The Power Principle: Influence With Honor - Softcover

Lee, Blaine

 
9780684846163: The Power Principle: Influence With Honor
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0684846160 ISBN 13: 9780684846163
Verlag: Free Press, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

The principles you live by today create the world you live in: if you change the principles you live by, you can change your world.
In the life-changing tradition of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Power Principle teaches the core principles that dramatically affect our careers and our lives. Dr. Blaine Lee, an extraordinary teacher, shows how principle-centered power is the ability to influence others' behavior, not to control, change, or manipulate it. Power is something other people feel in your presence because of what you are as well as what you can do, what you stand for, and how you live your life. When you honor others, they will honor you. Lee shows you how to overcome powerlessness, create legitimate power and influence with honor, and create a legacy that will outlast you in the lives of the people you care the most about.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Blaine Lee is a vice president of Franklin Covey Co., the leading global provider of integrated, sustainable, professional services and product solutions based on proven principles. Franklin Covey's client portfolio includes eighty-two of the Fortune 100 companies, over two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as thousands of small and mid-sized companies, government entities, educational institutions, communities, families, and millions of individual consumers.

Blaine has created and delivered custom leadership development programs for many world-class organizations, including: Proctor & Gamble, U.S. West, Intel, IBM, Pillsbury, General Motors, Conoco, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Andersen Consulting, Arthur Andersen, NASA, Occidental Petroleum, MCI, Mass Mutual, Kimberly Clark, Prudential, Nabisco, Xerox, and many others.

Blaine has been a contributing author to books by Stephen R. Covey and Norman Vincent Peale, and has written college texts on teaching and organizational behavior. His teaching takes him over a third of a million miles annually. His ability to deal perceptively with difficult organizational and people problems has made him a unique advisor to senior executives in many kinds of organizations. A trainer's trainer, he is called a "Life-Coach" by leaders who claim he helps them do with their lives what athletic coaches can do with their muscles.

Blaine has been studying, teaching, and coaching successful men and women for over twenty-five years. He has been on the faculty of four colleges and universities and has twice been recognized as one of the Outstanding Young Men of America. He was the Director of Instructional Systems Development for the entire air force as a young captain. He co-founded and was Educational Director for two professional private residential schools for troubled teenagers. He created the National Speakers School, has mentored several past presidents of the National Speakers Association, and is listed in International Leaders in Achievement and Who's Who in America.

Blaine and his sweetheart, Shawny, live in a country home in the Rocky Mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah, where he relishes his time as a deliberate dad. He received his masters degree in instructional psychology from B.Y.U. in Utah and his Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington.

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CHAPTER 1

POWER AND INFLUENCE

The measure of a man is what he does with power.

Pittacus

Power is not a new phenomenon. It forms the foundations of government, sociology, psychology, history, religion, and the many disciplines that study how people live and work together, influencing each other. It can be intriguing, because power can be surprisingly complex. It can be enticing, because power can be seductive. But it can also inspire and uplift and exalt, because power can be used to help people accomplish marvelous things.

What feelings do you have when you think about power? To some, power means control. To be powerful may feel heady, exhilarating, exciting. Some feel strong with it and impotent without it; invincible with it and vulnerable without it; comfortable with it or scared by it. Some feel that to have power is bad, that power itself is bad. Didn't Lord Acton insightfully observe that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Others feel it is desirable or even essential for successful living. But power is not really good or bad; it is neutral. Power itself is not negative or positive, although our feelings about it may be. Power is the potential to influence others for good or evil, to be a blessing or a scourge. Like nuclear energy, it can provide the electricity to light a city, or it can fuel the bomb that destroys it.

You might not think of it as such, but power pervades every aspect of your life. You wield it and are subject to it. This is because we are all interconnected. We live together, work together, shop together, worship together, and play together. In all these settings, we are with other people whose feelings, views, desires, goals, and values may be different from ours. When we come together, it is natural that we influence and are influenced by each other. Power is our ability to influence one another.

WHO IS POWERFUL?

