How to Feel More Confident and Powerful in Your Work!

How can you feel more confident and powerful in your work? Hi, I'm Chester Elton and this is my dear friend and co-author, Adrian Gostick. Hello, everybody. Our guest today is going to talk about the science of personal power. And we're going to highlight practical tips and strategies to enhance your own personal power and influence over others so you can have the most powerful version of yourself. As always, we hope the time you spend with us will help reduce the stigma of anxiety at work and in your personal life. And with us is our new friend, Chris Lipp. He's the professor and director of management communication at Tulane University's Friedman School of Business. No, it's just Freeman. I'm gonna do that again. Here we go. And with us is our new friend, Chris Lipp, professor and director of management communication at Tulane University, Freeman School of Business. Roll Wave, often called the pitch guy. His first book, The Startup Pitch, introduced the modern framework for investment pitches that is now used ubiquitously by global accelerators and institutions such as Stanford University. His new book is The Science of Personal Power that just came out in November. Chris, we are delighted to have you on the podcast. Thanks for finding the time. My pleasure to be here. Well, we're excited. Chris, this is such an important topic that everybody sort of struggles with, and we'll get into the dynamics of power versus kindness as we go through this. But first I'll start with this idea of power. How do we give away our power at work? It's important to understand what personal power is because a lot of us, when we think of power, we think about like influence over other people. We think about money, position, but personal power is a little different. You know, it's personal. And what that means is it's personal power is our belief in our own capability to create impact. So it's actually something that is completely unique to us. But just because it's a belief that we have about ourselves doesn't mean it's that easy to change. It's actually, you could almost think of it as like a subconscious computer, just like self-esteem. It's analyzing the way that we're behaving and the way that we're thinking. And from that, it's creating, our unconscious is creating a belief about ourselves. And so there are certain things that we do that make us feel more or less empowered. And what is really nice about this is that how we feel about our own power, we communicate it in ways that signal to other people how powerful we are. And so it's both internal and external. And I think this is important because today everybody pretty much wants to be successful and everybody wants to be happy. And it seems like a lot of the books that are written on ways to be happy, for example, and fulfilled, and well-being don't necessarily lead to success. Whereas those books that are written about success, you know, a very kind of like stereotypical power, they don't necessarily lead to well-being. I mean, it's kind of this, you know, I don't want to be a Machiavellian person. But I believe, you know, when I started writing this book, I believe that, you know, human psychology is not built to be in conflict with itself. And so there naturally had to be certain ways that we behave that make us feel good on the inside and make us successful on the outside. Personal power is that. Such an interesting way to look at how you transmit and how you show that personal power. In your book, though, you say that personal power is the first step to building self-esteem and creating strong boundaries. I thought that was interesting. You said strong boundaries. Why don't you walk us through that and why is that so foundational? They did this research study where they wanted to, they took people and they basically had them affirm their capability, right? So self-affirmation, we all know the power of self-affirmation. Right. But they did it in a position where the person, like, you know, power posing was kind of a very basic, rudimentary level of personal power. But they had them either in a power pose or in a weaker, like, kind of crunched up, curled up pose, which would be a powerless pose. And then they had them do affirmations. And what was really fascinating about the study is when they were powerless, it did not matter what the affirmation was, whether it was a positive affirmation or a negative affirmation about one's capability, it simply had no impact. Because when we are out of our personal power, we don't trust ourselves. We don't trust our beliefs, we don't trust our words, we are really looking outside for signals about our worth. And so no matter how much you practice self-affirmation, if you're not practicing, if you're not in your personal power, you're gonna ignore your own affirmations. But when you're in your personal power, now, for example, in this kind of power pose position, what they use, but there's a lot better ways to do it, but that is one fundamental way. And then you affirm yourself, then it's stuck because now you trust what you believe about yourself. So, Chester standing with his hands on his hips, like Superman, that actually is helpful? 