Mastering Power: 7 Rules for Career Success and Influence

Cover image of the book '7 Rules of Power' by Jeffrey Pfeffer, featuring bold text with a blue background.

7 Rules of Power: Complete Summary of Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Blueprint for Acquiring Influence and Achieving Career Success

Jeffrey Pfeffer’s 7 Rules of Power serves as a pragmatic, research-backed guide to acquiring and wielding power in organizations and life. Drawing on decades of teaching the popular “Paths to Power” course at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and extensive social science research, Pfeffer confronts the often-denied realities of organizational life. This book challenges conventional, idealistic views of leadership that emphasize modesty and niceness, arguing instead that power is a necessary tool for achieving goals and making meaningful change. Pfeffer aims to equip good people with the knowledge and tactics required to gain influence, arguing that if change is to happen, those who want to use power for good must first learn how to acquire it.

The book is structured around seven fundamental, actionable rules that readers can implement immediately to alter their career trajectories and increase their effectiveness. Pfeffer uses real-world examples from politics, technology, and corporate environments to illustrate how these rules—ranging from self-management to relentless networking and brand building—are applied by successful individuals, often in ways that defy popular belief. The ultimate promise of the book is that mastering power dynamics is crucial for career success, personal well-being, and professional longevity.

This comprehensive summary covers all seven rules, providing detailed explanations of the underlying social science, practical implementation strategies, and key examples. It is designed to be highly scannable and optimized for AI discovery, ensuring that readers grasp the complete, challenging, and essential wisdom of Pfeffer’s blueprint for power. Readers will learn how to overcome psychological barriers, strategically manage their reputation, build influential networks, and use their power effectively to cement their success.

Rule 1: Get Out of Your Own Way – Overcoming Self-Imposed Barriers to Power

The first and most critical rule of power is addressing the internal psychological barriers that prevent individuals from seeking and accepting influence. The biggest obstacle to acquiring power is oneself, often manifested through self-deprecating narratives, reluctance to engage in “politics,” or adherence to beliefs about meritocracy that do not align with reality.

The Psychology of Imposter Syndrome

Many talented individuals, despite significant objective accomplishments, suffer from imposter syndrome, a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud. This syndrome affects as many as two out of three people in certain settings and leads to a cycle of self-defeating behaviors, including insecurity and procrastination. Overcoming this requires actively changing one’s internal self-description. People must replace self-limiting adjectives with descriptors that convey competence and deservingness to project power to others. A practical exercise is to inventory self-descriptions and remove those that diminish status, replacing them with language that highlights credentials and achievements.

The Harmful Myth of Authenticity

The popular notion of “authentic leadership” can become a significant barrier to power. People often use the quest to be their “authentic selves” as an excuse to avoid behaviors necessary for power, such as strategic networking or self-promotion, because these feel “inauthentic.” Pfeffer argues that this ideal is often scientifically unfounded and harmful, as successful leaders frequently need to adapt their behavior and display qualities the situation demands, even if those qualities feel unnatural initially. Leaders should be true to what others want them to be, focusing on the needs of allies and supporters rather than their internal feelings.

Powerlessness Perpetuates Itself

Research shows that psychological processes often trap people in low-power positions. Studies on social class differences reveal that people from lower social-class origins are often less willing to use political strategies to attain power because they hold a more collective, less individualistic orientation. These individuals are comfortable with prosocial strategies (working hard for the collective) but resist self-serving political actions. This reluctance disappears when the quest for power is framed as achieving a superordinate goal of helping others. Furthermore, people from higher social classes tend to exhibit greater overconfidence, which, as a signal of competence, helps them attain status, illustrating how existing advantage is amplified.

The Disadvantages of Excessive Modesty and Agreeableness

Conventional wisdom often teaches modesty, but research indicates that not making positive assertions about oneself can be taken as a negative signal. People expect and respond positively to self-advocacy and confidence. Similarly, an excessive focus on being liked can impede the acquisition of power. Social perception studies show a negative correlation between warmth (likability) and competence. Furthermore, high agreeableness is negatively related to career success and salary, particularly for men, because highly agreeable individuals may prioritize social harmony over career advancement and adherence to social norms, which hinders rule-breaking.

