There was a time when I thought it was just me who felt this way. But if I’ve learned anything in my work on power, it’s that I am not alone. Everyone feels powerless sometimes, no matter how much power they have. And we all have power, whether we can realize it or not.
As an academic, I’ve written a lot about what having power might be like, and as a person, I’ve hoped against hope that becoming an expert and attaining stature in my field would help me feel more powerful and make it easier for me to be me. Yet having power, to the extent that I do, has not felt like I thought it would. Power attracts attention, and greater scrutiny. Higher expectations, and more ways to fail, with more at stake. Having power has done little to relieve me of my childhood insecurities. It has just provided a bigger stage on which to act them out.
I still felt like the same person, doing the same work — running experiment, publishing journal articles, and learning to teach — but to everyone else I was different. I was supposed to know things, to be the expert, to hold other people accountable and tell my students what to do.
It was the most uncomfortable of ironies. As a psychologist, I was a bona fide power expert. But I still felt powerless myself. I felt like an imposter, underserving of the respect and attention that come with the role. And the more I advanced in my career, and the more my stature grew, the more I struggled to own who I was to other people. I could see how others looked in positions of power; I just couldn’t see myself as one of them.
A classroom, she explained gently, “is like a theater, where we play the role of teacher. When we give a lecture, we are giving a performance. Like an actor, we make choices about how to play that role by enlisting characters that live within us who help us bring it to life.”
And at the same time, I could see that when my colleagues were able to let go of being themselves and fully embrace the roles they were playing, their performances actually became more compelling, more engaging, more “true.” Somehow, acting didn’t make them less “authentic”; it actually made them appear more real.
I now know that power is not personal, at least not in the way I once thought. In life, as in the theater, power comes with the roles we play. Actors, if they are successful, don’t let their insecurities stop them from being who they need to be in order to do their jobs. To do any job well, to be the person you aspire to be, and to use power effectively (whether you feel powerful or not), you have to step away from your own drama and learn how to play your part in someone else’s story.
As an expert on power, you would think I might have seen it coming, and that I should have known how it might look. But before the story broke, I still had an arm’s-length relationship to power. I had studied it, thought about it, taught about it. Before that day, I had played with power, like a toy in a sandbox. Turned it over and pushed it around, to see how it worked. For my entire adult life, I had found power fascinating. But I couldn’t see what it had to do with me.
In the theater, what it means to give a powerful performance is to accept and own the truth of what it means to be a human being: to be strong and weak, accomplished and fallible, powerful and powerless, all at once. To play any part authentically, an actor must accept the character without judgment. And this is true for the rest of us as well. By accepting that each of us is all of these things, by learning to value all of these truths and show all of these sides of ourselves when appropriate, and by handling our mistakes with grace and equanimity, we become more resilient, less ruled by shame and self-loathing, and, ultimately, more powerful. Ironically, this is where authenticity comes from: not trying to be more yourself, but learning to accept more of yourself.
We aren’t always cast in the roles we desire, or in roles we feel prepared to play. But the show, as they say, must go on.
The one clear implication of all my research, and all my experience, both personal and professional, is that success, impact, and life satisfaction are not the result of how much power you can accumulate, or even how powerful others think you are; they are the result of what you are able to do for others with the power you already have.
We buy into the myth that we all need more power to reach our goals in life, and that how much power we have defines our worth as human beings. We accept that we should strive to attain the highest possible position whatever it takes, and maintain the upper hand in every circumstance. The traditional take on power teaches us that the key to success is to attain more power, faster, by whatever means necessary, and that the person with more power wins.
These assumptions are not just wrong much of the time. It is far worse than that. The idea that we all need more power plays into our worst fears about ourselves and heightens our most destructive instincts. When power-holders feel more powerless than they are, when they are out of touch with the reality of their circumstances, when they fear they have less power than they do, they become self-protective and incapable of generosity. We all know what it means to use power badly; just take a look at the news: hate-spewing world leaders, corrupt politicians, unscrupulous CEOs, sexually aggressive entertainment moguls, wealthy parents who cheat their kids’ way through the college admissions game — the list goes on. People who use power they have to manage their own powerless feelings are bound to stray from their responsibilities. This is what it means to use power badly.
Power exists in every role, and in every relationship; it’s a resource that flows between people who need one another. And because relationship partners, by definition, both need one another and have something to offer, power is almost never absolute. This means that all of us have power by virtue of the roles we play in others’ lives. To use power well, we need to think about power differently. We need to accept responsibility for the power we have. We need to take our roles and responsibilities more seriously than we do.
