How to Wield Power to Improve the Workplace

Employees from marginalized groups, and those with strong ethics, often feel uncomfortable pursuing positions of power.

Many people – particularly women, people of color and those from less-advantaged backgrounds – experience a clash of values when faced with traditional strategies for obtaining power. Such tactics, while successful, often prove downright Machiavellian. They’re premised on the idea that, as author and professor Jeffrey Pfeffer claims, you have to “take care of yourself” first and foremost. Hard work alone won’t help you get ahead, and he points to research that shows niceness is often a handicap. To get power, you must use everything at your disposal – including deceit and manipulation – to achieve your goals.

As a graduate student, now business professor Peter Belmi felt disheartened by Pfeffer’s take on power. But, Pfeffer’s perspective helped him zero in on a key question that defines his own research: Is it possible that traditional approaches to achieving...