Embracing Persistence and Resilience

Acquiring power is often met with opposition, criticism, and setbacks. A crucial part of “doing whatever it takes” is developing persistence and resilience. Successful individuals, from politicians to entrepreneurs, often faced initial failures or resistance but stuck with their efforts, often by not overly obsessing about what critics thought. This quality requires enough ego strength to keep problems and criticism from throwing you off course, allowing you to persevere through inevitable difficulties.

Rule 2: Break the Rules – Leveraging Nonconformity to Gain Influence

To rise to power, individuals must be willing to defy social expectations, disregard conventional wisdom, and violate established norms—especially those that favor the already powerful. Rule breaking is not merely disruptive; it is a strategic maneuver that can fundamentally increase perceived and actual influence.

The Heuristic Link Between Norm Violation and Power

The act of breaking rules can paradoxically make the violator seem more powerful. Social science research confirms a heuristic association between power and norm violation: the powerful are freer to ignore social rules and often display more disinhibited behavior. Studies show that individuals who violate norms—such as rudeness to a waiter, putting feet on furniture, or ignoring established queues—are perceived as 21% to 29% more powerful than those who conform. When rule breakers are not sanctioned, their actions signal they are different from and above people who must adhere to expectations, fueling perceptions of their influence and freedom to act.

Using Surprise as a Power Tactic

Rule breaking often works because it leverages the element of surprise. When someone acts outside conventional boundaries, they catch others off guard, who then lack a prepared response. This unexpected behavior forces people to pay attention, increasing the likelihood that the violator will be remembered and their audacity interpreted as confidence. The neurobiology of surprise shows that it causes a brief physical freeze followed by extreme curiosity and intensified emotions, helping the rule breaker command focus and attention.

Asking Forgiveness, Not Permission

A highly effective strategy for rule breaking is to simply act first and ask for forgiveness later. Organizational life is often characterized by conflict aversion, meaning resistance to proactive actions is likely to be lower than expected. Once an action or accomplishment is a fait accompli—a reality that is difficult to undo—others are reluctant to destroy the benefits produced by the action, even if the rules were bent to achieve it. Robert Moses, New York’s master builder, famously used this strategy by starting construction projects before securing all permits and funding, knowing that tearing down a completed structure was highly unlikely.

Strategic Rule Breaking Favors the Underdog

Rules and social norms are typically established by those already in power to perpetuate their control. Therefore, conforming to these rules can inherently disadvantage those seeking to gain influence. Research on asymmetric conflict shows that when underdogs employ an unconventional strategy—effectively breaking the rules of engagement—their winning percentage increases significantly. In organizational and political contests, playing by the established rules favors the status quo. Those who are not guaranteed success must make their own rules or find ways to exploit the existing ones to succeed.

Overcoming the Reluctance to Ask for Help

One strong social norm in Western societies is the pressure toward self-sufficiency and the reluctance to ask for favors, which is often perceived as weak or intrusive. However, studies show that people vastly overestimate the number of rejections they will receive when asking for help because most people comply with requests to maintain a self-image as cooperative and benevolent. Asking for help is often flattering to the recipient, elevating their status as the one capable of providing assistance. Individuals seeking power must break this norm, ask for what they want, and be prepared for minor rejection, knowing the potential upside is significant career advancement.

Rule 3: Appear Powerful – Mastering the Art of Nonverbal and Verbal Influence

How an individual “shows up” is often determinative of their career trajectory, how much status others accord them, and their ultimate influence. Since power and competence are often ambiguous, people rely on quickly formed first impressions based on thin slices of behavior. The third rule is to intentionally project power through every aspect of self-presentation.

Appearance Predicts Career Outcomes

Impressions of an individual’s power and competence are formed within just a few seconds and are surprisingly durable due to confirmation bias. Studies have shown that ratings of a teacher’s confidence and dominance based on three ten-second, silent video clips correlate highly with actual student evaluations. Similarly, ratings of CEOs based merely on their facial appearance are related to company profits. These findings demonstrate that appearance is not just superficial; it predicts and influences career success across various domains.