When individuals stay focused on collective outcomes, on elevating one another’s performances, it creates psychological safety, enhances agility and flexibility, and minimizes status and power contests so that energy can be channeled toward group goals.
Human interest in power has deep existential roots. Psychologists believe we care about power because we fear death, and power promises a kind of immortality. Power affords not just greater access to shared resources and control of our own outcomes but also greater connection to others and elevated status within the clan. Human psychology has evolved to support these evolutionary realities.
We seek power often without knowing it. And as much as we ate to admit it, power contests are everywhere, even in places where we think they don’t belong. Not just at work but at home, in our marriages, with our siblings, in our friend groups, and in society more broadly, power is a central organizing force. We are dealing with power differences and negotiating power all the time, often while we think we are doing other things.
This “cult of personality” approach seems to suggest that power resides in the person, someone who possesses a combination of superior charm and ruthless ambition that the rest of us don’t. It implies that to be powerful means to pursue self-aggrandizement and world domination, at the expense of everything and everyone else. And so the rest of us, who find this approach to social life abnormal, if not distasteful, conclude that power is not for us. We can’t see how to be powerful ourselves and be a good person at the same time.
Sometimes, when my colleagues and I placed normal people in position of power in the lab, they became more self-serving and more oblivious to social norms. And other times, it was the opposite. Power didn’t turn everyone into a monster; in fact, sometimes it brought out people’s most cooperative, most prosocial instincts.
Power makes people more likely to act on both their best and their worst instincts.
When you have status, you typically have power, because people want to be associated with you.
Authority is the right to tell others what to do based on a formal position or title. So authority and power mutually reinforce each other, but it is possible to have power without formal authority.
Power and influence are also different. Influence is the effect of power. Some people prefer the idea of having influence over the idea of having power, because having influence implies you don’t have to use force. But this is a false distinction. When you have the ability to force someone’s hand, you almost never have to use it.
Myth: power is personal; either you have it or you don’t.
Truth: power is social; it lives and dies in the context.
Power is not an aspect of the self; it cannot be possessed by a person. Wealth, fame, charisma, good looks, ambition, and self-confidence are all personal qualities we equate with having power. But these are merely potential sources of power. They may also be consequences of power. But none of these qualities guarantee leverage over other people.
What makes someone powerful — what makes other willing to comply with their wishes — is the degree to which they are needed. Any person’s power depends entirely on the context in which power is being negotiated.
Another way that power can be fleeting is that it corresponds to who adds more value in a particular context — a unique source of knowledge or skill is more powerful than a redundant source of knowledge or skill. And power corresponds to the strength of your allies, and the strength of your options, in the context of a particular relationship.
Power is part of a social contract. People have power to the extent that others consent to being controlled. When powerful individuals violate the terms of the implicit agreements that give them power, they rarely stay in power for long.
It’s true that overestimating our power can sometimes have short-term benefits, especially when others also benefit from our bold actions. And underestimating our own power may seem like a mark of humility or modesty, both generally desirable traits. But in fact, it is much better to see the reality of your circumstances for what it is. Failing to appreciate that others outrank us is the source of many faux pas. And failing to internalize our own power over others can have serious consequences as well.
Without status, illegitimate power-holders must resort to bullying, intimidation, and the use of force to maintain the upper hand. In general, the more someone has to show they are powerful, the less power they probably have.
A meek job candidate with a better offer is more powerful than an overconfident candidate with no concrete options. An entry-level employee with strong connections to powerful people in the firm can be more powerful than coworkers who rank higher or have been there longer. An administrative assistant who controls access to the CEO’s calendar can be the most powerful person in the organization (as many have learned the hard way). Knowledge is almost always a source of power, and you can’t see directly what, or who, other people know.
But what we often fail to realize is that the ability to show respect and even submission can also be a source of power. Deference is treating another person in ways that acknowledge that their expertise and experiences are at least as important as your own. It does not mean you have less power than the person you are deferring to. It means that you do not intend to use the power you have against your relationship partner. Deference is disarming, it signals an absence of threat, and it creates a foundation of trust that allows a relationship to form.
Intuitively, it seems obvious that parents “outrank” their children. Parents have more authority — that is, the right to tell their kids what to do. But most parents also want their kids to love and respect them, and to validate their competence as parents. This is how we parents end up wrapped around our children’s tiny fingers. Using power well as a parent, in other words, depends much less on authority per se than on how well we can show our children that their needs and insecurities matter more than our own while trying to wield authority. The same is true for any other context or relationship where power differences matter.
Yet subordinates have power too, to the extent that they are valuable. If a subordinate is hardworking, competent, and committed, the boss, generally speaking, wants to keep that subordinate happy. This is also contextual: in an economy where labor is scarce and employees can easily leave one job and find better work elsewhere, the boss has some power, but an indispensable employee could, theoretically, have more.
The imposing physical surroundings called attention to Zhu’s power and status. But his attentiveness to each of his guests as they met him showed respect for their power and status.
The atmosphere was very formal, but Zhu looked completely relaxed, as though he was enjoying the show in which he was starring.
It said, We are friends, and we are in this together. At the same time, it reminded them, and others, that he had the power to make or break any of them in China.
One of the first things I noticed when I started working with actors is that most people, when thinking about how to “act” powerful, will spend most of their time worrying about what to say. Actors, on the other hand, have their lines given to them, which means they are able to spend more time thinking about physical action. And when it comes to using power, we can learn a lot by paying attention not just to words but also to how we deliver our lines.
Playing high is doing things to raise oneself relative to others — by name-dropping, claiming expertise, or pulling rank; or to lower others relative to oneself — by criticizing or judging someone, disagreeing with them, mocking them, or ignoring them.
To survive in his new dog-eat-dog world, Buck has to rediscover his most basic animal instincts . The landscape has changed from a civilized one in which the best way to get what he needed was to be friendly and cooperative — where it made sense to play his power down — to a competitive arena in which to get what he needs he might have to sleep with one eye open, bare his teeth, and even fight to the death.
When we act with power in the real, civilized world, regulating our body language is just as key to delivering a convincing performance as it is onstage or in the wild. We tend to trust others’ nonverbal messages more than their verbal ones. And nonverbal assertions of power can be more effective than verbal ones.
When playing high, an actor will speak slowly, deliberatively, and in complete sentences that end definitely, with a drop in pitch or a sharp consonant. There is no rush, no apology for claiming time or attention, and no invitation for further discussion.
Imagine yourself with a heavy crown on your head, and notice what happens to the rest of you. You stand straighter, your shoulders drop, you move and even breathe more slowly, and you chin lifts just a bit to keep the thing from sliding off.
Humor is very hierarchical, because many jokes are put-downs or take-downs.
Backhanded compliments like these are almost always a kind of power play. That’s because commenting on someone’s appearance — whether positively or negatively — not only is objectifying but also assumes the right to scrutinize and pass judgment. This is why it’s taboo for a subordinate to compliment a superior’s appearance, but perfectly acceptable for a boss to compliment an underling’s.
It is important to be aware of the power you have as a subordinate to protect yourself, to protect others, and to protect your boss from the risks that come with having power. The key is to have established trust beforehand, to have demonstrated that you know your place, and to convey that you are acting with the other parties’ interests in mind.
When playing low, actors also smile more often than they do when playing high — and this is not because life is better at the bottom. Rather, they smile apologetically, to make sure no one else is ever uncomfortable. These kinds of smiles can seem forced, weak, frozen on the face. Giggles, like controlled smiles, are an attempt to make sure no offense has been taken and to assure others that the giggler needn’t be taken too seriously.
Although the actions associated with playing low are often displayed without awareness, they are strategic acts, as in the case of playing high. You play your power down for a reason. In most social encounters, most animals would prefer not to fight. This is an excellent survival instinct.
But the real power-holders of the world play their power down a lot of the time, in part because they have learned it has many benefits. People feel contemptuous of those above them in the hierarchy and may want access to the advantages they possess. A truly powerful person is often motivated to keep a low profile.
Another way to play power down is to allow others to define the social boundaries. In most contexts, the size of a person’s private bubble corresponds to their social rank, with higher-ranking people having a larger bubble that keeps others at a greater distance.
Agreeing, complying, and deferring to others’ wishes are all ways of showing that we are willing to let someone else’s interests loom larger than our own. We are all much more likely to do this when dealing with people who outrank us, as we should.
Managers who worried too much about whether others liked them were, ironically, disliked as managers, because they created chaotic and disorganized working environments. They also played favorites, bending the rules for difficult subordinates in order to stay in their good graces. Their employees saw them as fickle and unpredictable.
The lesson is this: in a group of peers, when you are vying for status and influence, there is more than one way to the top. You can play power up and be feared, or play power down and be loved. And either way, if your approach adds value — because you know some things and are willing to take risks to share them — you can end up in a powerful position.
And although people tend to flock to authoritative political leaders in times of crisis, at all other times, participative leaders are actually preferred.
They had swagger. They were always smiling. You would have thought their lives were idyllic. But I knew better. They would take those masks off in my office. They were dealing with health challenges, family tragedies, visa issues, and relationship problems, and some were struggling academically to the point that they were on the verge of flunking out. These were the same people who were doing “great!” and “awesome!” when I saw them in class, and no one was lying exactly. They were acting. They were making choices about which sides of themselves to reveal, and which to keep behind the curtain.
Goffman described how “being oneself” is, essentially, a performance. We are all motivated to show ourselves in the best possible light, and to do this takes effort and planning. We express a stable, coherent identity that keeps us grounded psychologically as we grapple with the messiness, self-doubt, and confusion that are an inevitable part of the internal experience. Social interactions are performances. “Being oneself,” in other words, is an act.
But actors are simply people who, like the rest of us, must manage the noisiest parts of themselves — their feelings, their needs and insecurities, their desires, their habits, their performance anxieties, and their fears — in order to bring the more useful parts out at the right moments. And really, isn’t that what we all want to do? Bring out the best parts of ourselves, instead of checking out, hiding out, or opting out by failing to show up at all?
Losing the plot is like showing up to play your part in one story and, mid-performance, losing track of where you are, why you are here, and what you are supposed to be doing.
When we act as though we have more power than we actually have, or downplay our power in ways that don’t make sense to the people around us, we have lost the plot.
But on the ground, when power comes with the roles we are actually playing, it tends to activate responsibilities. Research shows that people who define themselves more in terms of roles (e.g., spouse, child, manager) than attributes (e.g., intelligent, fun-loving, introverted) are more likely to put responsibilities ahead of needs.
Presidents who were firstborn children had careers that were less marked by scandal. This result is consistent with studies showing that birth order predicts feelings of responsibility and the ability to delay gratification in childhood.
When we don’t really commit to playing our roles, others don’t know how to play theirs. No one looks out for anyone else, and no one knows how to behave.
Without the clarity of a formal hierarchy, we have to figure out on the fly where we fit in and how to stand out.
To use power well, we need to take our roles seriously, to see ourselves as part of something greater: as someone for whom self-interest includes advancing causes greater than oneself, not just as a means to an end but because doing right by other people is an end in itself. In fact, this is what roles are for, to advance group causes.
If I wasn’t committed to playing my role as the caring and responsible boss, she wasn’t going to commit to her role as the respectful subordinate.
Stanis honed his craft by doing out in the world “in character.” He would disguise himself as a fortune-teller or a tramp and wander about the city to experience what life was like in someone else’s shoes.
Research on self-fulfilling prophecies and stereotype threat shows without a doubt that the things we fear may be true tend to come true.
Uniforms remind people of their respective roles; they inject certainty and predictability into stressful, chaotic situations; and they remind everyone of the protocols that can keep people safe.
My female friends who are physicians tell me they never enter a room without a lab coat and a stethoscope. These are props, they tell me, that are not always needed for an actual patient visit.
Turf is so important for power. Animals go to great lengths to claim it, and people do too, because we know instinctively that the person who owns the space makes the rules. When Trump sits at a table with other people, he moves things — sometimes even their things — out of the way to create more space for himself.
Turf gives us permission to assert power; when we are at home, we are in charge. A meeting in your office immediately shifts the balance of power in your favor, even if you are not the most senior person in attendance. When I meet executives in a classroom at Stanford — on my turf — they raise their hands before asking me a question, even though most of them would outrank me on their turf, and some would outrank me almost anywhere else.
Even monkeys get twitchy and exhibit stress-related hormonal changes when a new actor comes onto the scene and upsets the old way of doing things. Instability within hierarchies activates deep-seated fears and insecurities that make us cling to old habits and trigger knee-jerk impulses at precisely the time when we need to consider options and try something new.
Our biggest fears in life are about being alone or cast out of the group. We all seek love and power unconsciously, in varying measures, for this reason.
When a person can’t resist opportunities to elevate himself, everyone else will feel put down, including those who actually rank higher. A Superhero (by definition) has to save the day, by rescuing others from their own incompetence and vulnerability, in order to feel powerful. He does whatever it takes — giving unsolicited advice, claiming expertise in all topics, name-dropping, disagreeing with anyone who seems to know more, reminding others of his accomplishments.
So you can see how having a Superhero complex might present challenges when playing a subordinate role. A Superhero needs to land on top and, as a result, struggles to stand down, step aside, or wait in the wings. The fear of being unimportant, undervalued, or underestimated can make it very hard to resist trying to steal the show.
Showing someone else more respect than you have to is a relatively safe error. But you can’t play your own power up without playing someone else’s power down. Showing too little respect for a highly respected person in the group suggests you don’t know your place, which can be extremely costly, like committing social suicide.
There is something uniquely off-putting about people who act as if they are more important than they are. But why? For one, when you overshoot in this way, it sends a message to other people about how you see yourself relative to how you see them. It tells your superiors you don’t think they deserve the power and status they have earned. It tells your peers you think you are better than they are. It’s like spewing insults at everyone around.
An executive I know deals with this all the time. Often he finds that people who seek specific roles within the large, high-profile organization he leads do so less because they want to serve the organization or advance its mission and more because they want to be associated with the brand, create a personal platform, build a resume, and become more visible as a mover and shaker. Many books on power will tell you this is the right way to think about power. I have always thought it was nonsense. Everyone knows when this happens. These people have not just lost the plot, they never cared about the plot to begin with.
It’s human nature, supposedly, to be interested in power: not just to find it interesting but to be drawn to power, to crave more, to seek it for oneself. Nietzsche believed that we naturally approach each and every life circumstance by striving to attain the highest possible position. This kind of striving is healthy, and even necessary, he believed, to justify the existence of humankind.
But the idea of having power is, for many people, more attractive than the reality. My colleagues and I like to joke that although we want to be offered the biggest jobs in our respective fields, we aren’t sure we want to do them. Many people in many situations are more comfortable in the wings than in the spotlight, and many of us would rater be loved than feared.
Performance anxiety, especially in a big role, can be a really big deal.
It is not intuitive that people feel scared when stepping up in their lives. But as many know, one of the great ironies of power is that we seek leading roles in order to feel more secure and more in control, but then the joke is on us: we find that the moment we step into a powerful position is the moment we realize how little control we actually have. As any parent, any manager, any team leader knows, stepping into a position of power while feeling unsure of your ability to control things is a nightmare.
A powerful role attracts attention, big audiences, and often harsh reviews. It comes with responsibility and great expectations, and it sometimes sparks envy and resentment. Stepping into a bigger role lands us on a bigger stage, where, inevitably, we feel smaller. And in the glare of the spotlight, we feel exposed, naked, with our weakness on display.
In the management world, the specific fear that accompanies stepping into a big role is described as imposter syndrome. It is a form of performance anxiety that affects all kinds of actors who find themselves playing roles for which they do not feel fully equipped.
Imposter syndrome is a fear of being exposed, and sometimes, as this Freudian slip illustrates perfectly, we react by exposing ourselves. It’s a classic if subconscious choice to play power down, like showing your jugular, as in “Please don’t bite me. I’m not worth it.” Some people, instead of taking themselves down, will take themselves out, by hiding, freezing, or losing their voice. Others play power up in response to imposter syndrome; they try to hide their weakness by acting more superior than necessary. The classic response is to over-prepare, to train for the role by beefing up knowledge, expertise, and confidence, and then wait too long before making an entrance. When we step into a big role without techniques for managing performance anxiety, these impulses can work against us, in a number of ways.
When the goal is to establish trust in a high-power role, the fear of appearing incompetent can distract us from what matters more, which is the degree to which our subordinates believe we have their best interests at heart. It’s not intuitive, but research on this is clear: the competence of a high-power actor is usually taken for granted. The bigger problem, usually, is learning how to demonstrate that we care.
The lesson is this: when you are the person in charge, people will look to you for many things. Mostly, they will be trying to figure out how important they are to you. As the person in the high-power role, you are the harbinger of everyone else’s self-worth. You must make it a priority to show people they are worthy of your time and attention, because as the person in the high-power role, you will be the beneficiary of many privileges. But on this, you will not receive the benefit of the doubt.
The fear of bombing on a big stage can afflict even the most seasoned performers among us. Jay Z describes how he choked in his first live show: “I just forgot the words. I stood there, and I tried to pass the mic to Damon Dash. He was like, ‘man, I don’t rap!’ I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t — I was just, like, in shock.”
