Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [19]
Energy
Laura Esserman, director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the University of California–San Francisco, and a person who has led remarkable changes in medical practice both locally and nationally from a position of little formal power, got her MBA degree while practicing medicine full-time and having her first child. As she once said to me, “You don’t change the world by first taking a nap.” The late Frank Stanton, president of CBS and a huge influence in the news and broadcasting world, worked prodigious hours including on the weekend and typically got five hours of sleep a night.12 Rudy Crew, the school system leader, is an insomniac, often up at three in the morning. Crew was typically the first person to arrive in the New York City chancellor’s office, where he made the coffee.13 I know of almost no powerful people who do not have boundless energy.
That’s because energy does three things that help build influence. First, energy, like many emotional states such as anger or happiness, is contagious.14 Therefore, energy inspires more effort on the part of others. As a young congressional secretary working for Representative Richard Kleberg in the early 1930s, future U.S. president Lyndon Johnson worked his two aides mercilessly. But because he worked alongside them with just as much effort, they didn’t complain.15 Your hard work signals that the job is important; people pick up on that signal, or its opposite. And people are more willing to expend effort if you are, too.
Second, energy and the long hours it permits provide an advantage in getting things accomplished. Research on genius or talent—exceptional accomplishment achieved in a wide range of fields—consistently finds that “laborious preparation” plays an important role. Social psychologist Dean Keith Simonton has spent more than a quarter century studying the determinants of genius. He writes, “individual differences in performance in a wide diversity of talent domains can be largely attributed to the number of hours devoted to the direct acquisition of the necessary knowledge and skill…. Some investigators have even suggested that the notion of talent or innate genius may be pure myth.”16 Obviously, having the energy that permits you to put in long hours of hard work helps you to master subject matter more quickly.
Third, people often promote those with energy because of the importance of being able to work hard and also because expending great energy signals a high degree of organizational commitment and, presumably, loyalty. As Melinda, the credit card executive, commented, if there are two people and one is willing and able to work 16 hours and one just 8, it is clear who will be chosen for a promotion opportunity.
People can develop more energy and get by on less sleep. Laura Esserman credits her surgical training and having to go long hours without sleep during her internship and residency with helping build her endurance. This suggests that there is a practice or training effect in developing energy. Kent Thiry, the CEO of kidney dialysis company DaVita, and someone known to do backward somersaults at employee meetings, has his personal assistant schedule exercise time for him—a lifestyle influence on energy that implies that even people who have demanding jobs and travel a lot can eat and exercise in ways that enhance their capacity for hard work. And you are more likely to have energy if you are committed to what you are doing, so in that sense, energy goes along with