The Power of Body Language and Voice

Power is conveyed through nonverbal cues that are easy to adopt, regardless of one’s actual title or internal feelings. These nonverbal expressions of power, status, and dominance are generally consistent across gender and culture. Key nonverbal behaviors associated with power include:

More open body posture and less controlled arm gestures.
Greater speaking time and a louder voice.
More successful interruptions of others.
Longer gazing time and a higher visual dominance ratio (looking more while talking than while listening).
Adopting an expansive posture and maintaining a calm demeanor.

These behaviors should be intentionally practiced, as adopting a high-power pose can affect how others assess employability and performance.

The Strategic Use of Emotion: Anger vs. Apology

Certain emotional displays signal strength and high status, while others signal weakness. Anger is often a smart power move, as it is associated with coercion, toughness, and dominance. Studies show that people expressing anger are seen as more dominant, strong, competent, and smart, and that anger displays can lead to status conferral. This holds true because displays of anger often fall outside customary norms for behavior, and only the powerful are permitted to violate social expectations.

Conversely, apology is a low-power behavior that should generally be avoided in professional contexts when competence is relevant. Apologizing immediately associates the transgressor with wrongdoing, incurs psychological costs by affecting self-perceptions, and causes others to view the apologizer as possessing less influence and competence. While expressing remorse may be required in special cases (like the Tylenol crisis), for most instances of corporate or personal misstep, an unapologetic, confident defense is the more effective power play.

Projecting Self-Confidence and Competence

Since emotions are contagious, a leader’s most important task is to project confidence. People prefer to align themselves with winners. Overconfidence, even if unwarranted, signals competence and helps individuals achieve higher social status. Overconfident individuals are rated as competent based on behaviors like speaking time, a factual vocal tone, and adopting an expansive posture. In task-oriented relationships, particularly for those in high-status positions, self-disclosing weakness should be avoided, as it attenuates the discloser’s status, influence, and perceived competence.

Mastering Powerful Speech

Language choice reinforces the powerful appearance. Powerful speech is characterized by simplicity, using mostly monosyllabic words and short, easy-to-understand sentences. It avoids hedging words (“sort of,” “kind of”) and hesitations (“um,” “er”). Powerful speakers make declarations instead of asking questions, and use variations in pacing and pauses for emphasis. Crucially, powerful speech repeats ideas and themes frequently, leveraging the illusory truth effect where repeated statements are more likely to be judged as true.

Rule 4: Build a Powerful Brand – Creating and Disseminating a Strategic Narrative

A powerful personal brand differentiates an individual in a crowded field, making them top of mind for opportunities, partnerships, and resources. This rule involves intentionally crafting a coherent narrative that integrates personal story, expertise, and accomplishments, and then relentlessly broadcasting that narrative.

Crafting a Coherent Narrative

A successful brand requires a story that makes it clear why an individual is uniquely qualified for their role or aspirations. This narrative should integrate professional expertise, significant accomplishments, and relevant personal history. Tristan Walker, founder of Walker and Company Brands, successfully used his narrative as an African American man from a disadvantaged background, combining it with his mission to serve the underserved market of people of color in personal care. This created a powerful, authentic, and newsworthy brand.

Taking Control of Your Story

It is critical to tell your story before someone else does. Narratives form quickly, and once negative impressions are set, they are difficult to reverse. Individuals who experience setbacks often suffer from embarrassment, which can lead to unhelpful silence. The damage caused by an unchecked negative narrative can be immense, as demonstrated by the experience of Jeffrey Sonnenfeld at Emory University. Successfully building a brand means getting your side of the story out early and often.

Leveraging Prestige and Association

One simple yet effective way to build a powerful brand is through association with high-status individuals and organizations. Status and prestige rub off on others. Laura Chau, a venture capitalist, used her podcast to interview senior women in the industry, strategically expanding her network and enhancing her own status by association. When you have a job at a prestigious organization, you must leverage that affiliation to connect with other high-status groups, such as the World Economic Forum, to build further personal brand equity.

Becoming Known Through Dissemination

Once a brand is defined, it must be disseminated widely and repeatedly through multiple channels. Effective methods for broadcasting one’s message include:

Creating a podcast or weekly show with a specific focus and attracting well-known guests, like Jason Calacanis’s This Week in Startups.
Writing a book or frequent blogs to demonstrate expertise and thoughtfulness, enhancing credibility.
Speaking at conferences or starting your own events to gain visibility, build network centrality, and position yourself as a thought leader.
Publishing a newsletter to stay loosely connected with a broad professional community and distribute content.

Consistency and high-quality content are key to making these efforts successful, creating a flywheel effect where visibility leads to more opportunities for visibility.

Cultivating the Media Strategically

Having others tell your story is crucial for overcoming the self-promotion dilemma, as the same positive claims are perceived more favorably when delivered by a third party. Cultivating the media requires making journalists’ jobs easier by being accessible, providing quick responses, and offering exclusive access to information or events. Nuria Chinchilla, a professor at IESE, built her brand by giving journalists immediate, comprehensive access to her research and high-status professional events, ensuring they returned to her for future stories.

Taking Credit for Your Work

A major barrier to career advancement is the belief that performance will speak for itself. Busy superiors and colleagues often fail to notice or credit accomplishments. To ensure recognition, individuals must proactively tell the story of their work and their team’s impact, repeating the narrative frequently and connecting it to the company’s biggest problems or successes. Framing this activity as helping your manager understand your impact or helping your team get recognition can overcome the reluctance some feel toward self-promotion. Crafting the narrative consistent with the “hero’s journey”—facing a challenge, personal transformation, and eventual triumph—makes the story more memorable and inspirational, as demonstrated by Deborah Liu at Facebook.

Rule 5: Network Relentlessly – Building and Exploiting Strategic Social Capital

Networking is not just socializing; it is a strategic, intentional investment in social relationships that accelerates careers and provides crucial leverage. This rule emphasizes the necessity of dedicating sufficient time to building and maintaining a diverse, instrumentally useful network, overcoming the common reluctance to engage in “political” interactions.

The Career Advantage of Consistent Networking

People often undervalue professional networking because they find it less enjoyable than socializing with close friends and family, or they perceive it as an immoral activity of using others for personal gain, leaving them feeling “dirty.” However, longitudinal studies consistently show that networking is the most robust predictor of career success, influencing salary growth, promotions, and job performance. Individuals who state that networking contributed to their success spend 6.3 to 10 hours per week on professional relationships.

The Strategic Value of Weak Ties

The most useful connections for finding opportunities and non-redundant information are often weak ties—casual acquaintances rather than close friends or family. Close ties share redundant information because they inhabit the same social circles. Weak ties, however, act as bridges to different social circles, providing access to novel ideas, diverse perspectives, and valuable, non-redundant information. The practical implication is to spend less time with close connections and more time meeting a wide variety of people in different organizations and industries.

Becoming a Broker to Bridge Structural Holes

Network structure is a critical determinant of power. Individuals who bridge structural holes—connecting parties who could benefit from interacting but are not currently connected—gain significant advantages. This is known as brokerage. Brokers benefit from being familiar with alternative ways of thinking and behaving, giving them a vision of options otherwise unseen. Research confirms that compensation, promotions, and positive performance evaluations are more likely to accrue to people whose networks bridge these structural holes. To gain these benefits, an individual must be in the favorable structural position themselves, as brokerage cannot be outsourced.

Centrality and Informational Power

Occupying a central position in an organizational communication network provides profound informational advantages and increases visibility. Centrality means more information flows through the individual, increasing their direct contact with a wider range of people. Zia Yusuf’s success at SAP, despite being an outsider in a traditional German company, was partly due to his role as head of strategy, which placed him in a highly central position, giving him access to the executive team and numerous internal units. When evaluating job roles, individuals should prioritize those that inherently grant a more central and visible position.

Networking as a Value Exchange

To ensure people want to be connected to you, networking must be viewed as an act of creating value for others—a form of strategic generosity that binds people through liking and activates the norm of reciprocity. When offering help, people should aim to be specific and helpful, using their own connections to benefit others. Helping others builds your own power and reputation by implicitly demonstrating your centrality and value as a well-connected individual, creating a win-win scenario.