“From the corner of my eye, I could see the huge boom stand of the TV camera, and all the dignitaries upon the stage and the people beyond. Unaccustomed to such overwhelming case of nerves, I was unable to continue. I hadn’t forgotten the words that were not a part of me. I was simply unable to draw them out.” In short, Smith “choked.” She was so far out of her comfort zone, she became momentarily incapable of doing what she came to do.
Often, before a big meeting or presentation, a speaker will say, “I just want to get through it.” This is also a response to the fear of showing weakness and the anxiety that comes with performing. Many executives manage their discomfort with power and the fear of not doing power “right” by “checkin out,” or “phoning it in,” which is a version of the same thing. We figure if we don’t really show up, we can’t really screw up. And then we wonder why subordinates don’t trust us. If you can’t find a way to be present, it shows that you don’t want to be there. And because you are the person in charge, no one is going to assume it is because you care too much about them, even if that is the reason.
In contrast to Nietzsche, who believed everyone wants to rank first, Freud argued that, actually, most people fear power and try to avoid accountability for using it. Many executives deal with this anxiety by acting just like the “bureaucrats” in the Stanford prison experiment; that is to say, they play it by the book. They try to follow the rules, to refer to existing policies, principles, and higher-ranking people instead of owning responsibility for their own decisions.
Most people fear doing things that provoke hostility in others, most of the time. And using power poses special risks in this department, particularly for those with an elevated need to be liked. The occupants of high-power roles are targets of envy and resentment, almost by definition.
They are superstars with numbers, on a steep trajectory upward, and then they stumble. They can’t handle being promoted above their peers; they want to pretend they are still equal. Suddenly they have to hold their friends accountable, and they want to pretend it’s not their job! We’ve lost a lot of good performers this way. And the groups they manage start to unravel. They don’t trust that anyone is in charge. It brings out the worst in everyone.
In short, performance anxiety is a normal part of stepping into a bigger role. Even professional actors experience stage fright at times. But they learn to expect and even welcome the surge of nervous energy that arrives before a performance, because they have techniques for harnessing that energy and using it in constructive ways.
Athletes, dancers, musicians, and, of course, actors manage performance anxiety by engaging in a physical warm-up before showtime that reminds the body of what it is there to do. They stretch, loosen up, try to move the energy through their bodies instead of trying to block it or make it go away. A physical warm-up is a way of shaking off emotional baggage, releasing familiar ways of holding the body, letting go of what just happened, and creating space within the body for physical flexibility, agility, and adaptation.
Anxiety is energy; it feels like a motor, and you can almost hear it whirling in your ears, blocking out other sounds.
Experienced athletes often perform better in front of an audience, because the anxiety is a source of physical strength, and, importantly, because experienced athletes (and other performers) know where to focus when anxiety kicks in. Inexperienced performers, on the other hand, tend to get rattled by an audience, because they don’t know what to do with the excess energy. And in these situations, the presence of an audience makes things worse.
Police, firefighters, EMTs, and increasingly, teachers need to know where to focus when the adrenaline kicks in. This is at least in part the reason for disaster drills: when the alarm sounds and the fear kicks in, they need to spring into action.
The key to optimal performance in any endeavor is to practice. But practice isn’t just about getting more comfortable with your speech or your slide decks or your lines; it’s also about getting comfortable with playing your role. Practice is how most of us learn to do most things, and using power, like most things, get easier — more natural, more skillful, and more automatic — the more you do it. It requires developing muscle memory and establishing routines for managing your attention, your mindset, and your physical body.
In the science of optimal performance, peak performance is known as flow, which is basically the experience of losing yourself in time, space, and doing. Flow is the absence of self-consciousness. Flow is an aspirational state for an actor. And to achieve this state, you need to learn to manage where your attention goes.
When acting with power, onstage and in life, it’s the most natural thing in the world to be focused on ourselves, to feel exposed in the glare of the spotlight, to be hyperaware of the audience, and to imagine all of those eyes out there looking you up and down. Performance anxiety is, at its core, a self-conscious reaction. The only way to get on with the show in these moments is to lose your “self” in doing something. They key to owning a stage, owning the room, and owning the moment is to become absorbed in something, anything, besides how you look and feel.
