Power is the means by which you get things done. Find out how to use it in your own life.
Look at your friends and colleagues. You can always tell who has power. The person who uses her power wisely gives off the feeling of belonging in a meeting. Whatever she does, she catches your eye. She holds it. She is always a bit different. If everyone is cultivating others, she holds back. If everyone is in a blue business suit, she is wearing something a bit more outrageous. Her stance is difference, and her comfort with it is profound.
A powerful woman does not complain, or slump, or cry that she’s exhausted. She keeps her feelings to herself except when the use of those feelings is to her benefit. She is not casual about herself.
Powerful actions take the form of tactics
Make every act count; that’s how soldiers and artists work, as if their lives depended on their actions. When a painter lifts a brush, she does it with thorough knowledge of how to set it down on canvas. She knows the effect that it’s possible to achieve: how the canvas will receive the paint, how the brush will respond to her intentions. A powerful woman knows that the way she uses her body, mind and spirit is a form of expression, much the same as the artist’s use of her materials. Power comes from knowing in advance the kind of effect you can have, as if your body, mind and spirit were your instrument. The most artful actions are what warriors call strategies.
That is the blessing of tactics: You can know in advance the impact you will create.
Every woman who succeeds takes risks. She looks for a skirmish, a war, a conflict. In risk is opportunity. The tactics here require a little risk for much reward.
There are 18 tactics analysed in my book, The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women. Here we will discuss three.
Tactic: Behave as if your enemy is your ally
Do the unexpected. Be tenderly alert to your enemy’s vulnerabilities. You have great influence over every opponent. Tell a lover he has a strong and generous character, behave as if he does, and you will encourage that behaviour in him. Strength and generosity will become more prominent features of his character. The greater your expectations – not your demands, please note – the harder most others try to achieve them. The difference is that expectations are expressed in love; demands are expressed in anger.
The tactic of as if is very powerful. A study was once done of winning racing drivers. Those who came in second consistently did exactly the same things as the winners, with one exception. The winners behaved as if they had already won. They climbed into their cars with the same confidence and composure as if they were sitting in front of the television, working the remote control. That calm allowed them to find the microscopic grooves in the road and shift the wheels just enough to pick up an extra 1/10th of a second in their race.
Calmly behaving as if you have what you want, allows you to take the lead and not get flustered by your opponent.
Tactic: Understand how to use time
Time is power these days. A knowledge of how to use time and express time is crucial. Appear unhurried, but when you are finished, when everything has been expressed in a meeting, stand and thank your visitor. Tell him or her, "It’s great that you came by. Thank you." The meeting can then adjourn. You have been decisive, not hurried. As important in understanding time is understanding timing.
Power is in an ability to be strategic about time, and to make other people respect your choices about how you spend it. You set the meetings. You decide who is to come to them. Take the initiative. Get out of the passive-aggressive routine. The people who feel they have no power often feel they have no time. If you sense you are constantly rushed, the problem may not be a lack of time but a lack of power.
Build a working day that respects your needs.
Remember to say no. It takes years to learn to say no and mean it. It takes a lot of experiments drawing the line, stopping people from taking advantage of you, your competence or your commitment to getting the job done. Saying no is powerful.
But even more powerful is saying yes. Saying yes requires courage. It means putting yourself on the line. Saying no will not make you a woman of great accomplishment. Yes will.
Tactic: Ask for everything
This is the simplest and most effective tactic. Ask for more than you think you can ever have. It’s amazing. Most women end up asking for less than they think they can get, and then are surprised when that’s all they get. That is why negotiating is so dangerous for women: We tend to accept far less than we desire or deserve.
A journalist I know wanted to spend Fridays working from home in order to be with her young son. I advised her to ask for that and to ask her supervisor to consider putting her forward to join the company’s board of directors. She was aghast: How could she ask for both? It was aggressive and unseemly; she insisted she was unqualified. In fact, she did ask for both. In doing so, she surprised herself and her boss. Once she began thinking of herself as worthy of a high position, it wasn’t a leap of faith to get her boss to believe the same about her that she now believed about herself.
He ended up granting both her requests. Neither has been disappointed by the outcome.
Conclusion
Remember, you may not always win or get what you want. The key is to remember that many strong women lose many battles, but that is not the same as losing the war. Tactics also take patience. Consider Gandhi’s advice:
First they ignore you
then they ridicule you
then they fight you
then you win.
It will take a while for your opponents to take you seriously enough to engage in your fight. But it will come.