100%. You know, I want to dig a little deeper on that because you talk about how you translate people's physical stature. Isn't it interesting? We've got people that we know that as soon as they walk in the room, it seems like they own the room. Yes, and it is kind of a physical manifestation, isn't it? And then there are other people where you go, are you sure they were in the room? Like you don't even notice that they're there. So this posing or this physical, is that the first step in manifesting your personal power? I would say that it's not necessarily the first step. The research is still a little bit murky on whether or not power posing is 100% effective. But if you think about it, and I'm just thinking about it now in situ as we talk, yoga is a very, people who practice yoga feel better about themselves. And when we think about it, yoga is just stretching, so it's opening up the body. And you could assume that power posing, I think it's generally been reduced to this fact of like, I'm taking up space and stuff, right? And in the jungle, I'm bigger and therefore I'm a predator. Possibly there's something to that. But also when you open up your body, you are more in tune with yourself. So you're more aware of your sensations, your feelings. And as a result, since you're more self-connected, I think that's one of the accesses to your personal power. And you know, because Chester and I, we do a lot of executive coaching. And one of the things we tell leaders is about executive presence. And while I'm joking about Chester with the hands on the hips, I usually tell people, look, that's sort of the old school. Now, executive presence, but it still is very much with your body. You know, you might put your arms behind your head. You might open yourself up. When somebody begins to speak, you might turn toward them and have a very open expression. I think this is really important and But but have power sort of poses changed over the last little while or or is that just me giving bad advice? Both of those hands on the hips and hand behind your head Back, you know, the expansive postures are both considered power poses and I think they're eternal power poses. But again, they're kind of the surface of power posing. You think of like humans are like these complex beings with these very complex brains and then, oh, I can just stand in a position and my whole life is better. I mean, no, of course not, right? And so I really say in the book, if we look at the research, the power posing is just kind of the crust of feeling power. It's like the answer room of the house of personal power. It's where you put your coat, but it's not where you live. It's not where you get the comfort. When you step into your personal power, there's really three things that define the psychology of personal power. And those are, number one is the sense of control over your environment. What does that mean? People who are in their personal power, when they vote, for example, in a national election, they feel like their vote counts. Somebody who's out of their power, who feels powerless, feels like their vote doesn't count. So personal power in the sense is not necessarily like, I have control of a big company or I manage a million people. It's simply like, do I believe that my actions in the world have an effect? And those who feel that sense of control, feel their actions have an impact, that's personal power. And as a result of that, they're going to see ways that they actually can impact the world. Because everybody's, you know, to some degree, we all have the same influence in our environment and powerlessness is just not being able to see that. So that's number one is a sense of control and the way that really shows up in our language is we take responsibility for things. Why do we take responsibility for things? Because we recognize that we had influence over the outcome of it. Whereas powerless person doesn't recognize their influence over an outcome, right? I'm powerless, it wasn't my fault, it was somebody else's fault. You blame. Blaming is one of the, I call it one of the four horsemen of killing your personal power. And people who blame also are seen as less powerful managers, they're less liked, et cetera. So if we talk about anxiety at work, for example, and well-being, I think one of the things that we misunderstand is responsibility equals less stress, according to the research. Responsibility equals less stress. Why? It's the people at the bottom of the hierarchy who have the least influence, who have the least responsibility and accountability over the events of the corporation that feel the most stress. It's just, it's socioeconomic status, the same thing. As you go up in the hierarchy or as you gain more influence, more, I should say, responsibilities, you feel less stress. It's fascinating. In fact, there's a Harvard study on this. So one of the things I recommend is take accountability for what's happening in your domain of influence within an organization. If you continue to not accept the responsibility for the event because you feel small, then of course you're going to continue to feel small and you're going to feel more anxiety. It's just the nature of the beast. That's number one. Number two, I'm just going to go through the other two real quickly. Number two is self-connection, which is why I think opening your body is so important to feeling yourself, understanding your values. And number three is simply action. So link this to, and you were very good before we began to ask about our podcast and what we're trying to accomplish here. This is an anxiety at work podcast. So everything you're talking about is already resonating. I think it's really spot on. But if somebody has anxiety or it comes down then, it can be a little hard to be a little courageous. So how can people have a little bit more courage at work and take a little bit more of that power if maybe they are a little bit more predisposed to anxiety? You know, I