Power Corrupts, But It Doesn’t Have To

Berkeley’s Dacher Keltner, author of the HBR article “Don’t Let Power Corrupt You” and the book The Power Paradox explains how to avoid succumbing to power’s negative effects. But one of your arguments– and the reason that I think you titled your book The Power Paradox– is that you feel that the skills and behavioral traits that lead people to positions of power in the first place are actually the inverse of the misbehavior and impulsiveness and selfishness that you describe in the power corrupts research. A lot of studies show that less powerful people are always attending to powerful people.