Powerful or Bully?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t

Competencies: political leadership, influence skills, self-development

Who benefits: leaders at any level

Consultant Usage: excellent for executive and career coaches

What’s it about? This book is provocative, make no mistake about it.  Author Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, will likely push your “hot buttons”.  Still, some of our best learning comes from thinking about ideas we don’t agree with.  Only the truly uneducated consistently seek out the opinions of those they are already in agreement with.  So if you find yourself in disagreement with the professor, so be it, but read on.

The author states that intelligence, performance, and likeability are not enough if you seek organization success or advancement.

He says we need “power”, which he defines as “self promotion, building relationships, cultivating a reputation for control and authority, and perfecting a powerful demeanor”.

He clearly crosses the line from assertive to aggressive.

There is one thing I really like about this book.  He gives numerous explicit behavioral examples of how to gain or demonstrate your power with others and within the organization.  I don’t agree with them all, but I certainly appreciate the specifics rather than the general platitudes so often found in other books. 

He also presents case studies of how certain famous people managed their careers.  I like to draw from real examples like these, although and again I have some problem thinking of George Patton and Oliver North as role models!

The book is just released and the professor certainly has the right credentials.

One final though.  After reading this book I decided I would pay big bucks, very big bucks to hear a discussion about workplace behavior between Professor Pfeffer and fellow Stanford Professor Robert Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t.   I especially wonder if Dr. Pfeffer would constantly interrupt Dr. Sutton to demonstrate his power and if Dr. Sutton would point out that Dr. Pfeffer is using bully tactics???

Catch you later.

 
[tags]power, powerful people, how to get power, achieving power, political leadership, leadership and power, self-promotion, control, authority, powerful demeanor, bully tactics, no asshole rule, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.