The Power Paradox | Why Leaders Lose the Skills That Made Them Successful

So welcome everyone to another podcast, Dr. Steve and I Gunther, that's me and Dr. Paul Donovan talking about the topic of power. And today we're discussing something called the power paradox. So sounds intriguing, it's a great title and it's actually a core importance.

Now we have mentioned this before in passing, today we're going to go into it in more detail. And this power paradox is actually very enlightening as a way of understanding power. It was first emerged, I read it 2003 paper by Dasha Keltner at all, a whole bunch of other people and since it's been verified by a lot of research. So when I read that paper I was pretty excited and I could see that he really introduced an important new concept. So Paul handed it over to you, what is the power paradox?

Yeah, thank you for that. I became a fan of Dr. Keltner. Actually some years ago I didn't get to his paper, I read his book and he put this the book together later on called the power paradox and that's when it became a little more famous. He's been a professor for many decades and he did lots of research on power but what he did was nail the rise and fall of leaders and why that happens and he called it the power paradox and it was based on lots of research but here's a quote from here.

In fact I quote him in my own book, Bosses Behaving Badly and that's a terrible plug isn't it but there you have it, it's nice isn't it? But this is the quote. And here's the quote, I'm going to read it to you. This is the heart of the power paradox. The seductions of power induce us to lose the very skills that enabled us to gain power in the first place.

As leaders get elevated and lifted into positions which have more rank and more power, they tend to lose skills with people, critical leadership skills. And it's such an extraordinary thing but here's the really problematic part of it. The leader themselves are often not aware of it. So while the power paradox can be usmarded, the first and most important step in managing the power paradox is being aware that it even exists. As the leader elevates in position, there is demonstraitable, repeatable changes in how they tend to behave.

That's the most incredible thing. And these demonstraitable, repeatable ways of behaving are these. Do you want to hear them? Yes. And in fact before you dive in, I just want to comment that the fact of losing skills I think is very key here as well.

So let's come back to that. Yes. They do lose skills. Here's the incredible part about the paradox. As people get elevated, most people who get elevated because they don't smarth the power paradox, lose skills.

They get less able to work effectively with others. That's why so many leaders you meet who are in elevated positions, they get weird. They get kind of weird to talk to. There's because it's this invisible but pervasive impact of being in elevated positions that they don't know is happening to them so they have an outsmarted it. It can be outsmarted.

That's a way Dacca Keltler talks about it, outsmarting the power paradox. So here is what happens to leaders. They don't know it, but this is what's happening to them. They are less able to accurately read the emotions of others around them. They tend to become more self-oriented, less others are intated.

They tend to see others more as utility in their service. They tend to talk more. They become less disinhibited. Or sorry, more. I got to get to talk.

So when you say this Paul, a lot of people would say, well, okay, it seems to happen. They become pricks when they get in power. I mean, they say, yeah, okay. So what's new about what you're saying? It seems kind of obvious.

Oh, right. Sure. What's really problematic is that it's why, and your reaction is a really interesting one, is because we've tended now just to expect that when people get into more senior positions, they behave like jerks. They do outrageous things. You know, here in Australia, they're having sex on their desk in the Parliament House with some staffer.

And thinking they're going to get away with it. That no one will ever find out about it. And this is the thing that the effect of the power paradox is that it enables you to completely overestimate what you even get away with. What you're going to outsmart others with. And so we've just come to expect that people who get to really high levels of behavior, they've kind of strangely are very self-orientated.

And I'm wanting to sound an alarm here, Vene, because this is not what we need. We need leaders who both know they need power to get their job done, but who work with it intelligently, who are disciplined with its impact on them, and who know how to outsmart the power paradox. Is the paradox is that work reducing their capability to really lead moment by moment with others, to be able to empathize, notice what's happening around them, and then leading people onto a better place. That gets eroded when people get elevated if they are not awake to what's happening. So it sounds like more of that.

It sounds like a version of the power corrupts. It's again, people say, well, yes, we know power corrupts, and you're just giving examples of that and people become stupid. So again, what's startlingly revealed here by this notion? Yes. Power does tend to corrupt.

The power paradox is the nitty-gritty of how that happens. So it starts with us. We must demand that our leaders live examined lives and examine what's happening inside them so that they can outsmart us. But I want to let you know, most of us are looking at leaders who behave badly and thinking, what a jerk. And perhaps they will always like that before they got there.

That's our mindset, but it's not true. The truth is we are likely to do exactly the same thing when we get to those positions. So it's too easy to dismiss people in high positions as being jerks and a prick, selfish and unable to genuinely connect with others. And thinking they were always like that, they probably weren't. They were probably just like you, and now they're in an elevated position.

And they're actually under more stress, far more stress because of that elevator position. And I would suggest that that's one of the critical reasons why this power paradox is so pervasive. So you're kind of talking about it, but can you say something about like what's going on? Like why do people become jerks? We know that phrase power corrupts and we just sort of accept it as you say.

But is there anything about the power paradox which kind of helps us understand it a little bit more? Here's one little bit of research that I think could help us gain insight into it. I'm just going to share how the research is done because it's an interesting story. So what Professor Keltner does and did is he primed people to feel powerful and then notice the differences. So here's an example of how he did that.

He took two groups. One group he showed images of very rich, very privileged people who had access to a lot of resources, you know movie stars, people on their own aeroplanes, that kind of thing. And the other group he showed pictures of people who were really struggling, the underprivileged, without resources, homeless, that kind of thing. So he had these two groups. So he showed these two groups, their respective images.

And then he showed each group a picture of a 12 step ladder and said here's a picture of the ladder of life. Where would you position yourself on the ladder of life right now? So we asked him that same question. Now the group that he showed the pictures of the rich and famous, ranked themselves lower on that ladder because they felt less than, here they are exposed to all these people who have made it and who have great resources. And the people whom he showed the pictures of those who are homeless and underprivileged, they ranked themselves quite naturally higher on the ladder of life because hey, I think I'm doing alright.

And so they get shown this ladder immediately after the images. And then immediately after ranking themselves on the ladder, they have their ability, their empathy measured. So they go through a well known test to measure your capacity to read emotions in others. And here's the really interesting bit. The group that ranked themselves higher in life, higher on that ladder had a distinctly lessened ability to read the emotions of others.

It happened instantly. And the people who ranked themselves lower in life because they'd seen all the pictures of fancy people had, were more accurate at reading emotions in others. So it's a relatively instantaneous impact. The moment we start feeling more than compared to others in our world, the moment we start being orientated toward a comparison and thinking, where somehow above, our ability to read emotions drops immediately. And all of that is just amplified and drawn out and made even more pervasive when you get elevated into positions of power for long periods of time.

But the effect of the power paradox is actually can be quite instant. If you get primed to feel powerful, you'll be less able to read other people's emotions. And your capacity to accurately read what's going on around you in a social context is a central skill to lead well. So isn't that amazing for me? Yeah, yeah, I was stunned by it and every time I read about it, or I hear you talking about it now, I think wow, that this is so interesting, I mean, it's partly, you know, I did a PhD on power and you're teaching on it and practicing on this subject, it's part of the fascination.

And for me, what's important is that this also reveals that this is not like something just inborn or people are like a path air called something like this. This suggests that in fact, in terms of the neuroplasticity that we talk about, the changeability of our brain, that this in fact is, as you say, something that can happen instantaneously. So if it can happen so quickly on the one hand, that can become very unconscious, we just don't realize that this is happening and then we're in a position of power and it just this phenomenon that you're talking about sort of takes over. On the other hand, if it happens so instantaneously, then it means, yeah, it's not really inborn in some way or even maybe a personality tray, although it could, it could. exacerbate personality traits, but in fact that it's something kind of circumstantial and fluid.

So this kind of fluidity, I think, is gives hope because if we can, if simply changing our perception can change our behavior and even our empathy so dramatically, then yeah, so far, awareness can potentially shift it as well. Yes, well said. I love the way so that it's very instantaneous. It's what I say, it's chemical. It's a set of chemical reactions inside our body when we start to get elevated and if we're not prepared for that elevation, for positions of more power, it's going to happen.

It's going to happen and it's not that tough to outsmart. So we talk about how to do that. Yes, let's do that because the research is fascinating. You know, there's many, many studies that's like hundreds of studies now that have replicated what you're doing. of describing an each study from a different angle has found the same thing.

So it's a very consistent and very solid findings. So yeah, of course, what's important is what we can do about it. But before we go on to that, I want to pick out one thing you set, which is the chemical aspect. Now one of the things I found fascinating is that not only is there's change of perception and they see themselves differently on the ladder and their empathy changes, but as you say, they're actual chemical changes. There's a amount of hormone, someone's secreting the cortisol in their blood.

I mean, there's a whole cascade of effects of this, which are probably reciprocal. So if this power paradox, if flipping into the state increases cortisol, then that also affects us and so hormones are very significant to how we feel and how we see the world. So we have a sort of a cross-the-board effect. Yeah. Here's how I...

in their role that gives them that tender, live longer, they get less heart attacks. There's all sorts of far-reaching health benefit from actually dealing with power well and wanting power to achieve a purpose in your life. But most of us want to run from power because it exposes us and then those that get elevated, many of us, the majority of us will pray to the power paradox. there's only a small number of people who end up doing it well. And the reason why we engage in these unhelpful patterns of behavior, if we're not prepared to be elevated, is because they give us temporary reduction in stress.

So when I walk and you're going to imagine a manager walking into a team of people that report to them and they're stressed and so out of that. stress they walk into the team and go, okay, right, you could do that if you could go and do that, that's great. If you go and do that and they just hand out job store everyone and inside they go, that feels good and they've just just decreased temporarily their stress level but in the process they've seen everyone in their team as a utility to get job jobs done for them and that's and that's a very poor approach to leading people and it tends to disengage them and it doesn't lead to long-term good outcomes not at least long-term poor business outcomes. So people can ask people can ask okay so isn't that what a leader does they hand out jobs they delegate they supervise like you know what are you saying what should they do differently? Yeah, the best managers in the world and the research on this is far, far reaching and really solid.

Certainly, the best managers in the world know how to allocate work, know how to give feedback. But they do that in the context of understanding the needs of the people with whom they're working. In fact, the mindset shift from those managers who get the best business outcomes is that they are there to ensure that the needs of the people who report to them get met isn't that a mind-blower. Yeah, and that's, that could be described as the empty-the-in-away. Yes, exactly.

How can they have a mindset to make sure that those people who report to them have their needs met if they can't even read appropriately where those people are? And when managers bring that kind of mindset, business outcomes increase. And it's not that they're not prepared to give tough feedback. It's not that they're not willing to drive towards their outcomes, but they do it in the context of knowing that a team of people reporting to them must continue to get their needs met or else they go to disengage. So this sounds kind of, it still sounds almost, could sound almost idealistic.

Well, yes, that's a good manager and if you have a good manager, that's wonderful and they care about the needs of the people around them, rather than just dispensing work. But you know, how can understand the paradox, the power paradox, help someone to achieve this? The first and most practical thing I would suggest leaders do is become more aware of where their anxiety spikes. Because that's likely to when they'll do a rank fail, or when they'll use the perk of power to temporarily reduce their stress. And when they use those perks to reduce this.

stress, they became less effective with others. So the first thing is I sometimes have done this and I have with leaders I have asked them just to tell me about their day from nine to five on a little scale here and I draw a line and say tell me generally where your peak of stress might be created throughout that day. And so that we can anticipate it because that's the moments where they're more likely to fall prey to the impact of the power paradox. If they're unaware that they start getting stressed and start barking orders to people or start becoming very self-orientated or this is many leaders do this. They start to have a stressful thought and they're sitting in their team and they start looking at their phone or they start being completely entranced fixed by something else that's going on in the room altogether and forget that they're the leader and people are watching them.