remember when I started in an organization when I was just out of college and I also had a lot of anxiety. I probably wouldn't have... I don't think I told anybody, right? But I'm certainly feeling it on the inside. And there are a few things. One is just to accept responsibility where you can. Do not blame, do not tell yourself or communicate to yourself and to others that you're powerless. Really look for those angles by which you had impact. For example, I'm teaching university students, as you know, and they do group projects. And sometimes somebody will fail to contribute to the group, and then they get a low grade and they blame it on that person. Because everybody else contributed but they didn't show up. So I asked them, okay, well, you're just blaming. You basically said all your power of your grade was this person and they chose not to help you and so you failed. So I'm like, where could you have influenced that environment? Could you have reached out to that person and communicated differently? Could you have taken up the slack? What are the, don't think about the status quo and that person failed to live up to your expectations or the expectations of the status quo. Look for the opportunities that could have changed the situation. This is what leaders do. They're given employees and those employees aren't perfect. And so they have to maneuver with the employee's strengths and weaknesses. They don't say, oh, this employee has this weakness, our whole team sucks. No, they're like, okay, I'm a leader. I need to take responsibility and make this work. So make things work. So that's one way to get into your power and feel courage. There are two ways before you take action. Number one is that, again, that accountability, which I keep pushing on because it is so fundamental to our sense of power. Number two is this self-connection. So I remember I had when I was in my first job, there was an employee there, and she was totally never stressed, but she was a star employee. And I'm like, I asked her, why, like, how are you so successful? She's like, I don't even care about my job. I'm like, what? You're not like, a lot of people would expect about somebody who's successful to be like, I don't care about my job. She's like, I'm just here because I have a family to raise, I need to feed them, I need to, you know, I got a new, a young child, a toddler. That's why I'm here. Like, and she was just so clear on her purpose for working. And because of that, it just, her self-esteem wasn't tied to her work, it was tied to her values, her goals. So if you're at work and you're like, well, I'm gonna judge myself based on how successful I am or how much people appreciate me and my job, well, that has nothing to do with you, that has to do with what other people think of you. So why are you really there? Maybe you're really there because you wanna be independent, right? Or you wanna support somebody. Or maybe you're passionate about what the organization is doing, but even the organization is not your end goal, it's the value behind your purpose in being in that organization. So if you can find and continually reinforce your core values that in the environment in which you are in you will feel less anxiety. I'll add one more thing to that. Yeah, no, I can't remember what I was going to say. You don't understand, Chris. That's what I'm supposed to say. I'm the one that forgets what he's thinking about, not you. Anyway, I really find this really interesting, particularly that example of I don't care about my work. See if I've got this right. What you're saying is just remember what you can control and what you can't control. What you can't control is how you feel about yourself and your values and so on. You can't control necessarily how other people always perceive you, which is so interesting because we find that bosses stress people out, even good bosses, unintentionally. So if I'm a boss and I want to reduce that anxiety and I want to give people back their personal power. What are a couple of things that as a leader should be red flags for me or that I can self-identify and think, oh, if I'm doing that, I'm taking people's personal power away. Does that make sense? Yeah, there's a few things. One that actually, I'm gonna borrow from another researcher, I think it's Adam Galinsky, and he said, people who are in a less powerful hierarchical position right to their leaders, we all know this. By the way, hierarchy is just innate in our human nature, right? I mean, even if you didn't have an organization, people in a group will organize into an informal hierarchy. There's the leaders, we know who the leaders are, we know who the people at the bottom and nobody listens to are. And that's not because of some talent, that's just personal power being emanated out. But people who are in a lower position, when they hear silence from their boss, they tend to assume negative information. So if the boss says, I want to talk to you at one o'clock in two hours, for the next two hours, you're going to stress. You're like, what did I do? What did I do? And then at one o'clock, they're like, I want to give you a promotion. You're like, oh, great. Because the brain is just negative about the silence. Silence. So if you're in a position of power like a boss, you know, manager, make sure that if there's a positive silence, don't communicate, right? Communicate that there's nothing negative. It's important. Number two is there's a couple of ways that you can empower employees. And we know and nobody likes micromanagers and micromanagement actually is a disempower. Well, first