Seven Rules of Power 3: Maintaining Your Image
Seven Rules of Power 3: Maintaining Your Image
In this talk we talk about one of the most important things for personal power - image. * Your image is your political life. *
There’s a Chinese saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” which is really a first-order truth: the zero-order truth behind it is that people mostly just judge people by their appearance, and it’s very effective. Especially for power, it’s almost entirely about judging whether or not you have any real ability by your outward appearance.
Say what you will about ‘the road is long, the day is long’, that can’t be a working relationship. If your tenure is only three years, you can’t plan on people obeying you in the second year and “really” getting to know you in the fourth. The reality is that no one wants to take the time to get to know the “real you,” and you have to get your people on the ground and get to work quickly.
There’s a story in the Shishu Xinyi (New Words on the World) about King Cao Cao of the Wei Dynasty, who once received an envoy from the Xiong Nu (Huns). Cao Cao, probably thinking that his short stature and ugly appearance would detract from his country’s image, asked a famous scholar named Cui Yan to play the role of the King of Wei. Cui Yan was tall and handsome, and Cao Cao himself pretended to be a guard.
After the reception, Cao Cao sent someone to ask the envoy, “What do you think of the King of Wei? The envoy said, “The King of Wei is very elegant, but the man who catches the sword at the head of the bed is a hero. He said, “The King of Wei’s demeanor is indeed good, but I think the guard next to him is the real hero.
This story tells us two truths.**First, the power is really an aura, people who know how to casually look at the appearance of the people know that this person can not; Second, the power of the aura is not the ordinary people sense of beauty and ugliness.**This power aura is your image.
You have to maintain this image well, because it creates an expectation.
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We said this earlier in the column when we talked about The Hidden Game [1], that whoever is present to play the hawk and whoever is present to play the dove has to be named. The subordinate has to act as a subordinate, preferably with a keen sense of humor, and the superior has to act as a superior, e.g., without anger. Don’t let the subordinate look forward to himself and name himself Dragon Ao Tian, and the superior is gentle and weak and named Liu Bo, that’s not a normal phenomenon, that’s the “Annual Comedy Contest”.
- The most important temperament of power, or self-confidence. * Extreme self-confidence. Self-confidence not only brings promotion, but also provides power radiation. As a superior, you must project your self-confidence to your subordinates, so that the subordinates are proud to follow you to work, so that they have confidence that they will be able to get things done, and believe that the team is absolutely no problem.
Cao Cao, for example, was not only confident in the novels, but also in real history. Once Cao Cao was defeated by Ma Chao and had to cross a river with his pursuers, the army was going very slowly, and the arrows shot by his pursuers from behind filled the sky……. Some of the soldiers in Cao Cao’s team began to cry. Just at this time, Cao Cao actually laughed out loud and said “Today a few for the little thieves are trapped in it!” [2]
This is a self-deprecating, but particularly optimistic and relaxed attitude, like losing a game of ping pong, it doesn’t matter. Brother, how can you be so happy when you’ve reached this point? There is no objective basis. This is overconfidence. Overconfidence has a strong contagious effect.
One study found that overconfidence gives you as much extra points in your teammates’ evaluations as your actual ability. Someone who is exceptionally confident but not very good at hitting has the same high evaluation score in the minds of their teammates as someone who is not very confident but exceptionally good at hitting. Overconfidence is a powerful buff, and one that lasts a long time: one study says that you project overconfidence once, and the effect on your teammates is still there seven weeks later.
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- The most important thing is the first impression. * You have to build the persona right off the bat.
One study looked for 13 college professors from a variety of disciplines and took three clips from each of their lecture videos, each only 10 seconds long and with no sound, so that only the professor’s image and movements could be seen. The researchers showed the clips to students and asked them to rate them.