So who among us is powerful? How do we define power between individuals? If you're like most people, you know power when you see it, but you can't really define it. We seem to have an innate ability to measure power in our fellow man. An exercise I often perform with organizations illustrates this point. I've gone into companies and other groups with this request, "Here's a personnel roster -- rank these people in terms of their power." With no more than this single instruction, people have no difficulty completing the task. Although there is some disagreement about the ranking of those in the middle, most people readily agree on who really has power. In fact, what I often find is that everyone agrees who's at the top and bottom of the list. People seem to sense who is powerful. I find this agreement whether I am asking about power at work, power in politics, power in the community, or power in families -- wherever people are together.

A group of automotive engineers testing the horsepower of an engine would be expected to concur on how powerful the engine is. Since we don't have physical instruments for measuring interpersonal power, what is it that causes this agreement when people are asked to rank the more powerful and less powerful people they associate with? I believe it is our perceptions, based on our experiences -- we feel it. When I ask people about those they know who they consider to be powerful, they often explain the source of their power in terms of an instance in which the powerful person played a significant role. This frequently includes some reference to the kind of relationships the powerful person has. For example, one might say, "Enrico is so powerful -- he gets anything he wants because people are afraid of him." Or, "Suzanne is pretty powerful -- she has what others want, and the only way they can get it is to go through her." Or, "I'd say that Chris has power with other people and they choose to follow him because they trust him -- they believe in what he is trying to accomplish."

Reflect on your own experience. Do you know a powerful person? This might be someone you have worked with, someone you have lived with, or some historical or current public figure you have read about. However you define power, this person has it. What makes others choose to follow this person?

THREE PATHS TO POWER

There are three options you should consider. First, is it because they are afraid not to? Perhaps this person has the capacity, authority, or ability to intimidate or bully people, to do something unpleasant or uncomfortable to other people. Is this person powerful because they can hurt others in some way, or embarrass them, humiliate them, impose sanctions against them, fire them, or take something away from them? If they are afraid that this powerful person can do something they don't like, others might comply just to avoid the problem. With fear as a source of this person's power, others might go along to get along.

Consider a second option. This person might be influential with others because of what they can do for them. This person has the capacity to do something that other people want. For example, they might offer one of the following: "I will pay you if you'll do what I want. I have something to exchange for your time and effort. I can give you information. I can give you opportunity. I can give you resources. I can give you power. I've got something you want, you've got something I want. Let's make a deal." This person has power because they can provide things that other people want, in order to get what they want in return. This is different from the first kind of power. There is no threat or force involved. Ask yourself, Is this second option the reason why people choose to follow the individual that I was thinking about? Is there something valuable they offer to do for them in exchange?

A third option represents an entirely different approach and a different kind of power. This category suggests that the person you believe is powerful is someone others believe in, someone they honor, someone they respect. They comply with this person's wishes because they want what she wants. Whether she is there or checking up on them or paying them does not matter. She believes in them and they believe in her. As a consequence, people willingly and wholeheartedly give themselves to what she asks of them. This person has power with others, not over them.

It may seem artificial to divide your analysis this way. Perhaps the reasons people choose to follow the person you are thinking about fall into more than one category. Or perhaps the reasons people choose for following or listening or paying attention vary over time. The important thing is that you think about a real person and the possible reasons why they are powerful, why others choose to follow them.

WHEN ARE YOU POWERFUL?

Now consider a different situation. We all recognize power in others, but are you prepared to recognize it in yourself? Think about a situation in which you were the powerful person, where your influence was significant with a group of people during the past year in your personal life or your professional life. Whether formally or informally, you were recognized as the leader -- they chose to follow you.

Recall a time in your life when you felt particularly powerful. Maybe you made a brilliant presentation or closed a major deal. Maybe you got a group of Boy Scouts to behave on a camping trip, solved a family dispute, or talked your way out of a potential problem. Maybe you were initiating a new activity or product, installing a new system at work, collecting money for a worthy cause in your own neighborhood, changing a program or policy at your children's school, or working to accomplish something for your community.

Think of a specific setting, and a specific group of people that you influenced. In relation to...

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Verlag
Free Press
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0684846160
ISBN 13 
9780684846163
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande