There is such a thing as personal power, but most people haven't encountered it even remotely. That's because their notion of personal power aims at the wrong goal. They define a powerful person as someone with money and status who can exert his will over others. Such a person is imagined to be strong, smart, lucky, and more than a little ruthless. Examples crop up from Washington to Wall Street, any area of life where competition is fierce and the spoils go to the victors.
But the real secret to personal power lies elsewhere. The difference is that one kind of power, the kind I've just sketched, comes from what you do while the other comes from who you are. Before writing this post, I reviewed in my mind the qualities I've observed in the most powerful people I've met over the past thirty years, and it was astonishing how many qualities come directly from being rather than doing.