The result was that the scores given to the professors by those students who had only watched three small clips were highly correlated with the scores given by students who had followed these professors through a full semester of classes. People don’t even need to hear what your lecture is about, they are judging you to a considerable degree based on a 30-second first impression alone. Don’t you think that’s scary?
There’s something even scarier. In another study, photos of CEOs of some companies were taken and 100 college students were asked to judge the level of those CEOs purely by looking at the photos. It turns out that the scores these college students gave from looking at the photos were not only highly correlated with more comprehensive and systematic leadership scores, but also significantly correlated with the profits of those companies.
You might say that perhaps the higher profits were due to the fact that the companies were better equipped to afford “good looking” CEOs, and that it wasn’t necessarily the good looking CEOs that made the companies more profitable. Yes, but in any case, the two things are related, and probably mutually reinforcing.
It’s pure profiling, and studies have proven profiling to be highly accurate.
To the powers that be, first impressions are that important. If you give a poor first impression, don’t think about what’s down the road, people won’t even give you the opportunity to continue to show your abilities.
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So how can you project a good image full of confidence? The good news is that your image can be shaped by a few optional actions, and studies have shown that it has nothing to do with your personality or gender. It’s like saying that even if you’re an introverted girl like Birdie who wouldn’t otherwise want to show her face, really put you in that position you can talk stand-up comedy for five minutes.
We’ve talked about leadership charisma in our column [3], and Pfeiffer summarizes some of it in this book. In terms of posture, to show confidence, you need to–
Use more speaking time;
Speak louder;
:: Increase the “visual dominance ratio”[4], which means that you try to look at someone when you are speaking to them, whereas you can not look at them when they are speaking to you;
Dare to interrupt others;
Speak directly with the facts, rather than looking the other way;
:: Be open in your body posture and use gestures more often;
:: Take the initiative to move closer to others;
Be calm, relaxed and take it easy ……
And in terms of exactly what to say, you can study the speeches of American politicians.
First of all, use simple words, try to use monosyllabic words, do not engage in complex long sentences, subordinate clauses. Simplicity is powerful, do not give the audience too much cognitive burden, the logic should be simple and clear.
In addition, do not use weak words, what “almost”, “possible”, “well”, “ah” and so on. Dare to use some particularly vivid image, can stimulate the emotion of the words, such as “hurt”, “death”, “problem” such words.
The key is to give a clear conclusion, do not end with a question. One of the most important techniques is to repeat your conclusions and themes over and over again - the more times you repeat them, the more people will believe you.
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If you love to read, you might think these actions are too straightforward …… That’s not advanced, is it? That’s right, not advanced is right. This is a power struggle, not a scholarly exchange of ideas. Not being able to pull off these simple maneuvers is probably why an advanced degree is a minus for power struggles.
There are more blunt and crude ones. One of the most important admonitions Pfeiffer gives to those in power is to never apologize for a job.
Tell us two stories, both from 2010. One was the explosion on a BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 employees and caused major pollution of the ocean, forcing BP’s CEO to be questioned by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Another thing that happened was Goldman Sachs sold a security to a client and then shorted that security. That’s like saying you’ve wronged your own clients, right? It became a major scandal and the CEO of Goldman Sachs had to go to the Senate for questioning.
The performance of the two CEOs during the questioning directly determined their fate. The big difference between the two was that one apologized and one didn’t.
The CEO of BP came up with an apologetic look and sat hunched over like a child who had done something wrong. He said he wanted an investigation into the cause of the disaster, compensation for the financial losses incurred, etc.
In Pfeiffer’s opinion, this performance lacked so much. You are not defending your company at all. The right thing to do would be to talk about the history of the company, how many people it employs in the US, how much it contributes to the US economy, how difficult the conditions are for mining in the Gulf of Mexico, but difficult it has to be done because it revitalizes the local economy …… But this CEO said nothing. He did absolutely nothing to defend the company, his employees, or his own honor, and he waited to plead guilty to the crime.