I mean, I was running a large meeting with a team of executives. It's the top 55 people who are running this large organization here in Sydney and I noticed that some people Some of the leaders some of the executive team sitting at table suddenly had stressful thoughts and then just get Trans fixed on their phone while they're in a conversation at their tables It's really poor form and it's only because they had got anxious at that moment About some random thought that went through their mind and they could no longer attend to the conversation they're in and their rank gives them their There are a ability just to tune out. Nobody else at that table was just tuning out whenever they wanted to and started doing e-m-up their inbox, but the most senior person at the table can is no one will call them on it. Yeah, that's right. Exactly.

Nobody's going to challenge them and say, what are you doing looking at your phone? Yeah, because they're positioned a power. So it's very interesting to me on a psychological level because really you're talking about a key being, I'm going to use the word stress, of course, that's a... of a more dignified term that you also mentioned anxiety which is a little bit getting to the psychology of it and the fact that anxiety is a very important metric for anybody in a position of how to be aware of because they tend to hand on that anxiety or they do deflective things with it. So we're talking here about self-awareness not just in terms of behavior but in terms of what your feelings are.

Yeah, that's a great mix. I think a leader's capacity to manage their anxiety to become aware of it and how it's impacting their moment by moment behavior is one of the critical competencies we all need to see in ourselves and in the leaders that we follow and that will enable them to avoid this paraparadox, power paradox and ultimately the rise and fall of leaders because this is why there is the fall People will ultimately not continue to follow leaders who they don't believe are there for their common good. And so in corporations they get worked around people just avoid them. In political environments they'll ultimately get voted out. They'll be in totalitarian states, they can be rebellions, it can take a long time.

But ultimately there's the long arc. the power paradox and it creates the rise and fall. And illustration of that I was just reading yesterday was story about the Dominican Republic, and they had a dictator forgotten his name from like 1930 to 1960 something, and he was just everything awful that any dec... Tader could be and he killed like 30,000 people and he had torture and secret informants, the whole thing and he was in power for a very long time. One of the features, one of his features was that he would walk into any room and from his point of view, any woman was his meat, he could just grab any woman that he wanted.

In fact he sort of I'm a demand that some of the wealthy families would profit him some of there, you know, daughters. occasion he walked into this party and there was a young woman who was the daughter of one of the you know, leading families and he was clearly pursuing her and she told him to back off and he continued and then she slapped him in the face which was you know something nobody did she was standing up to his power basically and she became one of the people that over a period of more than a decade sort of was instrumental and eventually helping us over through. unfortunately, it's worth death in the end. So it's just such an interesting story because it illustrates this thing that people know and that people see and that people in power just have this sort of elevated sense to themselves and the complete lack of awareness of other people is anything but their objects. So I think this is one of the very problem aspects of the power paradox is the total lack of empathy and the dangerousness of that as well.

That's a very extreme example and it's an accurate example and They're the examples that we tend to be aware of more broadly and they're good. It's good for us to be reminded of it And it's the same effect when we're dealing with the nasty boss who just Treats people as less than it is a Sold-of-Story experience to work for a really bad boss Now, I would not like to compare it with having to deal with that kind of dictator that you've just described. But I know in most of our Western world, many people work for bosses, and they are simply just surviving these people. It's really dignity, destroying experience. Those bosses are being affected by the processes.

and the phenomena of the power paradox, and they're protected by their rank for a while. And then comes the down. So I'm aware of our time and I just want to say the first, I want to answer your other question and that is what do leaders do? They must begin to live an examined life. They must begin to notice when their anxiety gets peaked.

