Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [14]
The lesson: worry about the relationship you have with your boss at least as much as you worry about your job performance. If your boss makes a mistake, see if someone else other than you will point it out. And if you do highlight some error or problem, do so in a way that does not in any way implicate the individual’s own self-concept or competence—for instance, by blaming the error on others or on the situation. The last thing you want to do is be known as someone who makes your boss insecure or have a difficult relationship with those in power.
One of the best ways to make those in power feel better about themselves is to flatter them. The research literature shows how effective flattery is as a strategy to gain influence.19 Flattery works because we naturally come to like people who flatter us and make us feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments, and being likable helps build influence. Flattery also works because it engages the norm of reciprocity—if you compliment someone, that person owes you something in return just as surely as if you had bought the individual dinner or given a gift—because a compliment is a form of gift. And flattery is effective because it is consistent with the self-enhancement motive that exists in most people.
The late Jack Valenti, for some 38 years head of the Motion Picture Association of America and prior to that an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, understood both the power of flattery and how to do it. In advice written to Johnson in 1965, Valenti noted, “What I am suggesting is that the President fasten down support for his cause by resorting to an unchanging human emotion—the need to feel wanted and admired.”20 Valenti himself flattered Johnson by showing him loyalty and consistently agreeing with him. In a speech to the American Advertising Federation Convention in June 1965, Valenti said, “I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently because Lyndon Johnson is my President.”21 Valenti also flattered the studio heads for whom he worked for more than 30 years. In fact, he understood and used the power of flattery almost continuously. When I wrote him a note after he visited my class, he sent back a handwritten message on the note complimenting me on my thank-you.
In his autobiography, written when he was in his eighties and published after his death, there is no dishing of dirt or unflattering portraits of anyone mentioned.22 A practice of flattering the other, begun decades earlier as Jack Valenti began his path to power, persisted even to the end of his life. And although the autobiography did not win reviewer plaudits because of its generally genial tone and a consequent absence of nitty-gritty details of the important events he had witnessed, no one who read the book would think ill of Valenti because of anything he had written about them.
Most people underestimate the effectiveness of flattery and therefore underutilize it. If someone flatters you, you essentially have two ways of reacting. You can think that the person was insincere and trying to butter you up. But believing that causes you to feel negatively about the person whom you perceive as insincere and not even particularly subtle about it. More importantly, thinking that the compliment is just a strategic way of building influence with you also leads to negative self-feelings—what must others think of you to try such a transparent and false method of influence? Alternatively, you can think that the compliments are sincere and that the flatterer is a wonderful judge of people—a perspective that leaves you feeling good about the person for his or her interpersonal perception skill and great about yourself, as the recipient of such a positive judgment delivered by such a credible source. There