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to disadvantaged women, and “doing the right thing,” Esserman ignored the others’ concerns. But then one day she realized that mammography was not even a diagnostic modality she was interested in pushing and that she was diverting her efforts into an enterprise that only provoked opposition. So she called her department chair and said, “I understand your point of view, I agree, and I will take care of this.” Within two weeks she closed the service down, and that simple act gained her support from people whose help she needed. It also conveyed an important lesson: far from diverting you from accomplishing your objectives, putting yourself in the other’s place is one of the best ways to advance your own agenda.

Capacity to Tolerate Conflict

There are lots of books and quite a bit of empirical research on the detrimental effects of workplace bullying—the screaming, ranting, profanity, and carrying on that sometimes occur in workplaces—on both the people who are the targets and the organizations in which they work.20 So why does such behavior persist? Because it is often extremely effective for the perpetrator. Because most people are conflict-averse, they avoid difficult situations and difficult people, frequently acceding to requests or changing their positions rather than paying the emotional price of standing up for themselves and their views. If you can handle difficult conflict-and stress-filled situations effectively, you have an advantage over most people.

Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff and formerly a very successful member of the House of Representatives from Illinois who ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is known for his temper. “Emanuel seems to employ his volcanic moments for effect, intimidating opponents…but never quite losing himself in the midst of battle,” observes Ryan Lizza.21 Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, recognized for accomplishing a lot while in office, was someone who never shrank from a fight: “Mr. Giuliani was a pugilist in a city of political brawlers,” noted New York Times writers Michael Powell and Russ Buetnner. “But far more than his predecessors, historians and politicians say, his toughness edged toward ruthlessness and became a defining aspect of his mayoralty.”22

Some people mistakenly believe that this willingness to engage in conflict is a source of power only in Western cultures, with their higher tolerance for individualistic behavior and more open, less circumspect style of interaction. But I don’t see much evidence for this view. In Singapore, a country that runs campaigns promoting courteous behavior, former long-serving prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, the father of the country, has been described as someone who was “often rude and contemptuous.”23 Lee came to power by taking on the British, who governed the country, and has shown no reluctance to back down from fights with political opponents over the ensuing years. Katsuji Kawamata, who went to work at Nissan in 1947 after a failing career at the Industrial Bank of Japan, eventually rose to become head of this large auto company even though he had no experience in the industry. His path to power in this typical Japanese organization entailed unexpected displays of toughness. As described in David Halberstam’s book The Reckoning, Kawamata’s rude and coarse behavior had a purpose: “It was…a power play. ‘What he was telling us—and we did not realize it at first—was that what interested us did not have to interest him,’ one of them [a Nissan manager] said years later, ‘but what interested him had to interest us.’”24

INTELLIGENCE

As we have already seen, job performance is not strongly correlated with the ability to acquire power. But what of intelligence? There is probably no human trait that has been studied as much.

The research shows that intelligence is the single best predictor of job performance.25 However, intelligence is often overrated as an attribute that will help people obtain power. That’s because intelligence seldom accounts for much more than 20 percent of the variation