The Power of Yes

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Many of us have stories about that one person who, along the way, chose to believe in us. When I was a goofball of a high school student in the 1980s, my wrestling coach, Ed Gibbons, chose to believe in me, and this fact helped keep me out of trouble and get on a good path. When I was a first-semester college junior, my GPA was in the 2.9 range—too low for the honors program that I was trying to get into (the GPA requirement was 3.0). My advisor, Gwen Gustafson, chose to believe in me and she made an exception for me, allowing me to get into the honors program at the University of Connecticut. There is no way I would have gotten into any Ph.D. programs without that act on her part.

After I got into the honors program, I needed to have a faculty member agree to oversee my honors thesis. Faculty members typically get no extra compensation for overseeing students’ honors theses, and saying “no” is both common and easy. Legendary psychology professor at UCONN, Amerigo Farina, told me “yes” when I asked him to serve as my thesis advisor. And this moment shaped my own life to this day. A few years later, when highly respected UNH faculty member Becky Warner agreed to serve as my dissertation advisor, my entire academic career took a level jump. And my life is what is today partly because of this benevolent decision on her part.

Life junctures where someone in a position of power chooses to be supportive as opposed to negative can make all the difference in someone’s life. And, if you’re like me, you can point to a small set of special people in your own life history who used their powerful roles to help advance your life in a positive way.

Two Routes to Power

An evolutionary analysis of leadership tells an interesting tale. In effect, in human groups, there are two basic routes to obtaining positions of leadership and power.

The Bright Route: When we think about attributes that are appealing to others, a broad suite of positive social and emotional qualities come to mind. We like people who are kind, generous, and honest (see Miller, 2000). We like people who are altruistic—people who give to others at a cost to themselves (see Wilson, 2007). When electing government officials, for instance, we try to vote for people who at least seem like they are honest and interested in advancing the greater good. And we often show a disdain for candidates who clearly seem to be just out for their own personal gain.

But if your take on the world is at all like mine, then you know that not all people who rise to positions of power and influence are saints. You can think of government officials who are corrupt and self-serving. You can think of supervisors in work contexts who seem to care little about advancing the goals of individual employees. You can think of educational leaders and teachers who seem to have little interest in supporting the development of individual students. And so forth. So while a genuine, other-oriented approach may lead to leadership opportunities, things don’t always work out that way.

The Dark Route: Research into the evolutionary origins of personality has shown that a significant proportion of people seem to have dark motivations in their approaches to others. Specifically, people who score as high in the dark triad show signs of narcissism (an excessive focus on oneself), Machiavellianism (a proclivity to manipulate others for one’s own gain), and psychopathy (a tendency to care little about others; see Jonason et al., 2013). Dark as this approach might be, this cluster of attributes has the capacity to advance one’s own goals. And it can, accordingly, lead to positions of power and leadership.

Interestingly, those who emerge in leadership positions by following a bright path, then, are likely to be very different kinds of leaders than those who have found themselves in leadership positions by following a dark path.

Two Basic Leadership Styles

Those who score as high in the dark triad lead by intimidation and use power for selfish gains. In leadership positions, people with this set of attributes may well show a discriminatory pattern of support—supporting only others whose goals are aligned with their own goals—and blocking the goals of others whose goals do not line up with their own goals. In fact, this is a pretty common kind of situation in the social world.

Those who, on the other hand, show markers of genuine kindness and a focus on the greater good likely are more generally supportive in their leadership styles. Advancing the goals of others, independent of their own selfish goals, is a more typical approach that someone with this orientation might take. And such an approach likely can have far-reaching positive implications in the lives of others.

The Power of Yes

If you find yourself in a position of power, rejecting the requests of others is the easy route. It requires little effort and it will tax your own time less. It is a low-cost, low-risk approach to leadership. At its base, a leadership style rooted in advancing one’s own agenda is fully consistent with a rejecting approach.

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If you’re an academic administrator and a teacher who works under you wants to create a new course or a new program, that can be risky. It might even cost money. Rejecting the proposal out of the gate is in your interest. If you’re a boss in a workplace and an employee wants to bring in a guest speaker who is an expert on a new idea related to your industry, it’s easiest to say no. New ideas might challenge the status quo. And there would probably be paperwork involved. If you’re a teacher and a student comes up to you with an idea for a paper that is a bit outside the box, saying no is easiest for you. And so forth.

On the other hand, leaders who say yes have a special place. Saying yes to requests from subordinates can be risky. It can be costly. It can be time-consuming. But you know, it can also be empowering.

An approach to leadership with a default of yes instead of no, in fact, can help people develop in all kinds of positive ways. Such an approach is most likely to follow from a leader whose general approach to people and to situations follows from a bright rather than a dark path.

Bottom Line

There are multiple routes to power and leadership. People who strategically advance their own agendas, often at a cost to others, might be effective at persuasion by intimidation. And such a pattern can lead to obtaining positions of leadership. On the other hand, people who display signals of being genuinely other-oriented tend to be respected and appreciated by other—and this approach is also, as a result, a natural path to positions of leadership.

Supportive leaders can make an enormous difference in the lives of others in positive ways. Similarly, non-supportive leaders can have a substantial negative impact on the lives of others. When helping to choose leaders in our groups, understanding this two-pronged path to leadership along with the implications that such choices have on the lives of others can go a long way toward creating atmospheres of support over atmospheres of intimidation.