I first came across Levy when I read a New York Times article16 describing an influencers’ dinner in his New York apartment. He brought twelve or so people from a variety of backgrounds together to cook a simple meal—and wash the dishes—with the proviso that no one could tell others what they did or who they were until after dinner, when people had

power changes how others relate to people, often in a positive fashion, while providing its wielders with more autonomy and control over their lives.

The history of the US civil rights movement is one of people refusing to accept norms and actual laws that kept people of color from enjoying the same rights, including the right to vote, enjoyed by others. The late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis at the end of his life admonished people to get into trouble, what he called “good

Figure out who can be helpful to you and reach out to them, practicing the idea of Rule 5. Build a powerful brand—Rule 4—by developing a concise statement of who you are and why you are uniquely qualified to be doing what you’re doing. Act and speak with power—Rule 3—by understanding and then implementing the ideas of how to convey power through

the empirical evidence on uncovering lies consistently reveals that people are largely terrible at this task.

Kordestani said that as someone with an immigrant background and an engineering education, he had eschewed any form of organizational politicking, despite having taken my class, believing that the quality of a person’s work spoke for itself and that people should be modest and self-effacing. Not embracing the class material, Kordestani did not

Gillani’s prominent role in airline strategy and his connections to the World Economic Forum resulted in an invitation to give a TED talk, which drew considerable interest, generating some 135,000 views. Gillani noted that when he was introduced to the organizer of TED in Germany, he suggested doing the first-ever TED talk on the airline industry.

While Adam Grant noted that people don’t necessarily want your whole, true, unvarnished self, Ibarra argued that people’s quest for authenticity often leaves them stuck and unable to change when they acquire new jobs or roles requiring them to engage in different behaviors and use different skills.

The ability to create a narrative and then tell it repeatedly until it becomes seen as truth helps people retain their power. The fact is that venture capitalists, other investors, and even employees and customers love a nice founding myth about an enterprise, which typically elevates the role of one entrepreneur and writes their colleagues out of