Donald Trump cheerfully breaks all the rules of good leadership, as codified in management books and taught in business schools. The modern CEO is supposed to be a consummate team player, modest and self-effacing, committed to equality and diversity, good at handling risk and adept at dealing with the press. But is there a little bit of Mr Trump in all powerful people?
A new book “Friend and Foe”, by Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer explains that you can prime people for power in a number of ways. You can get them to remember a time when they had power over other people. You get them to adopt a power posture—putting their hands on their hips or thrusting out their chests like gorillas (a technique developed by Dana Carney of the University of California, Berkeley). Or you can get them to listen to power anthems such as “In Da Club” by 50 Cent. This is a technique favored by sports stars such as Serena Williams, a tennis player, who often wears headphones when she walks on court.
Making people more self-confident is good. But power also makes them more self-centered. In one study, researchers asked people to draw a capital “E” on their foreheads. People who had been power-primed were almost three times as likely to draw the E backwards—that is, from their own perspective rather than the perspective of onlookers—than those who had not.
In another study, researchers asked people to play the role of boss and employee for a while, and then gave them a budget to buy chocolates, first for themselves and then for other people. The “bosses” bought 32 chocolates when buying for themselves but only 11 chocolates when buying for others. The “employees” bought 37 chocolates when buying for others but only 14 for themselves.
Power makes people more willing to take risks. For example, people who are primed for power, women as well as men, are more likely to have sex without a condom. Power also makes people more likely to break rules, for example by manipulating evidence to suit their purposes.
Researchers asked people to roll a set of dice to determine the number of lottery tickets they would receive—a roll of two would earn two tickets—and then report the roll of their dice to the invigilator. People who were primed were more likely to over-report their scores. Finally, power turns people into hypocrites: not only are powerful people more likely to cheat, they are also more likely to condemn cheating or other forms of moral failure in other people.
Read more of the original article in Bloomberg.
