Happily we do have a bit of advice on how you can try to avoid. You can mitigate the impact of these psychological changes that come with status and power. Rod Kramer is on faculty at Stanford and has spent his career studying those in power. Observing business and government leaders, observing many of the problems that we've been talking about, but also, some of the ways people navigate those problems. He comes up with a list of prescriptions that he calls, "Avoiding 'Genius-to-Folly Syndrome.'" The situation of getting power because you're genius and then losing power because of the folly that comes from the status related problems. His prescriptions are; keep your life simple, hang a lantern on your foibles, float trial balloons, sweat the small stuff, reflect more not less and recognize trade-offs. So, these are all actually pretty easy to understand and by themselves might be easy to do. Seems like that would be easy to do, but, you probably find some of them easier than others. A question for you, which of these do you think you're already doing? Which of these kind come natural to you? Which do you struggle with? So, for example many people that I talk with have trouble with is hanging the lantern on your foibles, because are we really supposed to talk about our problems? Are we really supposed to talk about our mistakes? This is one of the main prescriptions that Kramer makes. He finds that those who are able to avoid this Genius-to-Folly problem are those who air their problems earlier. They don't try to sweep things under the rug. They're more OK being imperfect. And they expect others to be imperfect and therefore it's going to be OK for themselves to be imperfect. Another thing people struggle with is reflecting more not less. So, we're very busy people, very busy society seemingly busier all the time. Kramer finds that those who avoid this problem are folks who step away from the business, who reflect a little bit on their behaviors, who aren't going from one activity to the next all the time. So again, now brain surgery. Pretty simple. But, some of us have trouble with some of these, some have such trouble with others. Push you to think a little bit about how you can do more of these, how you can bake more of these into your life. What are you having trouble with already? If you're 27 and just getting started and already having trouble with some of these issues then, you're going to have more problems when you pick up more responsibilities and more success down the road. The prescriptions that come from Kramer, is to start baking this in your life now to kind of inoculate you against trouble you have down the road. So, others have echoed Kramer's advice. Gary Loveman, CEO of Harrah's Entertainment says, "The higher you rise in the organization the more people are going to tell you that you're right." His antidote. This is what Loveman says. He says he regularly and publicly admits mistakes. He emphasizes to the decision process, prioritizing data and analytics on de-emphasizing who makes the decisions. He actively seeks the opinions of outsiders. This is a great antidote to open yourself to the opinions of outsiders, especially those who come from a different place than you. And encouraging debate among his leaders, among his team and critical self-reflection within the organization. So, very much in line from this CEO of what Kramer's prescriptions are. I have an e-mail from an executive MBA student a few years ago. About a year after he took my class. He wrote, "Watch how funny your jokes get." That quote made an impression on me because it began happening once I was promoted. I am not a funny person, I don't pretend to be. My comedic timing is awful (as my wife will clearly attest). Yet people laugh... fascinating. "I know that as I become successful I can be lured by the temptations of reading my own press so to speak. The slide I find most important, actually, is how to avoid Genius-to-Folly Syndrome." "This rings true. Every time my ego runs away with me I make a mistake. I know this and I'm constructing ways to integrate those points in my life for the long term. There is a real need and cannot be overstated." Lar Tiedens, another Stanford professor who studies Power says, "It is this very reflection that she's out for and studying this stuff." She says she sometimes gets accused of being a little evil for studying the roles of hierarchies and dominant behavior and for the recommendations she makes. But, in self-defense she says, "This sorting-out behavior is going on between people all the time, and the pernicious effects occur because we don't talk about it. Once it becomes an explicit part of our relationship, we have a lot more control over how it plays out." The same thing is going on within ourselves. If we can be a little bit more honest with ourselves, if we can name these problems, if we can be more explicit with those around us about how we are changing or tempted to change as a result of power and status. We can take the edge off that risk. We can inoculate ourselves just a little bit. One more note from a recent student, and one of the more profound examples of people taking steps to avoid these problems. The student writes that, "Kramer's prescription to 'hang a lantern on your foibles' got her thinking about one of her old managers who had kept a log of his professional missteps for nearly five years." She says, "What's more, this manager asked his assistant to randomly select one of these errors and send it to him in the subject line of an email everyday. When I first heard of this ritual, I regarded it as very quirky, if not downright masochistic. But my manager explained that he had seen too many leaders fall prey to 'the power paradox,' and cease to acknowledge or learn from their errors once they reached the top. Instead, my manager was taking steps to constantly remind himself that he too was only mortal and prone to mistakes, no matter what title level or pay grade he ultimately achieved. He remarked that arrogance often lead to complacency or recklessness in decision making, and vowed to do whatever he could to avoid letting hubris get the best of him as a leader." This isn't even one of my students. We don't know where he picked up the stuff but, it's it's an extreme because like proof of concept that you can take these ideas very seriously and bake these prescriptions into your life. This is one of the most baked in examples of a prescription I've ever seen. Jeff Pfeffer concurs, Jeff Pfeffer the organizational psychologist says, "The combination of diminished vigilance and changed circumstances often leads to loss of power." What you had to do, this is one of Pfeiffer's prescriptions. "What you have to do is every now and then expose yourself to a social circle that really doesn't care about your position." This is one of the prescriptions that most commonly comes up in my discussion of this with students -- both MBA and executive MBA -- is staying in touch with people who they have known for years sometimes decades. Staying in touch with people who knew them before they had power, before they had influence to keep them grounded and to keep this outside perspective. And then finally, Pfeffer ends on this very sober note. "No matter what the original intentions and aspiration, eventually power goes to everyone's head." Unfortunately, this is also the way I feel about the field having studied it and taught it for the last 10 years or so. There is an inevitability, there does feel to be an inevitability or at least a big mean tendency towards power going to everyone's head. And, if we're not willing to acknowledge it, it only increases the risk that it'll happen to us.
