thoughts on just how to make people feel comfortable, uh, following some of these powers and building power knowing that, oh wow, maybe he's the epitome of some of this stuff?

    4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:04:38

       I will tell you a story. In 1993, a woman named Laura Esserman, 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. I... Laura Esserman 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 eviscerate her because she is incredibly smart, incredibly well-intentioned, but she will not network. She says, "I don't have time for schmoozing." She will not do almost any of the stuff that we talk about today. So she and her husband, Michael Endicott, two of my closest friends in the world, and I go out to lunch afterwards, and smoke is coming out of her ears. And (laughs) she is pissed off and this is a very accomplished woman and a very smart woman, and she's pissed. I said to her, "Laura, you have boundless energy and boundless intelligence. You're a force of nature. Let me discuss something from the past, subject of physics. You are creating friction. With enough force, you can overcome the friction. If you reduce the friction, just think how much more you can accomplish." And she looked at me and changed. And I will tell you, and I've said this publicly, uh, 'cause I get to introduce her for all the awards she's won and she's now won a ton of them.... in- including Time Magazine 2016 list of 100 most influential people in the world. And I say to people, and I say it with pride, that of all the things I've done in my life, the thing I'm most proud of, the most proudest of, is creating Laura Esserman.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:07:20

       That is an awesome story, and a really good way of thinking about this from a different angle.

    6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:07:24

       Yeah. No, I mean, and, and she, you know... So I said to... Basically, I said to Laura, 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 treatments that are being given to people. You want to make profound changes in the connection between research and teaching, you know, research and, and practice. You want to, you want to do all these things. If you, 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 has accomplished incredible things. She's won every cancer award to, 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 from the Susan Komen Foundation, who she fought with.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:20

       This is a, an incredible example of the opening quote to your book that I have here. "If you want power to be used for good, more good people need to have power."

    8. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:08:28

       That's exactly right.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:30

       And I like the... It's, like, a quote atributed- attributed to me inside you.

    10. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:08:33

        (laughs)

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:34

        Attributed.

    12. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:08:34

        Yeah. Well, I, I don't remember saying it, but somebody said I said it, so I'll take credit for it. You know, I, I said to Laura, "You want to change medicine? Medicine is not gonna change without the application of power and influence. If change was gonna happen, it would've happened already. I mean, you have to take on entrenched interests." She has a whole thing, which we need not go into 'cause it's pretty technical, on screening. You know, she says, "Everybody's getting a mammogram every year, at beyond a certain age," which is stupid, uh, for a variety of reasons. You can read, she was on the CB- uh, PBS NewsHour about this. You know, this is what got her in trouble with the radiologist. The radiologists, of course, still are selling screening. She said, "There's some people that need to be screened every month, and there's some people that need to be screened never because of their genetics." And so, you know, she wants custom tailored screening, or precision screening. Anyway, you could... She's, she fights everybody. Richard Blum, Dianne Feinstein's husband, both Dianne and Richard Blum are now deceased, was at a thing where she launched the Athena Project. The Athena Project, she is now, uh, with her collaborators collecting data on the diagnosis and treatment and outcome for 150,000 patients in the University of California healthcare system. So, I'm supposed to give some opening talk and to be, provide entertainment, and Dick Blum is there. Dick Blum, of course, is wealthy. He's Dianne Feinstein's husband. I said to him, "Dick, how did Laura get you here?" And I still remember, I think this is a quote in 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 gonna do it anyway. Save yourself the aggravation."

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:20

        Oh, man. I feel like you're just, uh, endlessly full of good stories that we could just keep going on and on. Let me try to summarize the s- 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, forgotten or both.

18. 1:10:49 – 1:17:13

    The price of power and autonomy

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:49

       Let me ask you a question, maybe half in jest. You teach people how to acquire power. Why aren't you the most powerful man in the world?

    2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:10:57

       Ah. That's a very good question to which I have a very good answer.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:02

       Yes.

    4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:11:03

       I have a colleague who's unfortunately now deceased by the name of James G. Marsh, who was a very, very distinguished scholar, and James Marsh said to me many, many years ago something which is completely true. "You can have power or you can have autonomy, but you cannot have both." And I have chosen to live a life of freedom, autonomy. I mean, I could tell you stories that would bring tears to your eyes. I'll tell you one. We had a dean in the business school whose wife was dying of cancer and she was projected to die in the fall. So the business school goes to him and says, "We'll give you the fall off to be with your wife." She lives until June. It's now winter. You have responsibilities as the dean of the business school. You have to meet with alumni. You have to go around and raise money. You have to show up at events, university events. I do- I do not necessarily think that is how he wanted to sp- spend the winter and spring quarters, but that's what you have to do. When I wanted Jack Valenti to come to my class, I did not call Jack Valenti. I called Judy Dickey. Judy Dickey was his assistant. Judy Dickey controlled his 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?" When I wanted my friend Gary Lovett who ran Harrah's and Caesars, and then was the number two executive Aetna, I want him to come to my class. I called Reggie Kirk. I didn't call Gary Lovett. 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 Outlook calendar on any website or on any computer. I want autonomy. If I said to you, "Lenny, I will give you $1 billion, or for that matter $10 billion. If you can buy-"

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:02

       Yes.

    6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:13:02

       If... Wait. If you can have last week again...... you can't. You can't.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:11

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:13:11

       Time goes in only one direction. I, I want control of my time. It is much more important to me than being a dean or an associate dean, a job that I was asked to do. I took one academic administrator job. I'm actually memorialized, believe it or not, in the Stanford, uh, record as having led, and this is according to my expense as the Nobel Prize winner, who was dean at the time, that I led the biggest and most successful transformation in the history of higher education. I, I did it. I did it once. I didn't like it. Life is too short. I want to do what I like.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:51

       That's a really profound point that I think people don't think about is there's always this drive to acquire power, and your point is that there's a big downside, which is a lack of autonomy. Yeah, you think about the p- like as I... I was trying to get Satya Nadella on the podcast, and I talked to his comps 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, uh, Elon, I totally get what you're saying.

