Why You Have No Power

Understanding the rules of the game and how to apply them is the only way you will ever gain power.

“Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”

- Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958)

I recently held a fireside chat with renowned Stanford business school Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer. He is most famous for teaching his perennially oversubscribed class “Paths to Power” and his research on how to get and use power. He is a social scientist first and foremost, and he matter of factly identifies what he has observed, whether people like it or not. In his syllabus, he clearly states in bold letters: This class is not for everyone.

Insufficient sensitivity to and skill in coping with power dynamics have cost Stanford GSB graduates and many other talented people promotion opportunities and even their jobs. My objective for this class is simple: make sure this does NOT happen to you.

The course seeks to ensure that you will learn the social science concepts useful for understanding power and ways of analyzing power dynamics in organizations. The course and its projects and self-reflective assignments encourage you to think about and develop your own personal path to power.

My fireside chat with Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer on the Cemex Auditorium stage at the Stanford Graduate School of Business

Professor Pfeffer is very frank and upfront about how he feels about other theories of leadership. He has stated in the past and reiterated during our chat, that he believes that servant leadership and authentic leadership are nonsense. Pfeffer has spent the past five decades studying and teaching about people in power and his empirical data supports this view. The point of his course and his books is to have his students and readers see the world differently and change what they notice and think about how they apprehend the world around them. It is also to change what they do as they navigate through that world.

He has narrowed his years of studying strong and successful leaders down to in his bestselling book The 7 Rules of Power, even though many people might not agree with them. But as he said himself, if he wanted to make lots of money saying things people wanted to hear, he’d become Simon Sinek. Like it or not, from primates to kids on the elementary school playground, these rules have always applied. Pfeffer writes and teaches about how the world is, how it was and how it will be:

The 7 Rules of Power

1. Get out of your own way

2. Break the rules

3. Appear powerful

4. Build a powerful brand

5. Network relentlessly

6. Use your power

7. Success excuses (almost) everything

We need to stop thinking of “power” as a dirty word. Hollywood and the media twist the word “power” and equate it to negative words such as tyranny and greed. When you think of “power” you think of dictators and selfish people. But if you add two letters in front of it and say “empower,” it changes the meaning and perception completely. When you “empower” someone, you give them agency and allow them to choose. You make them stronger and more confident, to control their life and claim their rights. The origin of the word power comes from the Latin word potere, which means “to be able” and there is no negative connotation associated with it. If anything, we should all seek power, because having it means that we are able to do more with it.

When you have power you can get a promotion and a raise. When you have power you can get recognition for your team members. When you have power, you can influence others to get the things you need done, done. When you have power, you can lead more effectively. Power enables you to accomplish and attain more. Power gives you autonomy and control over your own life. And studies have shown that people who have a strong sense of power have higher satisfaction with their lives than those who do not.

As Pfeffer points out, women and minorities are expected to follow the rules and have been socialized to work for the welfare of the collective. So it is even more important for us to understand the rules of power and leverage that knowledge effectively to succeed. You can blame the rules and use them as an excuse for why you don’t have any power, or you can use them as information to your advantage to gain power. If you’re the only woman or person of color in a room, you can shrink and become invisible or you can embrace the role and stand out. It’s all about how you reframe the situation for yourself.

Inbal Demri’s fundamental point, one that I hear from many successful women and people of color: people can use the fact that the world is not fair and that many things are stacked against them as an excuse to opt out and not try to build power. But that gets them nowhere. People need to understand the obstacles they face because of their race, gender, social class, and so forth, but then they need to master the power skills and rules to improve their prospects. Or as Alison Davis-Blake, the first female dean at the University of Minnesota business school, and then the first female dean at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business before becoming president of Bentley University, would tell my class: “Women need to be twice as good to get half the credit. Fortunately many women are four times as good.”

