Nice people and introverts can build real power through two sources: having information others need, and mastering a specific skill. In the Information Age, these matter more than seniority or fame. Young entrepreneurs in their 20s now command billion-dollar valuations on expertise alone.
There are two other sources of power though, and these ones become even more important in developing our careers and developing our ability to influence others. They are informational power and— informational power and expert power. These are the two most important ones for us to actually spend some time developing. Informational power is power that comes from having insight, comes from having information that others don't have access to. When you've read something that other people haven't read, when you're more in touch with what's happening in your industry and in your profession and all of that, you have informational power. When people say, "Oh well, Mark, let's ask Mark. Mark knows what's going on with this new regulation," you have informational power. Expert power is when you can do things better than other people, when you have a particular area of expertise. Power comes from, "I don't know how to work XYZ software. Who's our expert at that? Oh, well, Bob's the expert. Sally's the expert. Let's go ask them because they know how to do it." These, interestingly, are the two biggest sources of power, and not only are they the biggest sources of power, especially What do we call this age? Isn't this the Information Age? Well, in the Information Age, guess what? Information and expertise tends to be the power. How is it that we have companies with billion-dollar market valuations that are run by people in their 20s? How does that happen? Is it 'cause they're so well loved? Is it because they have Brad Pitt's phone number? Is it because they took some path through an organizational hierarchy? Uh-uh. It happens because they had informational power and expert power. Those are the pieces of power that people have been able to leverage. And that is frankly what has shaken our traditional notions of power. It has turned it completely upside down.