When performing, instead of focusing on something distracting but irrelevant, you can choose to turn your attention on the other actors in the scene. This is what some actors do as an approach to handling stage fright, and I use a similar technique all the time. When I start to feel fearful, anxious, or worried about how I am going to perform, I shift my gaze onto the person I am dealing with and just focus on trying to take them in — it’s like trying to listen with my eyes — and it absorbs all of my concentration. I observe carefully, and with curiosity, not judgment: “How is this person doing? What is going on for them?”
It also helps to remember that people aren’t all that interested in your (or me) most of the time. Mostly, people are interested in themselves. We tend to overestimate how much others notice our actions and appearance.
Rather than feeling ashamed of what he didn’t know, he became obsessive about learning. I read like crazy. If you are prepared, I’ve learned, that is where your confidence comes from. And the more you do it, always, the more your confidence grows.
For Michael Powell, focusing on his responsibility to the country — instead of worrying about winning approval — kept his anxiety at bay. Without a clear sense of purpose and direction, you are subject to every single person spinning you in circles; with no coherent agenda, you are just reacting and repelling.
Performance anxiety heightens the need for approval and acceptance. But often we think the desire to be liked is the same as being likable. What really matters, of course, is how much other people think we like them.
One day, he thought about how he was playing his role and the objective he was coming in with. “I hope you like me” offers nothing to the recipient of that message. “I really like you,” he found, worked much better.
Early in my teaching career, I noticed that whenever I felt that something had not gone exactly in my way in a class, it was like a worm in my brain. I would ruminate endlessly, blow it out of proportion, and find I couldn’t make it go away. It was just that overwhelming sense that I had failed somehow, not been clear, forgotten to share something important, accidentally offended someone. I would obsess about that one student who seemed hostile, replaying the frowny face over and over, and wondering what else might be coming and how many other people were secretly turning on me. The fear took over, and it informed how I prepared to walk into class the next time. I was getting ready for a fight.
At some point, it occurred to me that my worry was not constructive. Not only was I out of touch with reality, I was actively cooling on the crowd at a time when it would have been much more productive to warm up toward them. I was filling my mind and my body with fear and anxiety: the precursors to hostility. And in teaching, on this dimension, you definitely reap what you sow.
Many people who abuse power have been victimized themselves, often in the exact same ways.
Sometimes, it is to let off steam. Other times, it is to blame us for his failings. And often, it is to undermine our confidence; suggest that we are broken, unworthy, or pathetic; and make us feel dependent or indebted, and that we could not possibly find a better situation elsewhere.
This kind of “feedback” is a tactic, a power move, designed to shift insecurity from the source to the target. It is a way of trying to maintain power and control by disempowering the target psychologically. It is couched as “feedback” or “coaching,” when in reality it is psychological warfare.
Sometimes, when power leads to sexual misconduct, it is because it is lonely at the top. Male power-holders who fear they are unlovable, seek love from every woman they meet. Power can also make people paranoid about the reasons that people are near them, and this heightens the need to test whether others really, truly love them. Other times, when power leads to sexual misconduct, it is because of another kind of insecurity. There are social pressures in a male-dominated world, of needing to constantly test and prove one’s masculine power. In the same way that power and aggression are linked when the reason for using power is to preserve a position of social dominance and superior status, power and sex are linked when the reason for using power is to achieve dominance and validation of a different kind.
Feeling painfully insecure — unlovable, undesirable, weak, incapable, or unimportant — drives the desire for both power and sexual validation. So although having power does not make all men more sexual, in some men, the concepts of power and sex have an automatic association, such that thoughts of one concept automatically activate thoughts of the other. In these kinds of men, having power creates opportunities to fulfill sexual needs, and having sex is a way of fulfilling the need to feel powerful.
The needs for love, intimacy, secure attachment, and belonging are among the most fundamental drivers of human psychological development.
And often a bully will kind of sneak up on you. First he’ll win your trust, and you will give him power by offering rights, respect, and a big part of your story. And eventually he will turn that power against you in ways you did not see coming. It could be a boss, a mentor or coach, a beloved parent or sibling, a friend to whom you feel indebted and have pledged loyalty, or a partner you promised to love, honor, and cherish whatever the cost.
One of the reasons that cycles of abuse tend to feel inescapable is that victims of abuse learn to behave as though they are helpless even when they are not. The first studies of learned helplessness showed that animals who received shocks but did not learn to control them eventually gave up and stopped trying to avoid the pain. But animals who learned that pressing a lever would stop the shock continued to fight to protect themselves and to avoid repeating painful experiences.