- 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer

I Want You to Have Power

I write this essay from the perspective of a person who has power. I am not ashamed or embarrassed to say that I am a powerful and influential person. My younger self would have shied away from saying such a self-aggrandizing thing, but my middle-age self owns it. I graduated from the best business schools in the world. I worked at some of the biggest tech companies in the world. I started two companies and raised tens of millions of dollars. I didn’t ask permission and syndicated $30M to invest in Asian American founded startups. I broke the stereotype of quiet Asian and led a movement with an open letter in the Wall Street Journal condemning Asian hate crimes during the pandemic that was signed by President Bush, the CEOs of Google, Zoom, DoorDash, NBA great Andre Iguodala, Hollywood film director JJ Abrams and 8,000 other business leaders. I won an Emmy Award for producing a documentary about Asian American sports icon, Jeremy Lin. I started my own venture capital fund. I’ve been a member of the exclusive leadership network YPO. I’ve spoken at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference, Stanford business school and to thousands of employees at Goldman Sachs, Google, Marriott, Visa and other Fortune 100 companies. I’ve won multiple awards for my advocacy. I am friends with billionaires, CEOs, celebrities, professional athletes, mayors and members of Congress, renowned musicians and chefs, and more.

I don’t list all of these accolades to brag or flex, I list them because they are facts. I list them as evidence of the power I’ve built, to give credence to Pfeffer’s seven rules. I am not an academic or a social scientist talking about theoretical concepts or ideas. I have powerful friends who have corroborated these rules. I am living proof that you can use these rules to your advantage to gain power. I want to use my power to empower others, because despite what some people believe, it isn’t a zero sum game.

Just as many might not like what Pfeffer says, they won’t agree with my takes. My goal is to create awareness and relevancy for those struggling to understand why they feel stuck. I was raised to believe that we lived in a meritocratic society, only to learn that was a lie. I once thought the system should adapt to me and blamed the system, but one day I accepted that I can’t change the system unless I have the power to do so. Even if you don’t agree with or apply these learnings, it will inevitably change your view or perception of how the world works. Once you take the red pill, you can’t unsee these things.

Asians and the Rules of Power

I was invited to lead the conversation with Professor Pfeffer at the Asian Leadership Conference in front of 400 Asian American alumni and friends at my alma mater, the Stanford Graduate School of Business. And it was not lost on me that our cultural values are antithetical to every single one of the rules of power.

Asians in America are perceived as weak. We are treated like doormats and pushovers. We have no real power in this country. When bad things happen to our community, they usually get ignored. When violent crimes happen to our elders or our households are robbed, they barely make the local news. We’re not even recognized as a racial group in election polls. Everything is Black and White. At the workplace, we aren’t part of diversity initiatives, but we also don’t get the benefit of the doubt that our white colleagues get. It’s impossible for us not to feel invisible in our own country.

This is why it was so triggering to see the Simu Liu Bobagate incident on the Canadian reality show, Dragon’s Den. Most Asians couldn’t care less about a white Canadian couple trying to sell bubble tea. What we did care about was seeing how Simu was blown off by his fellow judges when he voiced his concerns. It felt all too familiar to many of us. I posted about the incident on LinkedIn and it got 400K views. After reading the post, Pfeffer sent me this email:  

“Your LinkedIn is so completely consistent with my view that one can not wait for others to take care of us, but we need to act to change what seems unfair and unreasonable. The tea example is perfect--you saw something you felt was inappropriate and wrong, and called it out. Getting everyone (and certainly more Asian Americans) to adopt that degree of agency/agentic behavior is precisely what is needed. You model what everyone should be doing, and I may call that out during our session. You are the example that shows it can be done!”

Unfortunately, when it comes to Asians being powerful, our cultures can often betray us in Western society. Here are some of the challenges that Asians have:

• Scarcity mindset if you are an immigrant or child of immigrants

• Caring too much about “face” and what others think of you

• Avoiding drawing attention to yourself or promoting yourself (refusing to take credit publicly)

• Choosing not to socialize at work or outside of other Asians (are not good at networking)

• Fear of taking risks and failing because we are driven to perfection

• Avoiding conflict (passive aggressive)

• Fear of making others uncomfortable

• Failure to self advocate: never complain and tend to suck it up

• Failure to ask for what you deserve or want, just hope that it’s given to you

• Following rules and obeying to a fault (filial piety)

• Prioritizing the collective above yourself as an individual, to your own detriment

All of these may work in Asian societies where everyone is aligned and agrees to the same social contracts, but not when you are in Western societies where those social contracts are thrown out the window. These are all antithetical to the 7 rules of power and will keep you being a background character in your own story.

Jimmy O Yang plays Willis Wu in Interior Chinatown, a Chinese American man who is a background character in his own story.

Rule 1: Get Out of Your Own Way

The number one most important rule of power is to “get out of your own way.” Far too often, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to gaining power. We fear failure. We want to be liked by others. We are overly apologetic. We are afraid to ask for things. We tell ourselves crippling stories that we are imposters. All of these are ways that we create obstacles for ourselves. I’ve written before about how our inner critic holds us back.

Many Asians are people pleasers, because we want to avoid conflict and maintain harmony. This makes us seem obedient. Because we were criticized so much growing up and afraid of making mistakes, we are constantly apologizing to people and being self-deprecating. This makes us seem weak. We act like we are not deserving with false humility, when we know full well we worked hard and earned something. People start believing it when you keep saying, “Oh it was nothing” and refuse to accept praise or credit. When you are constantly making yourself smaller in these ways, why should you expect others not to see you as small? If you act like you are beneath someone, you will be treated as such.

One way of getting over imposter syndrome is to focus on others in high-level positions and their differences from you, if any. Many of them are no more qualified than you are; success is sometimes the result of luck or being born to the right parents. Another way to move past imposter syndrome is to do what this woman and other people sometimes do: push or force themselves, even in situations where they are uncomfortable, to present and sell themselves. With experience comes more comfort as well as skill. Getting over imposter syndrome is a first step on a person’s path to power.

Mastering imposter syndrome, and describing yourself in positive rather than self-deprecating ways, is critical for achieving power and success. If you do not think of yourself as powerful, competent, and deserving, it is likely that, in subtle and possibly not-so-subtle ways, you will communicate this self-assessment to others.

- 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer

I believe that the biggest reason we aren’t as successful as we could be, is that we care too much about what others think of us. We are so consumed with “saving face” because that is what our parents raised us to care about. They taught us to believe that our sense of validation comes from external opinions including their own. When we realize that people don’t think about us nearly as much as we imagine they do, we become free of the shackles of their opinions and judgment. Our desire to be liked can become debilitating. As Pfeffer quotes Gary Loveman, former CEO of Caesars Entertainment, “If you want to be liked, get a dog.” 

Another point that Pfeffer makes is that just as you don’t need to be liked by everyone, you also don’t need to like everyone you work with. Ultimately, they are a means to an end. The most powerful people are really good at not giving away how they really feel about others. That’s something that many Asian cultures are extremely good at hiding. I’ve been told by many Japanese friends that everyone thinks they’re so polite and kind when you visit. In reality you have no idea how they actually feel about you, because they hide it so well. Use that superpower to your advantage.

Rule 2: Break the Rules

Asians are raised to be rule followers and have been raised to obey their parents and teachers. No one remembers the rule followers, because everyone follows the rules so they are completely forgettable. When you break the rules is when you stand out from the crowd. I’m not suggesting you break the law, that’s very different than breaking rules or social norms. Most of the time we don’t question who is making the rules and we eventually realize they aren’t actual rules at all. The “rules” are made to benefit the people already in power. In order to gain power, you need to be willing to be unconventional to stand out from the crowd and by definition, be exceptional.

Social expectations for how women and people of color are supposed to behave, both subtle and overt, disadvantage those who conform to those expectations. This phenomenon is sometimes called the “double bind” because violating norms often provokes backlash and resentment on the part of those benefiting from those norms.

…in the case of Asians, there was pressure to fit the stereotype of the “model minority” that succeeded through talent and hard work. Hewlett’s conclusion was that for women or Asian Americans to succeed, they needed to surmount the social expectations that limited how they showed up and what they were willing to do.

- 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer

Get over your ego and ask for help or ask for things. Too many people are worried about appearing weak or inadequate when they ask for help. They are afraid that they will be rejected or embarrassed. In reality, it takes courage to acknowledge a need and ask for help. The worst someone can say is no and you’ll be no worse off than when you began.

Photo by Dev O'Neill, courtesy of House of Representatives photography office

This iconic photo of journalist Connie Chung in a sea of white male journalists covering the Watergate scandal exemplifies rule breaking. She is the only person of color in that room and one of the few women in an industry that at the time was dominated by white men. She shared in her memoir how she faced overt sexism and racism throughout her career. Despite all of her success and being a trailblazer, Chung thought she was a failure until she met a group of Asian American women that were named after her and featured in the Sunday Times piece: Generation Connie. She didn’t even know how powerful or impactful she was by having an unconventional career in journalism that inspired many women and people of color to follow.

Rule 3: Appear Powerful

Whether we like it or not, people care about presence and appearance. People respond subconsciously to how people look and sound and how they show up and present themselves. How people look impacts how powerful they are perceived to be. The data confirms that taller, better looking, well-dressed people are more successful than others. People who are more self-aggrandizing and overconfident stand out and are more memorable.  

White men take up more airtime and so they automatically seem more important. The more speaking time, longer gazing time, and making others laugh with humor, all convey power. By doing so, they gain power and with more power comes more confidence, so it becomes self-perpetuating. Donald Trump talked twice as much as Kamala Harris did on the 2024 campaign trail. The content did not matter as much as the airtime did.

Think about this next time you’re in a meeting and observe the share of airtime people take. Now compare that with your perception of how powerful the respective people in the room are. The ones that talk the least are not likely to be at the top of that list. It’s not just how much time they talk but also the tone, posture and confidence of delivery that are all tied to the observers’ perception of competence.

This is a list of how to appear more powerful:

• Do not read from notes

• Make eye contact

• Anger (outside the norm)

• Make strategic interruptions (in meetings)

• Don’t apologize

• More Gestures

• Open body posture

• Louder Voice

• Invading personal space

• Sit in the power seat or next to the person in power

Perception is reality. You don’t have to be tall or attractive to appear powerful. You can act and sound powerful by how you deliver your words and the words you choose to use. Substance matters, but as you know in a lot of meetings you’ve attended, delivery and presence almost matters more. What do all influential and powerful people have in common? They are all exceptional communicators. Not just to large crowds but even one-on-one. Anyone can become a stronger communicator. If you need help with this, taking a speaking class like Toastmasters or finding a speaking coach can make a huge difference. This may be the single best investment you can make in your career. Even top executives I know have found them to be incredibly helpful and they are already strong communicators. Classes and coaches can video you and open your eyes to how others are seeing and hearing you. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken in the first place.

Rule 4: Build a Powerful Brand

Self-promotion is often considered tacky. But if you reframe building a brand as making yourself memorable, it becomes a lot less so. People are busy with their own objectives, so you have to be intentional about getting credit for your contributions and accomplishments. Good work and competence alone are not enough if they aren’t noticed by anyone. These are table stakes. If you want to be acknowledged and recognized, you need to ensure that people are aware of who you are and what you bring to the table, even if it makes you uncomfortable. You have to control the narrative about yourself and make your story known. If you don’t, others will tell themselves a story about you to fill in the blank. And unfortunately, much of that story will be based on stereotypes.

Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. What is your superpower? What are you known for? If no one is talking about you and you’re not known for anything, you can’t be powerful because you have nothing to offer. Build your brand around your strengths, or start focusing and building strengths. Make sure others know what those strengths are. Embrace and lean into what you do best, because then others will talk about it. Write content about that topic. Speak on conference panels about that topic. Do podcast interviews about that topic. Create a podcast or panel about that topic. Once you are known for your superpower, make sure even more people know, so your reputation and subsequently your power grows.

Asians are raised to stay humble and blend in; to not draw attention to oneself. This is why so many Asians are invisible in the workplace, because they refuse to stand up and take credit for their work. By reframing self-promotion into a way to get credit for the impact you’ve made for others or credit for the work your team has done, it becomes more about the collective than the individual. Make sure your manager, and your skip-level manager as well as other teams, know about the work that you and your team are doing. If you have visibility without substance, people will know you're useless. But if you have substance without visibility, no one will know the substance that you have.

Rule 5: Network Relentlessly

The most negative perception of networking is that it is akin to “schmoozing.” It is making shallow and superficial small talk with self-serving intentions. When in reality, networking is ultimately about building trust and relationships with people. The more people you know, the more helpful and knowledgeable you will be. Your network creates opportunity and power. As I’ve written in the past, your network determines your success more than you realize.

Just as self-promotion can be reframed, so can networking. The first principle of networking is generosity. Good networkers will ask questions like “How can I be helpful?” or “Who can I introduce you to?”. When you network through generosity, it doesn’t feel as negative or manipulative as some people believe. It only seems that way if someone is only taking by using people versus giving and helping them.

The best way to build a network is to build trust by helping others without expecting something in return. It should not be seen as transactional, but a long-term investment in someone that may or may not ever pay off. People know if you’re being transactional. The more you build a reputation as someone who is helpful and effective, the more people will perceive you as a person of means, which equates to having power. If powerful people consider you a valuable person, then by association you become a powerful person.

You can’t grow your network if you don’t meet new people. You have to proactively put yourself in a position to connect with people outside of your existing social and professional circles. For introverts, this may sound terrifying, but it doesn’t mean you have to go to big social gatherings and make small talk. Ideally you should be strategic about who you want to network with. Attend industry specific conferences or groups. Join non-profit boards of organizations with missions you care about. Go to alumni networking events for your alma mater. Reach out on LinkedIn or ask friends for introductions to people you want to learn from. If you’re able to, join membership groups like EO and YPO or even country clubs, because they are already exclusive to successful people.

Rule 6: Use Your Power

Once you are in a position of power or have any authority or influence, you can gain more by leveraging that power. You can choose to be passive with your power, or you can proactively use it. When a CEO takes over a company and replaces existing executives with their own trusted and loyal people, they are protecting their power. They can also use their position to make drastic organizational and culture changes to demonstrate their power. A CEO who comes in and makes no significant changes will be seen as weak and ineffective, while quickly relinquishing power.

Mobilizing resources to make good things happen will get you more resources. The more successful or effective you are, the more opportunities and promotions you will get. People will attribute that success to you which allows you to accumulate trust and goodwill that translates into more power.

If you are in a position of influence, people will listen to you and follow you. You can use that power selfishly, but you can also use it benevolently. You can help others by making them known or giving them opportunities. If the CEO gives someone a shoutout during a company wide presentation or an earnings call, that person will gain power. People with power can give others power simply by association, but they can also give power through resources. If you’re a Chief Legal Officer or CFO of a Fortune 500 company and you are choosing which outside counsel, consulting or accounting firm to work with, you can give power to the partner at the firm you give the work to. Be intentional about who you decide to work with, because inside their firm, they are getting recognition for winning the deal. When you are powerful, you can make others powerful.

