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7 Rules of Power

Surprising—but True—Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career

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7 Rules of Power

Written by: Jeffrey Pfeffer
Narrated by: Zac Aleman
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About this listen

Is power the last dirty secret or the secret to success? Both. While power carries some negative connotations, power is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Don’t blame the tool for how some people have used it. If fully understood and harnessed effectively, power skills and understanding become the keys to increasing salaries, job satisfaction, career advancement, organizational change, and happiness.

In 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, provides the insights that have made both his online and on-campus classes incredibly popular—with life-changing results often achieved in 8 or 10 weeks. Rooted firmly in social-science research, Pfeffer’s 7 rules provide a manual for increasing your ability to get things done, including increasing the positive effects of your job performance.

The 7 rules are:

  1. Get out of your own way.
  2. Break the rules.
  3. Show up in powerful fashion.
  4. Create a powerful brand.
  5. Network relentlessly.
  6. Use your power.
  7. Understand that once you have acquired power, what you did to get it will be forgiven, forgotten, or both.

With 7 Rules of Power, you’ll learn, through both numerous examples as well as research evidence, how to accomplish change in your organization, your life, the lives of others, and the world.

©2022 Jeffrey Pfeffer (P)2022 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Personal Success Career
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Re-read

Definitely a book I will re read (re listen). Lot of advices easily understandable, but harder to implement in daily habits

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This is the book worth listening over and over

The means mentioned in the book are so unconventional and unnatural but they are so true and effective. It needs brain washing to implant the ideas in you and practicing to make them work in your life.

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Read with a critical lens

The book does certainly cherry pick research, highlighting one-off studies that reinforce the author’s worldview. In spite of this, the book has some tips which MIGHT be helpful for marginalized people, in isolated situations. The book will also be useful for survivors of abuse who have had their confidence broken and need tactics as a starting point to practice to regain their footing socially. The book minimizes and ignores the role of social context and different power dynamics in relationships in most chapters and instead comes across pretty aloof as if advocating that you should practice these things all the time at work. If you do that, you are likely to get fired or come across as an oaf with no self awareness. These tactics will be perceived very differently socially depending on your race, gender and other visible factors and the CONTEXT you are in. You must learn to understand the culture of your environment if you wish to have status and influence within it, otherwise you will be ostracized and punished by those people for violating their norms. This book disregards that at every turn, advocating for a social dominance approach. To save you the read and give you some better advice, focus on building self awareness about how you’re perceived by others and bridge the gap between that and how you see yourself and would like to be seen. Earn trust and respect in the context and culture of your organization and you will be able to shape it over time. Learn to share your opinions and thoughts with confidence and participate actively in social life. Learn when to lead and when to inquire or defer. One of the most valuable skills to gain influence that isn’t discussed in this book is to learn when to shut up and listen.

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Cherry-Picked Stories to Justify Lack-of-Ethics

Buy this book if you want an educated man to give you excuses for unethical behavior. The premise of the book is that the ends justify the means and that even if you wish to do good, you must first know how to do evil to get there. I disagree with this book's premise. You can corrupt your soul/ heart/ mind/ conscience by acting against it, in sufficient degree, over sufficient duration... such that you will never forgive yourself for what you have done. And, you may attain the goal that you aim for if you do so in an unethical manner, but you will absolutely pay for it in other ways that you may never realize, or connect, except on your deathbed. If you act in devious, unethical ways, for sufficient duration of time and to sufficient depth, you will drive-away and pay the price by sacrificing good and healthy relationships where you may have grown into a happy interdependence with loved ones and ones that love you. The greatest accomplishments in human history were not achieved by individual actors abusing their power with regards to others, but through team work. And trust, and team work, is only possible when you can truly feel that you can trust other people and when you are happy with yourself for being a trustworthy person to others. You can create hell on earth for yourself if you do not follow your conscience. And you can create great peace in your soul if you learn to ask others for help, when those others are trustworthy and good and loving. And you can create peace in your own heart/ soul/ conscience when you decide to do good by other people, regardless of the difficulties it may require. God works in mysterious ways. Do you think that you can twist the fabric of reality out of shape - and not pay for it in some fundamental manner?

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