    10. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:14:17

        It's, it's true, and I don't, you know, I don't want to do that. And by the way, power also comes with enormous visibility. Donald Trump has done, for 40 years, what he's now being accused of doing, you know, the tax stuff, all the stuff. He's been a grifter all his life. But when you become president, people are gonna look at things that in the past they would not have looked at. You become president of a university, you're gonna have scrutiny, as the president of Harvard learned and the president of Stanford learned when they both re- re- had to resign, in one case because of plagiarism, in another case because of research misconduct.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:53

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:14:53

        Nobody... That y- when power comes, you're gonna be put under a microscope. People are gonna look at what car you drive. They're gonna look at who you go out with. They're gonna look at how you spend your time. They're gonna look at how, how you associate with. They're gonna... You, you'll, you'll have no privacy. You'll have no, uh, 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, are people praising you? Are people associating with you because of you or because of the position you hold?

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:40

        Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you spend any time, just to follow this thread, in your class convincing people stop being so obsessed with power, stop being so obsessed with becoming the top of everything? Is that a part of the class?

    14. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:15:52

        No.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:52

        Or is it just-

    16. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:15:52

        No.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:53

        ... an sudden... No? Okay.

    18. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:15:54

        I, I teach 'em... You know, they see... We have a class on the price of power. I bring out Rudy Krug. Rudy Krug was the New York schools chancellor under Rudy Giuliani. By the way, he tells many interesting stories about Rudy Giuliani, (laughs) who did not just become a, the joke that he is overnight. He's, he's worked hard to become that. But in any event, he tells, he t- You know, he will t- 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 the positions she's held, head of Miami-Dade County Schools, head of New York City Schools, had Hillary ever won, he would have been Secretary of Education, literally. There's Lauren in the room. He said to the class, "Geoffrey asked me the question. Why don't we let Lauren answer it?" By the time she was finished, there was not a dry eye in the room. What is it like to be the child? What is 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 is a price that not only you pay, but a price that your family pays.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:17:09

        I think that's a really good balance to the entire conversation.

19. 1:17:13 – 1:22:30

    A homework assignment for you

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:17:13

       Maybe just as a last question, what if we give the audience a homework assignment to work on these power, uh, 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?

    2. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:17:28

       So, what I would say, and, and it comes from, 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, "Lenny, go do this uncomfortable thing on your own," or I can say, "Lenny, 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 skilled at this, get coaching. Get a coach." I send out regularly the list of the coaches who work with my online and 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. G- In other words, get people who will give you advice, give you social support, and hold you accountable. 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, "Lenny, I want you to start an extraordinarily successful podcast, and I want you to do it without any help," you would not be where you are today. So, that simple principle, get help.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:18:48

       It feels like a part of rule number one, get out of your own way.

    4. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:18:50

       Yup.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:18:51

       Ask for help. Geoffrey, I was nervous for this podcast, 'cause I thought this was gonna be f- 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 the time, being here, sharing all these stories and insights. Is there anything else you want to share as a, kind of a final note or something to leave listeners with before we wrap up?

    6. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:19:17

       No. No.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:19:17

       We did it. We covered everything.

    8. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:19:18

       Well, I'm, uh, I'm happy, I'm happy. You're a very good interviewer, which is why your podcast is so successful, and I-

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:19:24

       I appreciate that.

    10. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:19:24

        ... I'm happy to spend the time with you, and I hope, I hope whoever listens to this will... I hope, first of all, there'll be a lot of listeners, but I also hope that they will find it useful.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:19:32

        I know they will. Uh, two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they w- or find your book, I guess, uh, if they want to learn more, and then how can listeners be useful to you?

    12. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:19:41

        So you can find my book anywhere where books are sold. Don't look in a physical bookstore 'cause nobody carries it, including Ashley Stanford bookstore. They run out of it if people kind of use it. But you can find it on Amazon, 7 Rules of Power. You know, so you can, that's how you can find the book. By the way, at the end of the book, I talk about, I have a personal website, jeffreypfeffer.com. If you go to that website, you can find my course outline. You could 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, um, so there are a lot of resources available for this. Um, a company was once thinking of hiring me to give a talk in their organization, and the woman who wound up hiring me said, "When I was discussing, uh, you, and arguing that we should hire you for this presentation, one of the people in the committee said, 'Is he a good presenter?'" And her answer... I love this, I remember this. Her answer was, "He's a fabulous educator." My job is to educate. That is why I have done what I have done for now more than 50 years.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:21:03

        Holy moly. I did not even realize that.

    14. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:21:06

        For more, for more than 50 years, I have been in the business of education. Not just about power, but about many other things as well. But, you know, so I'm in the education business. So I am happy to provide people with the resources, with the readings, the 7 Rules of Power is well footnoted. It talks at the end about, you know, you 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 gonna 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.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:21:51

        Which is a good, uh, plug for your other book, The Knowing-Doing Gap, which actually helps you with this skill-

    16. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:21:55

        Yeah.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:21:55

        ... which you can also find at all your, uh, finer, finer retails, retailers. Uh, Jeffrey Pfeffer, thank you so much for being here.

    18. JPJeffrey Pfeffer1:22:04

        Thank you for having me on your show.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:22:06

        Bye, everyone. (instrumental music) 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 leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.

Episode duration: 1:22:30