Rule 7: Success Excuses (Almost) Everything

When you are successful and powerful, what you did to get there will often be forgotten, forgiven or possibly both. People have short memories when you reach the top. In most cases, your social circle of connections will protect you. Silicon Valley has multiple examples of serial founders who have done questionable and even criminal things, but are still thriving: Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud and is still able to raise money for her next venture. Parker Conrad was forced to resign from Zenefits after questionable business practices, and has since raised $145M for his $1.35 billion dollar company Rippling. Adam Neumann was forced out of WeWork for mismanagement and illegal behavior after crashing the $47 billion company into bankruptcy in less than a year, but was able to raise $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz for his new startup Flow before it even launched.

None of these people cared what anyone thought of them. Even after being shamed with convictions and public failure, they brushed it off and got back up again. They know that no one cares about any of those stories when you are successful and powerful. They have limitless audacity because they have followed all the rules of power and they know what it takes to get it. Imagine if they used that power for good, the way that Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey have all used their power and influence to help people.

Stop asking for permission. Asking for permission is opening yourself up to denial. Waiting for gatekeepers to allow you to do something you want to do gives away your power. This is especially true for Asian leaders who have power, but still feel the need to ask for permission out of habit or culture. Asking for permission by definition makes you less powerful. It’s always better to ask for forgiveness than permission, because it’s easier to apologize for something that’s already been done than it is to seek approval beforehand. If you are successful, it’s much more likely that your sins will be forgotten.

“If power is to be used for good, more good people need power.”

- Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer

Skills, Not Values or Personality

Some people reading might interpret this as saying you need to change your personality into an arrogant fratty bro in order to gain power. Or that you need to abandon your Asian culture and values to succeed. Neither is true. These are all skills you can learn and practice that can help you get ahead. If you play a game and you don’t know the rules, how can you expect to win? If you don’t train and work on the right things, how will you get any better at it?

All of these are skills that can be learned. Embrace the principle of gradual progression, pushing yourself just beyond your comfort zone without overwhelming yourself. Aim for a 15% stretch beyond what feels familiar but not unreachable.

None of the rules of power make someone a bad person. Being aware of how you can use them, and how others are using them is like wearing prescription glasses for the first time. You can finally see clearly why someone is in the position they’re in. Not because they’re more talented or competent. Not because they’re smarter or more capable. It’s because they follow these rules and they win the game as it is being played. You don’t have to like how the game is played, you just have to know how to play if you want to have any chance of winning it.

Starting on Third Base

My parents immigrated to America from Taiwan with next to nothing to attend graduate school. I was able to get into an Ivy League college which got me into a consulting company and a Silicon Valley job before attending Stanford for my MBA. Despite achieving all of this, I was still used to comparing myself to others and feeling like I was behind. It wasn’t until I graduated from Stanford that I came to the eye-opening realization that many of the people in the rooms I was in came from wealthy and successful families. They grew up around power and learned how the game was played early on in their lives. They had more confidence to take risks because they knew they had a safety net to fall back on that most people don’t have. They were raised with power so they had the audacity to break the rules, never doubted themselves, and started life with the right network.

Don’t beat yourself up by comparing yourself to someone who started life on third if you started on first base or home plate. Just remember that you can’t control the circumstances you’re born into, but you can control what you do with the life you are given. Knowing and applying these rules of power can help you level the playing field.

Not surprisingly, people from higher-social-class backgrounds have a stronger and more positive sense of self, which leads them to exhibit more confidence—and even overconfidence—in their behavior. Because overconfidence can confer advantages in how others perceive people, a topic explored in more detail when we examine Rule 3 (showing up in a powerful fashion), one way in which social class differences perpetuate is through the mechanism of overconfidence. Research demonstrates that overconfidence causes people to appear more competent, and this perception of greater competence then causes overconfident individuals to enjoy advantages in the eyes of others.