You have to press the lever. Like so many of the other challenges, when it comes to stepping out of the victim role, the first step is to act differently.
A great irony in all of this is that people who abuse power are often extremely seductive. Why are we drawn to these people? Why do we fall in love with them? Idolize and want to work for them? We are drawn to these kinds of people, especially when we feel powerless, because their strength, fortitude, and success at controlling others makes us feel secure in their presence, whether they have any intention of protecting us or not.
Evolutionary forces aside, power is also seductive simply because a powerful partner is like a trophy — it’s a sign of your own status and value to the rest of the world. And knowing that someone who could have anyone has chosen you isn’t hard on the ego either. For most of us, it’s thrilling — and a little bit scary — to be in the presence of a powerful person. This is one reason why women are drawn to aggressive men, and underlings are sometimes eager to accept invitations to drinks, or dinner, or travel, for example, for reasons that have nothing to do with interest in sex per se and everything to do with proximity to power.
People often joke about women with “daddy issues,” but the truth is often quite sobering. It is believed that voters (of both sexes) relate to political figures as parental surrogates and often prefer the “strong father” type. This type of leader is especially appealing to those who feel they need protection and who feel safer with a “tough parent” in charge.
This might also shed light on why the most vulnerable groups and individuals are often the first to flock to such a leader, and why it is so easy for leaders to exploit those groups’ fears, insecurities, and feeling of powerlessness.
By stepping outside ourselves and looking at the whole picture we can start to identify opportunities for changing the plot, rewriting the old scripts, “killing off” tired characters, and reimagining the ending.
Studies of criminal behavior reveal what an attacker looks for in a victim: a person who looks easy to take down. Victims of street crimes are not necessarily smaller or physically weaker than others. They just act differently: more submissively, without clear direction or purpose, and without paying much attention to their surroundings. This, not their size or stature, is what makes them seem easy to overpower.
It is tempting to view abusive behavior as someone else’s problem: to cast ourselves in the role of the observer, or the critic in the audience. But in reality we are all players in the dramas of abuse that pollute the world we live in. Abuses of power happen in contexts where they are condoned, and every single one of us can make better choices about the roles we play in the stories that unfold in our presence.
Looking back, I count these instances among my greatest regrets and most guilt-provoking abdications of responsibility. And they felt that way even at the time. No one is proud to play the bystander. No one aspires to it, or auditions for it, and yet we seem to cast ourselves in that role all the time.
Being an upstander requires a mental shift. It requires learning to see yourself as a member of a community — not a lone actor, neither a victim nor a villain, but rather a guardian: someone who is willing to expend social capital and use power on someone else’s behalf, not just to be kind or altruistic, or as part of a quid pro quo, but because this kind of individual risk taking is necessary for the group to prosper and thrive.
What does this mean? The highest-ranking group member in any context should use the status, visibility, and power that come with the position to provide meaning by making sense of a chaotic world for everyone else. The leader must appear onstage, often, to articulate a direction and a destination that keeps individual actors focused on the shared objectives that bind them together. Without a clear, elevating, and shared purpose, organizations collapse into their lowest common denominator. They become a battleground for those who feel the least secure, who need validation, and who will grab first at the chance to do something that elevates their importance.
The way a leader uses power sets the stage for everyone else. And in organizations where the most powerful members are reluctant to take a stand in articulating a vision, everyone else competes for control, tries to build an empire, and works at cross-purposes. Without a clear sense of direction coming down from the top, the organization spins its wheels and nothing productive or meaningful ever gets done. And without a clear shared purpose, individuals are left to pursue their own purposes so that the work they are doing has meaning.
To use power well, in the role of the leader, is to provide a “secure base”; that is “a person, place, goal or object that provides a sense of protection, safety and caring, and offers a source of inspiration and energy for daring, exploration, risk taking and seeking challenge.” Individuals who feel securely attached to authority figures are more psychologically secure themselves. They act with a wisdom and maturity that is less evident in those who feel more needy. And why is this an important outcome in organizations? Because the person in power is not just accountable for his own behavior. The person in power is accountable for the abuse that happens on his watch.
No one writes plays about perfect people. Those stories would be untrue, and that would make them artistically uninteresting. A great play reveals deep, universal truths about humanity that allow us to see ourselves in one another. And in any great story, the most powerful characters are — like all of us — flawed, messy people whose weaknesses are on full display. This is why we actually care about them.