[00:00:08] Intro: Welcome to the podcast Help to Grow Talk where we talk about growing your communication skills. How can you better communicate and change the way you live, work, interact with others and help make the world a better place?
[00:00:21] Chris: "You know, humans are built to be successful on the inside and the outside. There's no division, right? Evolution wouldn't work if there had been a division. And that's what personal power really is. It's that bridge that makes you both successful and happy."
[00:00:35] Desiree: You just listened to our guest, Chris Lipp, author of three books on personal power and persuasion. He's principal coach at Speak Value and Professor and Director of management communication at Tulane University, Freeman School of Business.
In this episode, we talk about Chris's latest book 'The Science of Personal Power: How to Build Confidence, Create Success and Obtain Freedom.
My name is Desiree Timmermans, your podcast host.
Let's go.
[00:01:03] Desiree: Chris, welcome back to the podcast.
[00:01:08] Chris: Thank you. It's wonderful to be back.
[00:01:10] Desiree: It's great to have you. In episode five, we talked about your book Magnetic, which is about persuasion. And this time we're going to talk about your new book The Science of Personal Power. So I'm really looking forward to it. I'm really excited. What inspired you to write a book this time? What's the background?
[00:01:31] Chris: I think all of us have felt not powerful. And, you know, I think you have power in you, whether you believe it or not. Sometimes many of us walk into rooms and we feel small. We feel like nobody listens to us. We feel like the odd person out.
You know, here in the U. S. worker engagement is down. It is at like the lowest levels ever. And we're supposed to be one of the most ambitious nations with the whole American dream and these things. This kind of ironic contrast between people's ambitions versus their actual engagement at work, really speaks to the sense of disempowerment that many of us here feel and why we feel so demotivated within our situation. And so I really wanted to understand this more and wrote a book about it.
[00:02:14] Desiree: Well, I also want to know more about it. So, I noticed that within The Science of Personal Power, you also mentioned six practices. What are these practices about and where do they come from?
[00:02:26] Chris: To really understand how to tap into your power is to recognize that power is neither a set of behaviors, nor is it a certain personality that some people have and some people don't. Your power is within you, and you can tap it with the right mindset.
And it's not a mindset of affirmation in these things, of course those things help, but it's actually at a deeper level. And so personal power is the belief we have in our own capability to create impact. So it's a belief we have about ourselves, but it's not something like: oh yeah, well I'm just going to choose to feel like I'm more capable, right? You can't just say, I'm just not going to be stressed. It doesn't work that way.
And the way that our mind assesses this belief about ourselves is watching us almost like a subconscious calculator. There are certain behavior patterns that we do that alter that belief we have about ourselves. For example, do we take responsibility for things or do we tend to blame things on others? Because just very naturally, if we're focused on, for example, explaining the circumstances in our life as a result of what's happening outside of us, our mind learns to say: oh, we're not in power, the outside has power. The outside situation, the outside people, the outside job. I'm a victim. I'm at the behest of these other forces.
But in many ways, we have actually much more power than we think. And so it's very fascinating because people who feel powerful versus those who don't: people who don't feel powerful tend to believe that their vote doesn't count if they feel powerless versus powerful people feel like their vote counts. Now factually, the votes count the same, but when we feel powerful, we understand we feel capable in ourselves. We are more likely to see where our actual leverage is. Whereas if we don't feel powerful, we're going to discount our opportunities.
And so it's very fascinating. For example, parents who feel powerful feel like they have an impact on their children. Parents who don't feel powerful feel like, you know, their words are lost on their children. And so they might be doing behaviors to their children that actually are harming their children, but thinking: oh, my child doesn't listen to me. So if I yell at them, you know, I'm just trying to get their attention, but this poor child is getting like traumatized, you know.
We all have power in the world just by the very nature of being in it. Now, whether or not we claim that power is another thing and whether or not we see it as another thing. And so, for example, one way to take power is responsibility. And I go through a whole list of things. Three things is about how we actually interact with others that's really giving to them in a sustaining way that builds us up. And three ways that I call taking, where we really stand up for ourselves and assert ourselves, regardless of others. And it's really this balance of give and take that we find our power within the society.
[00:05:04] Desiree: Okay. And I saw one of the practices is Ringlead. Can you explain what that is?