In contrast, the Goldman Sachs CEO is a completely different story. This man didn’t say a word of apology during the three hours of Senate questioning and went on and on about the company’s accomplishments. He repeatedly told legislators, we Goldman Sachs as a securities firm, shorting or hedging, is our right, but also our responsibility. As a leading company in the financial services industry, Goldman Sachs has always attached great importance to the interests of its clients and is determined to serve them. Our size and reputation are among the best in the industry, and our employees have the most specialized financial knowledge.
His message was that I’m very happy with what Goldman Sachs is doing, and I can’t understand why on earth you’re picking on us; we’re not wrong at all, but rather you’re wrong, and you don’t seem to understand finance very well. The legislators asked him technical questions, and he answered with a smile on his face, as if to say, “You don’t even know what this is, so I’ll explain it to you.
The result was that that CEO of BP was quickly removed from his post, while the Goldman Sachs CEO worked until his normal retirement in 2018.
Apologizing takes the blame right back on yourself. Apologizing affects your self-perception and undermines your self-confidence. More importantly, by apologizing you show that others were wrong to trust you, and from then on you lose everyone’s trust and your political life is over. Big leaders, in particular, should never give a “guilty verdict”.
The opposite of apologizing is anger. Various studies have found that expressing anger is seen as you being dominant, powerful, capable and smart. For example, one study of software companies found that employees who were able to express anger frequently received more promotions and higher salaries, and their managers rated them higher.
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The more I talk about the Pfeiffer book, the more I think this is too thick. The pursuit of power can really warp human nature ah …… You have to go for something so paranoid that it doesn’t make sense.
Take apologizing for example, our column has talked about “elite level apologizing” before [5], it is not true that apologizing is to win back other people’s trust, but apologizing is first and foremost a way for us to perfect our own personality. How can you make a mistake and not apologize?
The key difference here is that in the former case we were talking about a scholar - or a normal person - and here we are talking about the struggle for power. Once you’re in the power game, you’re no longer normal, and let’s not forget that the vast majority of people in this world have no power. Of all the people, why does everyone listen to you? Using power is almost an act of magic, and you have to be fully vicarious in order to do it.
As a leader, you have to defend your image like your life depends on it.
- The essence of this image is trust. * Our column on Buckingham and Goodall’s Nine Lies at Work[6] tells us that the most important thing a leader offers his or her team is not management or strategy, but ‘certainty’.
In a situation where the situation is murky and people don’t know what to do, you stand up and say let’s go in this direction. Even if you don’t know what to do in your own mind, you have to stand up for yourself. You confidently give everyone a certainty, and the situation is immediately stabilized. People need a backbone, people need certainty.
Why could Clinton apologize to the American public for the Lewinsky affair? He was talking about his private life and how he shouldn’t have lied to Congress, he wasn’t talking about the president making mistakes in his job. The people still recognized his ability to be president, so he didn’t step down.
It’s a bit of a subtle but very strict line. The image should never cave in, the persona should never crumble. Once you show that your policies are wrong, your next order could be wrong as well, you are untrustworthy, you don’t provide certainty, your magic fails.
That’s why power games are not fun at all, sometimes that’s really hard work.
Note
[1] Hidden Game 6: ‘On Minds Regardless of Matters’ and ‘On Matters Regardless of Minds’
[2] Three Kingdoms Zhi-Wu Di Ji Zhi Zhi (三国志-武帝纪注).
[3] Elite Day Class Season 1, Learn Some Leadership Charisma
[4] The Elephant in the Head 6: Don’t Want People to Know What I Know
[5] Elite Day Lessons Season 1, Elite Level Apologizing
[6] The Nine Lies of Work 6: Where the King is King, and How Many Can the People Want It
Highlight.
Power Rule #4: Maintain your image; your image is your political life.
- the most important thing for power is the first impression.
- one of the most important caveats, never apologize for a work-related matter.
- the essence of this image is trust.