10 notes on signaling power

Been doing some people watching...

Look at this old man throw a hissy fit. King Charles has a tantrum over a pen. It’s so off-putting. I can’t stop thinking about how petty and gross it is, and how the more people try to act superior, the more small and feeble and weak they come across as truly being.

Regalia looks goofy.
It feels like there’s an inverse relationship between projecting power and embodying it. We want to have a beer with our leaders, not serve them drinks in crystal flutes and hope to get tipped.

Real power doesn’t need credit.
Approachability looks more like confidence than standoffishness. Making people feel welcome in our presence is a flex.

Road rage is for the weak.
Playing chicken with strangers in store aisles and on the road is off-putting, not impressive. Nobody likes being in meetings with characters who bulldoze through conversations, either.

People fall asleep in dull lectures.
The people we trust are the ones who do the things, not just opine on them. Listening to theory gets stale fast but actual, two-way conversations are powerful.

Punching down is just pathetic.
Arrogance is meanness that mocks, and when it mocks everything and everyone it encounters, the person wielding it finds themself avoided instead of venerated.

The bigger the ego, the more fragile it is.
It’s goofy that the people who act the most haughty tend not to know what to do when faced with minor troubles. Crumbling in the face of annoyance is the opposite of competence.

Haughty people are isolated and weird.
The leaders with the widest group of supporters don’t assume they’re better than the people they know, and that forms bonds instead of barriers.

Jerks make baby Jesus cry.
And so the idea of presenting as NOT intimidating becomes a route to do become a leader while presenting as a powerful presence becomes a route to become an object of pity—the pity that’s projected by the insecure who judge.