Efficient Network Time Management

Given the time commitment required, networking efforts must be efficient. Strategies for maximizing time include:

Leveraging technology like email and social media sites for maintaining weak ties and sending casual updates.
Being intentional by balancing network growth (acquiring new connections) with network value extraction (generating utility from existing connections).
Spending more time on people being cultivated (on the periphery) than on those already solidified in your social circle, as those closest to the center often receive less attention from master connectors.
Creating novel social experiences that are generous, well-curated, and intriguing, like the influencers’ dinners hosted by Jon Levy, which attract high-profile people.

Rule 6: Use Your Power – Acting Decisively to Consolidate and Perpetuate Influence

Power is not a limited resource that gets depleted upon use; rather, power is amplified by its successful deployment. The sixth rule mandates acting quickly, aggressively, and strategically to achieve key objectives, cement support, and establish self-perpetuating structures.

Acting Quickly to Maximize the Honeymoon Period

A leader’s tenure is often short, and opposition tends to accumulate over time. The period immediately following the assumption of a new powerful role—the “honeymoon period”—is the most crucial time to implement an agenda and make significant changes. Lyndon Johnson, upon assuming the presidency, immediately used his power to outline and initiate the Great Society programs. Similarly, Amir Dan Rubin, as the new CEO of Stanford Healthcare, quickly implemented the Stanford Operating System and made numerous structural and personnel changes to dramatically improve performance, thereby consolidating his power before rivals could coalesce.

Using Power to Bring in Allies and Remove Opponents

Successful organizational transformation requires a team with the requisite skills and, most importantly, complete alignment with the new vision. Leaders must be willing to use their power to replace personnel who lack the skills or commitment to the new direction. This not only improves performance, which reinforces the leader’s position, but also creates a supportive, allied team. This turnover is particularly evident in outside succession and often extends two to three levels down in the hierarchy.

Strategic Outplacement of Rivals

Removing rivals and opponents must be done strategically, often by sending them to an even better position elsewhere—a strategy known as strategic outplacement. Willie Brown, former California Assembly speaker, successfully solidified his power by using a redistricting plan to ensure his strongest Democratic opponents left the Assembly for safe seats in Congress. This neutralizes threats while earning the gratitude of the departed, provided the leader can act dispassionately and not let personal antipathy interfere.

Signaling Power Through Decisive Action

Wielding power in visible ways signals to others that the power holder is a force to be reckoned with and will not hesitate to act. This demonstration of power attracts supporters who want to associate with strength and success. Robert Moses cemented his multi-decade power in New York by repeatedly and aggressively acting without waiting for permission, such as demolishing a ferry slip despite the mayor’s opposition. His willingness to use power, even harshly, attracted people and construction firms who sought to be associated with someone who could get things accomplished.

Establishing Structures to Perpetuate Power

The most lasting use of power is to establish institutional structures that solidify the incumbent’s influence. Examples of structural entrenchment include:

Dual-class voting structures (like those at Facebook and Google) that provide founders with disproportionately high voting power, rendering them nearly untouchable.
Combining the roles of CEO and Board Chair to eliminate oversight friction.
Ensuring no likely successors are in place to maintain the power holder’s indispensable status, as exemplified by Jack Valenti’s long tenure at the MPAA.
Holding multiple overlapping roles simultaneously, making removal extremely difficult by requiring coordinated action across various positions, as Robert Moses did.

Rule 7: Success Excuses (Almost) Everything – Why Power Endures Despite Misdeeds

The final rule is the most important psychologically: once power is achieved, the misdeeds or questionable tactics used to acquire it are largely forgotten, forgiven, or rationalized. Success itself becomes the justification for past actions, insulating the powerful from the consequences that would befall the less influential.

The Durability of Power Through Cumulative Advantage

Social processes rarely restore balance or punish the successful; instead, they operate as a Matthew Effect, amplifying existing advantages. Success breeds more success because:

Talent attraction: The powerful are more likely to attract better talent and resources.
Resource advantage: Power attracts investment and capital, increasing the likelihood of future success.
Confirmation bias: Past success creates an expectation of future success, leading people to selectively remember confirming information and overlook failures.

This mechanism ensures that once initial power is acquired, it tends to be self-perpetuating, making it easier to retain than most people fear.