[00:05:08] Chris: What I really tried to capture with that word in the book is if you want to be powerful, you don't have to be in the spotlight all the time. And the ringleader at a circus is the person who's basically directing it. Like the ringleader is not really somebody who's skilled. They're the one who's saying, let's go to the trapeze. They're the one kind of aiming the spotlight rather than being in the spotlight. That's really a powerful position.
And, if you want to be powerful in a meeting, you don't have to be the one speaking the most and contributing the most. Actually, if you're the moderator of that meeting and you're just running through the agenda, you're going to be the most powerful in that room. And everybody's going to listen to you because they want to see where that meeting is going to go next, where you're taking the agenda next. And that's why great leaders, they're not giving their opinion all the time. They're listening to everybody else's opinion. And maybe at the end, they summarize everything.
You want to be powerful, there's a lot of listening involved, but it's kind of an assertive listening as opposed to a passive listening. That's what Ringlead is all about.
[00:06:03] Desiree: I understand. And then that comes back to taking responsibility.
[00:06:08] Chris: You could say it. Absolutely.
[00:06:09] Desiree: If you learn to take responsibility for all your actions, which goes very far, as you said, also the small things, then that helps you to better speak up but also to better manage. And it doesn't matter indeed if you are in the spotlight or not because that's not what it is about.
[00:06:28] Chris: Yeah. It's a big mistake that people think of: I need to be the center of attention. So they start to talk a lot and get annoying. And it's not bad to be in the spotlight but just recognize it's not the most powerful position.
[00:06:38] Desiree: It happens when it happens. It's not that I need to be in the spotlight because I want the appreciation of my audience etc.
[00:06:47] Chris: You know what, I love what you just said. If I were to summarize the difference between a powerful person and a weak person in just like two sentences, it would simply be that powerful people are focused on their own goals.
But what does that contrast against the powerless people? Powerless people are focused on making a good impression with others. Focused on being liked. I say this, not as a castigation. I feel that way. A lot of times, like I want to impress people and stuff. All of us go through powerless and powerful moments every day with different people, if you want to be in the spotlight, like what you said to just impress people, you're already losing because you're there to win the approval of others, which means by the very nature of that relationship, the other person has more power than you.
I think one of the challenges with really being in the spotlight a lot is you do find that you care about the opinions of others. It's kind of hard to not help it when your whole success is dependent on essentially mass approval. And so even in your success, there is a bit of weakness. And so what does this mean for us? This means that as you go throughout your day, you have power. And are you giving it away? Are you trying to impress your boss? Are you trying to impress your colleagues? Are you trying to impress your family? If you can begin to bring consciousness to it and realize: oh, shoot, I really I'm kind of doing this because I want approval. You'll notice whether or not other people detect it. If other people detect it, then you're going to start losing power externally. Even if they don't detect it on the inside, you're giving away a little bit of your power. And that's why you're going to feel a little bit small, no matter how other people treat you.
[00:08:27] Desiree: I absolutely agree. So when we are feeling powerless, what steps can we take to feel more powerful? What can we do?
[00:08:36] Chris: You focus on yourself. What does that mean? Powerful people are focused on their own goals. So let's say you're going to walk into an interview for a new job and the purpose of an interview is to impress the interviewer. You can see that right away, that's a very weak way to look at interviewing because it means that you're there to prove yourself, which means you're there to make the other person like you, which is a very powerless thing because basically you have low control over the outcome because it's somebody else's opinion of you.
You're going to put a lot of stress on yourself because what you want is out of your control by definition, right? Somebody else's opinion and you're going to try to prove yourself. You're going to try to impress them. And you're in this mindset that's actually low power. So it's going to block your thinking because of nerves. That's why we choke under pressure. And it's the wrong way to go about interviews. An interview is kind of the traditionally high power position. Now, I don't agree that it's the high power position by some fact of nature. It's just a dynamic that we accept based on our mindset.
A good interviewer walks into an interview and they're there to determine fit. Are you going to be a good fit for the company? They have an objective goal. And just by the very nature of having a goal, when they walk into that interview, they're in their power. But now if you're an interviewee and you want to capture your power back, there's a lot of things you can do, but one's a very simple thing. It's just to focus your goal on: okay, I want to see if this company is going to be a good fit for them and me. And then when you walk into it, as you're answering questions, you'll be really looking at the fit and explaining the strengths and weaknesses versus trying to impress them.