And then what they usual strategy. is to manage that anxiety which will usually be a problematic behavior. It'll be a them or capitalising on some perk that power gives them that will temporarily reduce their stress. And so that's the first and by the way, what we're really talking about is leaders must build their personal power because what we're really talking about for an A is just building personal power. And if they're unaware of it, they'd be...

the end of think that the feelings of power that they have in their elevated role is them. And they don't realize that this is just the feelings they're getting bloated with the feelings of being elevated, but it's not the portable personal power that we can take into other roles in our lives. It's just the bloated feelings of elevation that have come with being in the role that they are that's elevated. So the first thing is build personal power. by living an examined life and the second thing is get feedback.

You must know that you're living in a world that's deprived of data about how others experience you, the more you're elevated, the less data you get. So you have a massive responsibility to get feedback because the figure out Luke gets horribly interrupted as you get elevated in the positions of power. You know, I think about it. another term which is the term privilege which is a kind of, you know, sociological term and bandied around a lot, a lot these days, both people exploring that term and people reacting to that term. But I think that in a way apart from some inherited privilege, what we're talking about is the experience of privilege, which, and this is like the mechanics of it, this is like the psychology and the behavior and in fact, this power paradox we're talking about described.

what happens with privilege, which is when you move to a higher position, then there's a whole constellation of things where you start assuming certain rights and things like that, including the sexual rights that we talk about, which leads to some of that sort of need to sexual harassment behavior and a whole constellation of other sense of entitlement that people who step into leadership positions get. And this is, as you say, what often leads to their downfall. So I think something important also in the macros. as well as the micro-sense of awareness of anxiety, the macro-sense is exactly what you're talking about, wearing aware of the arc of the rise and fall of leadership and that each person, although they feel the privilege and the power of that role as you describe, that they are in fact just as vulnerable to a fall. And so the fragility of privilege we need to be aware of that and that in fact the seeing the wonderful feelings we have and all the perks that go with the role in fact.

as you say, are very much attached to the role. And so in a way, I think that can help people hopefully step back a little bit and be interested in both their internal experience, the anxiety and their behavior which results. But also, be interested in the sort of psychology of power, interested in how stepping into a role, give you the sense of identity and leads to certain behaviors which eventually can distance, especially as we're talking about the lack of empathy. I'm in entities of one. a full term and although, you know, customer service people these days learn to do empathy or mimic it and even though AI seems to learn to mimic empathy.

In fact, we want to call it real empathy that the interest in the welfare of other people is like a key. Now, this sounds almost like obvious like, well, of course if the leaders interested in other people, you know, they're going to be more caring, but where I guess the emphasizing that this is not just the important kind of sort of something. moral point of view or something, but it's important practically in terms of the effectiveness of the leader and their success long term. Yeah. I meant to that.

It is, I love the way you just said that we, as if you want to be a leader, then you'll need to know that you're in service to others. Fundamentally, leaders are offering something to people around them. And if you can offer it and stay connected to them, they'll follow. So this notion of leadership means that if we can talk about leadership in this context, we will have people going into leadership who will be less likely to fall prey to the power paradox. There will be able to sustain with them a genuine sense of connection.

with others while they understand and use well the power that they have in their role to achieve a purpose of some kind. And they know they must need power, they know they in fact greatly does want power because they want it in service of achieving something great and they just bring the discipline with the discipline, the psychological disciplines as you might refer to enable us not to f- for pray to the impacts of being elevated. It's this is the kind of thing that we as everyday people need to cultivate in ourselves and demand in our leaders increasingly. So that's the power paradox. And you mentioned this leadership and service and there's a wonderful book called Servant Leadership, which is exactly about that.

People might also want to look that up. So we'll see you next time. It's about it's always very exciting and it's great to check out of you. Come back to this again, but yes, it's, it's, I get very stimulated talking about this. I'm going to have read these things or, you know, we teach it for the straight to discuss it with each other and hopefully something that's very useful for people, whether they're in positions of leadership or considering them or in fact in down power too, because when you understand the way the power works, it can also help you understand what is going on with these.

bosses behaving badly as you described. Yeah absolutely yep it's a great topic and I hope that those who are listening found it helpful. Thanks very much and we'll see another time. See you now time. Bye.