- 7 Rules of Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer

Respect Yourself

Asians cultures care more about respecting others than respecting yourself. We were raised to compare ourselves to others and be cognizant of perceptions of others. We need to stop caring so much about what others think of us and start caring more about what we think of ourselves. We need to make way for ourselves. We can make excuses and complain about external circumstances all we want, but until we accept the reality that circumstances are out of our control, we will never put ourselves in a better position. Only those in power have the ability to change culture, so the first step is gaining power. Once you are there, you can choose to kick the ladder out behind you or help bring others along with you. When you have power, you can stop playing scared and ignore the optics and critics.

I used to attribute the bamboo ceiling phenomenon purely to discrimination against Asians by the people in power. But that wouldn’t explain why so many Indian Americans have made it to the CEO position at the biggest companies in the world including Google, Microsoft, Adobe, YouTube, Wayfair, Chanel and IBM among others. Or that so many other Asian Americans are sitting in the c-suite at the NBA, Coca-Cola, eBay, AMD, American Airlines and more. While the ratio of workforce to executives is clearly lopsided for Asian Americans because of harmful stereotypes and the model minority myth, the bamboo ceiling can and has been overcome. We must acknowledge the cultural conflicts that are holding us back from embracing power and using it accordingly.

A Lunar New Year dinner I hosted for Asian American executives including the CEOs of Opentable, Ancestry, and Bain, the founder CEOs of Weee and Credit Karma, the founder of Old Navy/CEO of Rothy’s, CFO of LinkedIn, among others.

As with any sport, you can train yourself all you want, but having a coach or personal board of directors can make all the difference. I talk about this in my essay Why Having a Coach Matters. They can see your strengths and weaknesses better than you can. They can identify your blindspots and give you honest feedback on where to improve. By getting their perspective on specific situations, you will have a better understanding on how you can handle things in a more effective manner. Knowing the rules of power is one thing, applying them is another. You can study Japanese in Duolingo all you want, but until you go to Japan and use it on the streets of Tokyo, it is pointless.

These are all skills that can be learned through coaching, which is why I partnered with Michael Takagawa at Corporate Edge to launch the Asian Leadership Center. Our goal is to match Asian American executives with culturally-aware executive coaches who can help them level up.

We shouldn’t have to play this game in single player mode, because it’s hard to win alone. We should be helping one another along this journey. What I’ve learned from by writing and speaking engagements, is that so many people are struggling with the same challenges of unwinding a lifetime of cultural programming. We need to find others we can confide in and actively support one another. We need more sponsors and mentors who can lift others up and model for them. We need more of those in power to become elected officials, to nominate others for awards and board seats, to hire and invest in others, to donate to charitable organizations…to show up.

Ironically our cultures teach us to think about the collective, but often we are only looking out for ourselves. As a community, we can do so much more than we can when we work alone. This is why The Asian American Foundation (TAAF), Ascend Leadership for executives, AAAIM for finance leaders, AAJA for journalists, NAPABA for lawyers, CAPE for entertainment executives and creatives and other organizations exist, to leverage the network to benefit everyone collectively. That’s why I started Hyphen Capital, so founders and executives could connect and help one another go even higher even faster.

My hope is that this essay gives agency to those of you who feel trapped in your role or stuck in your careers. I can’t flip a switch to make you more confident. I can’t tell you what your superpower is. I can’t make you a better speaker. I can’t make you go to events and network. But if you’ve read this far, it means that you can do any one, if not all, of these things to make yourself more powerful. Nothing is worse for career progress than inertia. Sometimes it takes an executive coach to push you to make changes and keep you accountable. Either way, remember that you are in control and have to be proactive. No one is going to give you anything. You have to go and take it yourself.

Recommendations

7 Rules of Power: Surprising--but True--Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career by Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer

Pfeffer on Power Podcast - All of the interviews are great, but I’d like to highlight the interviews with Christine Hung, Laura Chau and Deb Liu

Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work - Ancestry CEO Deb Liu’s book is a perfect complement to 7 Rules of Power. This book is not just for women, it applies to anyone who wants to become a successful leader.

Asian Leadership Center - Find an executive coach who is Asian American or who has experience working with Asian American leaders. Learn more.