[00:10:02] Desiree: And that's what I call a win-win situation. It's a different mindset. You both have an objective: you see if it fits, and if it not fits, then it's also okay.
[00:10:12] Chris: Yes. And here's the funny thing. Here's an amazing piece of research. I put it right into the first chapter of my book, which is if you prime somebody to tap into their power before an interview, 5 or 10 minutes before an interview, and they go into the interview doing nothing else, not learning better interview skills, not having a better resume, but just accessing that mindset of personal power before they walk into an interview: they're 81% more likely to succeed and get the job. Twice as much from just prepping themselves into their power. It's nuts. This is why I think personal power is one of the most, if not the most, important concept of our social lives.
[00:10:45] Desiree: Okay. And then practice six of personal powers. I saw it's Speak Up. Can you tell a bit more about that?
[00:10:52] Chris: One of the ways that we convey our personal power to others is through our language, of course, right? All of us know power posing body position and stuff, but that only gets us so far. It is not the primary indicator of communicating power.
You could have the most powerful pose in the world, but hey, when you start speaking instantly, people will know whether you're actually really powerful or not. Some of the ways that I write about in terms of speak up is people who tend to have more personal power or more direct and decisive. So direct, meaning they speak straight to the point and then decisive.
One of the most important aspects of personal power is our own belief in our own capability to create impact. Well, where does impact come from? Impact comes from action. When people are in their personal power, a certain region in the brain lights up called the behavioral approach system. And the behavioral approach system is designed for us to move forward, to take action in these things. It's contrasted to when we're out of our power, what's activated in our brain is the behavioral inhibition system, which is actually that thing that makes us freeze. It's that flighty anxious fear area. So it's the opposite of action.
Personal power guides us into action. And so as a result of that, what we see in language, many things, but one is we tend to be more decisive. We're quicker to focus on taking action, making decisions. So it's important we speak up and somebody who's in their power will focus on the goal in the moment.
You got to really understand authenticity is being true to what's most important to you in the moment and you can only focus on that when you're in your power. If you're out of your power your thoughts are distracted by worries and concerns that you can share but aren't necessarily relevant.
[00:12:38] Desiree: Yes, I understand what you are saying. And I think it's also a practice to focus on what is your goal because sometimes I forget it. I just start to do my work and then in the end I think: oh wait, what was the goal? And then when you do that, you know immediately the first three things, for example, that you need to do that day. And if you do that, you feel very well about the day and about your work. But if you forget it, you can do so many things, but in the end, you don't feel satisfied. So that's also something that I learned: focusing on your goal requires you to be aware of what you are doing. And it's not always easy to do that. So how do you do that?
[00:13:25] Chris: I love what you said, because you really speak to the truth that we all feel, which is our feelings. When we're focused and when we're getting things done, we feel: yeah, like powerful. And when we're distracted, even when we're getting other things done, by the end of the day, maybe you got a lot done, but you didn't get what you needed to get done.
[00:13:42] Desiree: So we just talked about some examples, but I know there's also another example in your book, which is about a school teacher, an attacker, and how she protects her children. Can you tell us that story and how that is linked to personal power?
[00:13:59] Chris: So, here's this woman, she's a school teacher, she's 25 or 26. And she hears a scream. And then there's doors slam.. She's at school, she's teaching these preschoolers, they're all very young kids. And then she's another scream and a door slam. And what she didn't know, those were two other teachers who were accosted by this aggressor. A huge guy. And they ran out of the school screaming, leaving all the children in those classrooms, by the way.
So, suddenly this guy who had walked into the school busts into her room. She's there, and she's the last adult left at this preschool. There's like 60 children now, spread out in three rooms. This guy comes into the room and he's like 200 pounds, you know, six foot x, whatever. She's like five, two. And he just looks at her and he says: help me or I'm going to kill you. And she's like: woof, right.
And then he starts moving towards her. And just very aggressively starts walking across the room over the kids and stuff. She said: when that happened, I could feel the heat in the room, just go way up. And she said: the guy stopped about five feet from her. And she just felt like almost like an invisible energetic wall. It was her own energy doing that.