off, managers who are micromanagers are actually already disempowered in themselves and that it's usually fear that's creating them And they're trying because they feel a lack of control They're trying to control everything right to gain back that sense of control. So micro-management is just a lack of control trying to Reinforce, you know a sense of control, but it doesn't work. It's like gambling to get the next win. It's It's a downward spiral. But anyway, forget the manager side. So if you micromanage employees, you also constrict their ability to have impact over their environment, right? So they can't feel that accountability in themselves because the environment is pushing on them, right? They really are getting disempowered. So what research has found is if you're a manager and what you want to do is you want to guide by high-level goals. So visions are, of course, everybody associates leadership with visionaries. But the reason that's so powerful is when you are a visionary, when you create high-level goals and give those to your subordinate, without giving micromanagement instructions on how to complete the tasks, your employees are empowered to think of creative solutions to fulfill the goal. So you're not laying out, you know, you're just like, for example, you're in LA and you need to get to New York. Well, a micromanager would say, I want you to buy the ticket from Southwest Airlines, let's say, I want you to go to the airport two hours before, I want you to get on a plane and get there. Right, just like, take every step. But an employee who's, or a manager who's not a micromanager would be like, just get yourself to New York. And maybe the employee will figure it out themselves so there's that sense of impact. Or maybe there's like, the planes have been grounded, you know, and so then they're like, oh, find a bus or something. So they, I guess kind of giving a silly example, but the long story, the short story is, you empower your employees by giving them the room to use creative solutions to fulfill the goals of the organization, as opposed to giving them specific tasks. And yeah, and makes just logical sense. Yeah, Chris, the you know, the beauty is in figuring out how to do this. And that's where your book comes in. Right. So we want to recommend everybody grab a copy of The Science of Personal Power. Tell us a little bit more about your work, Chris. Where can people find out more about you and what you do? You can find me online at speakvalue.com and you can find my books, of course, The Science of Personal Power on Amazon. I really named my domain many years ago. I've been doing this for, I've done pitching and persuasion and all these things. Speakvalue, I sort of started with communication because when I was at work and I was feeling anxious about my place and how could I create impact? For me at the time, I thought communication was really the way through it. And persuasion in particular, since persuasion is the language of influence, like hey, if people's opinions about me control my career, right, whether I get a promotion or not, then I better know how to influence people's opinions. And so I wrote persuasion, and ultimately, persuasion is the ability to communicate your value to others. That's how I really define persuasion. The whole reason I got into personal power about eight years ago now was because I realized that persuasion just wasn't enough. And there are so many ways that we're communicating to others, you know, our value, that I had to go deeper into the psychology of it. Hey, last question for me is, okay, so I mean, obviously the antonym of power may be something like, you know, being ineffective or weak, but sometimes in business, we think the antonym might be more like nice or kind. Somebody who is nice or kind doesn't have power or isn't confident. Help us understand, how do you walk the tightrope of being a kind, good, generous person, and yet also having power and confidence. Well, you know, there's this kind of, there's this mistaken belief about warmth and liking. Even in the research you find this. I was reading a research paper this morning that was talking about the dimensions of warmth and competence. Warmth in psychology is not being nice. Warmth is essentially being in service to others. It's a huge difference. And that's where this kind of likability gets associated with weakness is because we are so focused on other people's opinion of us, which is powerlessness by the way, that we act really nice so they don't harm us. But in that niceness, there's a communication that I'm weak, you're strong. So that's why we get disrespected. And so we think, okay, well, the opposite must be alpha power. And so I'm just going to be dominant. But of course, you know, is that in service? Not necessarily, right? Often in the ego, it's in service to our ego, which has nothing to do with serving the other person. So I talked to this city council member outside of Houston. I was like, she was like a very normal mother, and she made her way into politics. And then there was a lot of money against her, and yet she continued to get reelected, reelected. And so I was talking with her, I was like, how did you, what's your motto? You know, like, how do you act? Why do people love you so much? And she's like, my motto is simply this, I'm here to serve you, I don't care if you like me. I was like, wow, right? That really gets to the heart of what it means to be powerful in a way that is liked by others, essentially, it's not your warmth of your speech that makes us value each other, it's the service we give to each