Power

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Power, by Jeffrey Pfeffer.

Power provokes ambivalence. Power-seeking is politically incorrect. So power remains cloaked in mystery and emotion, the organization’s last dirty secret.

John Gardner, the founder of Common Cause, noted that nothing gets done without power. Social change requires the power to mobilize resources. That’s why leaders are preoccupied with power. As Michael Marmot and other epidemiological researchers show, possessing the power to control your work and social environment—having autonomy and control over your job—is one of the best predictors of health and mortality.

Obtaining power requires will and skill— the ambition to do the hard work necessary, and the insight required to direct your energy productively. Power comes from an ability to build your reputation, create efficient and effective networks of social relations, act and speak in ways that build influence, and from an ability to create and employ resources—things that others want and need.

Stop waiting around for bosses and companies to get better and complaining about how are you treated. Build the skills—and use them—that will permit you to create the environment in which you want to live.

Jeffrey Pfeffer is a professor at Stanford Business School and author of Power: How to Get It, Use It, and Keep It. Read more here.