And she said: instead of panicking or running or anything, she's like, how can I help you? And he's like: the police are after me. And she registers right then, like the blare of sirens. And she glances out the window and she notices something like: okay, the school is surrounded by police.
The guy looks up to, he sees all the police and he starts to move towards the back door. He's almost starting to step on these little kids. So she gets up and she grabs his arm and she says: wait, I'll help you. A few seconds later, the police bust into the school. And the guy gets really, really agitated. He starts looking around at the children. The officer's like: come here. And she's like: officers, you're not going to harm him, are you? And the guy instantly calms down and the officer's like: no, we're not. So she just walks the guy over to the police and hands to the police and they take him away.
This teacher, she showed her power completely and she basically redefined this whole situation. Now this guy, apparently what happened was he had escaped from a mental detention center. If you really look at it at the heart of what it is, number one is she took responsibility over the situation rather than panic. She looked inward at what was right to do rather than outward at the threat. And this is such a big aspect of our own power. When we're out of control, when we're powerless, we're focused on the environment and we're analyzing the threats and trying to take the path of least threat. But when we're inter focused, we're focused on our values and what's the right thing to do. We're not assessing the threats. We're using our own ethics.
And a powerful person will take responsibility over the situation. And the way they're doing that is not just responsibility, but they're tapping inward and saying: what's right here versus how can I avoid getting hurt? And that changes our entire way of showing up. And when we show up differently, people treat us differently. So when we're out of our power and we're focused on threat, we're simulating a world where we're going to get hurt. What we can't predict is how people are going to treat us when we step in our power, because when we step in our power, suddenly they're going to respect us.
This preschool teacher, she stepped into her own power. And because of that, this guy actually started to trust her and listen to her because he saw that she could help him, which in the end she really did. And this is also the equation of courage is number one is take responsibility over a situation. Number two is look inward at what you think is right versus outward at the threats. Those are the two keys to your power. And you cannot predict when you step into your power, how people are going to treat you.
[00:17:36] Desiree: Yes, that's the risk you have to take to experience what will work and what will not work. And that's also taking responsibility.
[00:17:47] Chris: Yes.
[00:17:48] Desiree: Well, thanks for sharing these stories.
[00:17:51] Desiree: So, I also have some lightning questions for you. Are you ready for it?
[00:17:56] Chris: I'm always ready for lightning questions.
[00:17:58] Desiree: That's good. What is the most ineffective thing you can say about personal power and what's the most effective thing?
[00:18:05] Chris: Most ineffective thing: it's not my fault. The most effective thing: it's my fault.
[00:18:13] Desiree: Yeah. Okay. Then my second lightning question is what's a tool of personal power that you really like to use?
[00:18:21] Chris: The most important tool is knowing your own values. Research suggests that 20 minutes before you go and interview, if you reflect on your most important values and you actually take four or five minutes to write about them as you're reflecting on them, you will walk into that interview and again, 81% more likely to get the job, doing nothing else. Why? Because when you plug into your values, you're plugging into yourself as opposed to plugging outwardly in the threats and impressions of others.
[00:18:45] Desiree: Okay. So the tool is focus on your goals.
[00:18:49] Chris: Focus on your goals, same thing.
[00:18:51] Desiree: And then the last one is what is an aspect of your personal power that makes you happy?
[00:18:58] Chris: Personal power, we mentioned the behavioral approach system and behavioral inhibition system. And the behavioral approach system, which is activated in your power and taking action and things. Because you feel more in control, you feel more optimistic about the future and you feel happier, your resilience goes up, your wellbeing. A lot of just positive emotions versus when you're out of your power, you're afraid, you're anxious, you don't feel like you have control, and so you feel more stress.
So, it's very important that you step into your power. Even when it's tough, because the consequences are positive on the inside, not just the outside, you know. Humans are built to be successful on the inside and the outside, there's no division, right? Evolution wouldn't work if there had been a division. And that's what personal power really is: it's that bridge that makes you both successful and happy.
[00:19:46] Desiree: It's that bridge that makes you both successful and happy. Chris, thank you very much for being again on the podcast. And I'm already looking forward to your next book so that we can have a next episode recorded.
[00:19:59] Chris: Thank you so much. It was really wonderful.
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