other. That is brilliant. You know, it boils down to service. If people are serving you, you're naturally drawn to them. And you give them, you know, your time, you give them your power, it's great. Hey, two things really quick, and I know we're running out of time here. We're going a little over because you're fascinating, so there's the compliment. I would love to know your personal rituals around how you manage your anxiety and so on. We're always interested in that. You mentioned something earlier, though, that I thought you might come back to and you haven't, the four horsemen of weakness. One was blaming. If you could go through those other three really quick and then give us some of your personal rituals, that would be brilliant. Great, I'll do that and I'll give you what you can do to step into your own power before big moments. The Four Horsemen are blame, blaming, proving, which is focused on the other person's opinion, inaction and reaction. So you can learn more about those in my book. Those are the Four Horsemen, those will destroy your power, blame, proving, inaction, and reaction. Excellent. Thank you. What they did, now, they did this research study. They found if you connect into your personal power 20 minutes before you go into an interview, you're 81% more likely to get the position. So think about that. If you could just do this one little ritual 20 minutes before you go into a high-stakes presentation or pitch or interview and double your chances, basically double your chances of success, I mean, wouldn't you want to learn that? And so there are a couple of ways to do this, to step into your power, at 20 minutes before. I'm gonna give you my favorite. And this has to do, again, with tuning into ourselves. They found, so researchers found, if you, 20 minutes before an interview, if you take, let's say, a list of values, and I have this exercise in my book, but if you take a list of values, you pick your top three of this list of 10 or 20, and then from that, you pick your top value in your life, not just this moment, but what's happening, but in your life. So you pick that value, and now you write for four to five minutes on a piece of paper, just write out why this value is important to your life. What that does at the psychological level is it tunes you back into yourself, so it tunes you into the parts of your brain that are associated with your personal power, right, you're anchoring inside, doing nothing else and writing for your top value for four to five minutes. When you step into that interview, you're almost twice as likely to succeed. That is fascinating. And it's just getting yourself in the right mindset and coming back to your core values, this is what gives me power. And then having written that out, isn't it interesting that it's not just exuding it physically, it's the physical writing of it down to reinforce it. And you say it takes four to five minutes. Now, people are listening. You'll say, well, that's not very long. Go ahead and write continuously for five minutes. It's longer than you think. Yeah. So if you're going to affirm something, don't affirm your capability, affirm your values. Excellent. That's awesome. Well, Chris, thanks so much for being on our show today. This has been delightful. We've learned a lot and yeah, we wish you the best of luck with it with the new book again The book is the science of personal power from Wiley and Available wherever great books are sold. So Chris, thanks again for being on the show today. My pleasure Adrian Chester Thank you for the great questions. I love this conversation. Yeah, it was a delight. Thank you so much well just really good stuff personal power so they don't know if we've done that much of yet but it is so poor to our ability to influence others to to grow their careers etc uh... love for everything you have to say but uh... really got a killer you know i like this three steps look and have control over your environment, feel like you have control. We talk about that in anxiety work as mastery. You have a little feeling of self-control, connecting to yourself and then some action. So really, lots of boots on the ground kind of ideas from Chris. I thought near the end, his practical piece about 20 minutes before you go into an interview, take five minutes, what are your top three core values, narrow it down to one, write it over and over for four or five minutes. Don't worry about capabilities so much, worry about your core and how it doubles your ability to get the job or get the promotion, whatever it might be. This idea of really turning inwards, control what you can control, what's really important to you is more important than what other people think about you or things that you can't control. Isn't it interesting how he said people higher on the food chain, have less stress because they've got all the control. Which is completely counterintuitive to what the business world thinks. They think, oh, we should pay that person more because they have more stress, they're higher up and he's exactly right. The people we talk to lower down as we do our interviews go, are you kidding? My whole day is stressful. If I get fired, I have no way to meet my rent next month. You know, versus somebody who, yeah, who has a million bucks in the bank because they've been getting stock options for years. Yeah, they have a different kind of stress. Pause this for just a minute, I'll be right back. Yep. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Chester, you just got way better looking there. I don't know what happened. Sorry about that, I didn't realize you were live. What's going on? How are you doing, Adrian? Good, good. We're just finishing up a recording here. We should be done quick They're doing okay, yeah, yeah, we're Jen's had Rotator cuff surgery four months ago now, and it's a beast so If you have that option don't do it Yeah Yeah. I talked with a woman who had knees replaced, hips replaced, and shoulders replaced. Because shoulders are the hardest. Yeah, that's what we're hearing. Yeah, well bless her heart. That's how rough it's going to get for her. Oh, yeah, it's been miserable. It still hurts, and she's going through physical therapy, and yeah, it's just a beast. Well, what do they say? How much longer? It could be a year. It could be two years. You just don't know. What are you talking about? Oh shoot. Yeah, Jen's rotator cuff surgery, so it's been a beast. Oh. Yeah, you remember when it happened, because I mean she couldn't do anything, she had a quarter of her body was immobile, you know. And I still had three gigs during it, so Tony would come over and take care of her, because thankfully they were just overnights, but they were, it was pretty bad. Yeah. Well, well, give her, give her our best. Yeah, sorry about that. I'm drinking all this water all day and all of a sudden, here we go. Well, I could finish this section and have to clean up my office. Or I could, yeah, well, hopefully Brent edits it, I'm sure. Well, and we're still recording, so You're streaming this, are you? That's okay. You might want to just start again. Chester's bladder and Jennifer's rotator cuff. It's all good. What do you want to do? Keep going. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, yeah. We can keep going. Okay, so we just had talked about the people at the bottom having more stress than people above, so we finished that thought. So, okay. I think it's my turn to jump in. Yeah. Okay, here we go. Yeah. The other thing I really appreciated was the simple practical stuff that he gives us, right? The 20 minutes before. The four horsemen. And I love the way he teased it. He said it's blaming, proving, inaction, and reaction. And I thought, okay, explain that. He goes, yeah, buy the book. That was great. And isn't that true, though? We give up our power when we blame. I love my dad's old expression. He goes, excuses, even when valid, are never impressive. And that's giving away, well, it's not my fault. And that victim mentality. I thought the proving was interesting. You're always trying to prove your point. This is why I'm right and you're wrong. Inaction is the easiest one, right? You just hold it. Yeah, I just don't care. Yeah, and then the reaction. And on that point, wasn't it funny? Why are you so great at jobs? Because they don't care. Yeah, and in a way, that kind of releases the stress and the pressures and the, you know, and again, people higher up, when you've got a couple of years salary stocked away in your 401k you're a lot less stress than somebody earlier in their career. I thought that was really good. I love, you know, too, some of the practical ideas. You know, do not communicate to yourself or others that you are powerless. And he used a very simple example of, you know, somebody casting their election ballot. Well, if you live in California and vote for a Republican, you might say, well, I have no power. If you're in Texas and vote for liberal, you may think, well, I got no vote, but you do. And people who say that, they go, no, I'm sending a message. My vote counts versus I have no power and thus I'm not gonna do it. It's just a different way of thinking. So be really careful as you communicate to yourself or others that, no, I am a powerful person. I'm very good at what I do. Let's move forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even the physical part, I found really interesting. You know, how you enter a room, how you stand and open and all that stuff. Well, it's really interesting, you know, in our lives, when we think of people that have power and that really feel good about themselves. There's always one name that comes to mind. I was gonna say Michelle Obama, could be some head of state, but I think where you're going, Dali Lama, I think you're going to Brent Klein, aren't you? I am. He's our producer and he takes this Mr. Gosh that we give him and puts it together and makes it a brilliant podcast. We love Brent Klein. We love Christy Lawrence who finds us these great guests and brings them to us all the time. Of course, we're really grateful for all of you that listen in. This is really a passion project for me and Adrian. You take time to listen to our guests and listen to our podcast. It really means the world to us. If you like the podcast, please share it. Give us a nice rating. Send it to your friends. Connect with us on LinkedIn. Connect with us at thecultureworks.com. It has all kinds of great stuff for you to download for free there, whether it's about culture or anxiety or leading with gratitude. What else would you add, Adrian? Well, if you're still listening to this, you just can't reach the turn off button yet. So we'll keep talking to you. Hey, pick up a copy of our book, Anxiety at Work. We've got other books out there as well. If you're interested in culture or teamwork, give us a call. If you're interested in us coming to speak to you or your organization virtually or in person, we'd love to spread the good word of wellness, culture, leadership, and gratitude. So yeah, give us a call. And Jess, I'm gonna give you the last word this time. Wow, I almost don't know what to say other than we wish you all the best of mental health. Take care. ♪♪