Leaders Need Power

Leaders Need Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer | Talent Management   A recent conversation with an executive coach who works with up-and-coming executives in Silicon Valley companies reminded me of one major challenge talent leaders face: helping people develop their power skills. These include promoting themselves and their agendas, displaying confidence and being able to understand others' points of view.   She said few of the smart, technically savvy people she worked with understand organizational dynamics or are comfortable building and using power. And they often can't get things done. For instance, a business development leader found he was more successful in getting his team's ideas implemented when he flattered his boss and led her to think the business development initiatives were actually her idea.   Hierarchy is ubiquitous, but people often have trouble with these kinds of relationships. Employees may exhibit counter dependence as they resist cozying up to superiors. People don't recognize the conflicting dimensions of collaboration and competition in peer relationships and can seem reluctant to exercise authority over subordinates.   Many young leaders grew up in a world where if there were seven people in a swim meet, seven people got ribbons. This tendency to view everyone as a winner and competitive differentiation as too harsh has produced high school graduations with multiple valedictorians. Meanwhile, inside companies, power remains, to use Rosabeth Kanter's apt phrase from more than 30 years ago, "the organization's last dirty secret."   Literature doesn't help much to clarify the issue, wavering between autobiographies from successful leaders that gloss over what they actually did to get to the top and Scout-like lists of recommended virtues and behaviors. Recommendations such as telling the truth, being modest and self-effacing, and coaching and developing others would clearly improve organizational performance and produce more humane workplaces. But such lists ignore two facts. First, few mortals are perfect, so the question becomes what trade-offs between strengths and weaknesses should companies make.   Second, the qualities that make someone a good leader are not necessarily the qualities that would get a person into a leadership role in the first place. There are often negative correlations between perceptions of competence and niceness, so, as one study showed, people who wrote more negative book reviews were seen as smarter albeit less likeable than those who were more positive in their evaluations.   Some companies, such as the Gap a few years ago and Hewlett-Packard today, have programs that train influence skills, and more companies should follow their lead. Programs ought to include some focus on qualities that promote influence - energy, focus, persistence, the ability to see the world from others' perspectives - and include a self-assessment and personal development plan to increase these attributes.   Skills to build effective social networks as well as networking skills can be taught, and this training can help people win promotions, compared to similarly talented and qualified peers who haven't had it. The ability to act and speak with power is a crucial skill that can be developed, as actors well know. Further, people need to understand the sources of power, the social psychology of influence and how to cope with the inevitable opposition and setbacks that even the most successful individual confronts.   Most leadership books present a world that is different in one important respect from the world that talented individuals inhabit; a few trade-offs must be made. In the world they portray, what's good for the company is good for the individual, so when individuals succeed, their companies are better off. Ideally, people succeed based on performance. The traits that make people likeable are, for the most part, the same ones that make them successful leaders, and so it goes.   Talented people clearly see when they look at the world around them that this isn't completely true. People receive promotions based on credentials, experience and their relationships with their bosses, not just their job performance. Sometimes not-so-nice people win the race to the top, and individual and organizational interests can and do diverge.     [About the Author: Jeffrey Pfeffer is the Thomas D. Dee II professor of organizational behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and the author of Power: Why Some People Have It - and Others Don't.]