Will to Power

I recently read “The 7 rules of power” (https://lnkd.in/gNSJw8Dv) by Jeffrey Pfeffer. Anyone who take on the leadership path are seeking power. You might say: “how about lead without authority, like Mahatma Gandhi?” Well, Gandhi might not have the official government power, but he had the influence like no others in his time, that is power. Once we convince ourselves “to get things done one needs to lead, and to lead one needs power”, the question becomes “how to get and keep the power you need?” Professor Pfeffer gave some pragmatic advices on power very different from what we were taught from schools and companies’ leadership trainings. Here are the topics I resonated the most: 1. The importance of self-promoting, self-branding, and the power of self-fulfilling prophecy. We are all taught to be humble. But the people who seek power need to deliberately promote themselves. You may say “but look how humble Abraham Lincoln was”. You might be right for the Lincoln that had become the president of the United States. But humbleness was NOT the No.1 quality that got Lincoln elected, it was his will to keep the country united. The other day I was talking to a new hire in our 1-on-1. “When do you think you could deliver your on-boarding project?” I asked. “Well I am almost done but there is Christmas coming and people start to take vacations, I figure maybe I will deliver it in January 2023, it won’t make much difference to the business value.” “Well maybe you are right, get it done in December 2022 or in January 2023 probably makes little difference to business value, but it makes a huge difference on people’s perception on you Delivering Results. It is your self-branding opportunity, 2022 and 2023, that is one year different!” This is an example of becoming deliberate to build one’s professional brand. 2. Break the rules. Rules are set to get things done for most time, but every so often to get things done differently we have to break the rules. The art is to first master the rules of the game, then to know when is the right time to break the rules. 3. Don’t trust the stories about the famous leaders, at least don’t trust them as the whole truth. Leaders all purposefully built stories about themselves based on what they want you to believe. Stalin infamously rewrote the history of the communist party of USSR to make himself the single handily savior. “once you have acquired power, what you did to get it will be forgiven, forgotten, or both.” 4. Network relentlessly. To seek power one has to gravitate towards powerful people, there is no way around it. Learn the art of networking. But there are also the dark side of pursuing secular power for the sake of getting more power itself. Secular power is a mean to an end. When we lose the purpose of getting power, we get devoured by the power. The will to power, is to acquire the power within, to overcome ourselves. https://lnkd.in/gRxiVhkrWhy Yo