A revolutionary and timely reconsideration of everything we know about
power. Celebrated UC Berkeley psychologist Dr. Dacher Keltner argues
that compassion and selflessness enable us to have the most influence
over others and the result is power as a force for good in the world.
Power is ubiquitous--but totally misunderstood. Turning conventional
wisdom on its head, Dr. Dacher Keltner presents the very idea of power
in a whole new light, demonstrating not just how it is a force for good
in the world, but how--via compassion and selflessness--it is attainable
for each and every one of us.
It is taken for granted that power corrupts. This is reinforced
culturally by everything from Machiavelli to contemporary politics. But
how do we get power? And how does it change our behavior? So often, in
spite of our best intentions, we lose our hard-won power. Enduring power
comes from empathy and giving. Above all, power is given to us by other
people. This is what we all too often forget, and it is the crux of the
power paradox: by misunderstanding the behaviors that helped us to gain
power in the first place we set ourselves up to fall from power. We
abuse and lose our power, at work, in our family life, with our friends,
because we've never understood it correctly--until now. Power isn't the
capacity to act in cruel and uncaring ways; it is the ability to do good
for others, expressed in daily life, and in and of itself a good thing.
Dr. Keltner lays out exactly--in twenty original Power Principles--how
to retain power; why power can be a demonstrably good thing; when we are
likely to abuse power; and the terrible consequences of letting those
around us languish in powerlessness.