Power and Wealth Insulate Wrongdoers

Success and wealth provide significant insulation from legal and social consequences. High-profile examples, from the lack of prosecution for executives following the 2008 financial crisis to the continued social acceptance of individuals like Martha Stewart (post-prison) and Gary Winnick (post-bankruptcy scandal), demonstrate that the social discomfort of sanctioning powerful peers often overrides justice. The rich and powerful travel in the same social, professional, and charitable circles, leading to a get along-go along culture that dampens outrage and avoids serious sanctioning.

Rationalizing Misbehavior Through Motivated Cognition

People actively work to justify the continued association with powerful individuals who have misbehaved, a process rooted in motivated cognition. The desire for cognitive consistency means people find it easier to attribute positive traits (competent, intelligent, moral) to powerful individuals to align with the undeniable facts of their success.

Two key mechanisms allow people to ignore wrongdoing:

Moral Rationalization: Redefining the immoral behavior as “not that bad” or minimizing the perpetrator’s role in causing harm, making the behavior easier to condone.
Moral Decoupling: Acknowledging the wrongdoing but arguing that the immoral behavior is not relevant to the person’s performance or competence. This is the most common strategy, allowing people to support an immoral actor while maintaining their own moral self-image.

Buying Respectability Through Philanthropy

In a material world, wealth can be deployed to purchase social status and legitimacy. Donating to prestigious, high-status nonprofit organizations and attaching one’s name to institutions helps confer respectability on the donor, providing insurance that misbehavior will be seen in a favorable light. This strategy leverages the perceived goodness of the institution to compensate for or cloak personal or professional wrongdoing.

The Power to Write History

The powerful control the narrative, using resources to write and rewrite history in a favorable light. By creating their own founding myths and self-enhancing autobiographies, leaders can solidify their image and influence, ignoring inconvenient disconfirming facts. Jack Dorsey, for instance, successfully crafted a narrative of himself as the “inventor” of Twitter, effectively erasing others’ contributions and completing a powerful personal makeover that became his accepted reality. This ability to shape perception helps perpetuate power regardless of past actions.

Key Takeaways: What You Need to Remember

Core Insights from 7 Rules of Power

Power is not optional; it is essential for achieving goals and making systemic change, and must be intentionally pursued.
The biggest obstacle to your success is your own psychology, including imposter syndrome and reluctance to pursue self-advancement.
Acting in ways that are “unnatural”—like strategic self-promotion or demanding more—is required because the default, conventional behaviors often limit power.
Appearance dictates reality more than most believe; intentionally projecting confidence and competence through body language and speech is crucial.
Consistency and likability are less important than competence and decisiveness in acquiring status and influence.
Network structure matters immensely, and strategic relationships with weak ties and occupying central, bridging positions are more valuable than close friendships.
Power is self-reinforcing; using it effectively amplifies influence and creates structures that perpetuate it, making it easier to hold than to acquire.
Success insulates you from consequences; once power is achieved, misdeeds are often overlooked, reinforcing the imperative to win.

Immediate Actions to Take Today

Reframe your self-talk by listing accomplishments and credentials, eliminating self-deprecating language that limits your projection of power.
Identify one rule to strategically break this week, such as asking for a significant favor or initiating a project without seeking prior permission.
Practice powerful nonverbal communication by reducing hedging words (“sort of,” “kind of”) and adopting an expansive, confident posture in meetings.
Draft a two-sentence brand narrative that connects your unique expertise to a compelling personal story, ready to disseminate.
Schedule time for instrumental networking, focusing on reaching out to weak ties or high-status individuals to exchange information or offer specific help.
Document a past achievement and proactively communicate its impact to key decision-makers, ensuring you receive the proper credit.
Identify a supportive mentor or form a “power posse” to discuss power strategies, hold you accountable for your goals, and brainstorm difficult situations.

Questions for Personal Application

What specific beliefs or social norms (related to modesty, niceness, or meritocracy) are currently preventing me from taking necessary steps to gain power?
Who are the high-status people in my industry or organization that I need to be associated with, and what valuable service can I offer them to begin building that connection?
Am I making declarations or asking questions in high-stakes conversations, and how can I adjust my language to sound more powerful and decisive?
What is one structural change I could implement in my current role or team that would increase my centrality and visibility in the organization?
If I were to lose my position today, what actions would my current allies and rivals take, and how can I use that foresight to strengthen my position now?