A paradox of power is that people gain it through virtuous behaviors such as collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing, but once they enjoy a position of privilege, those finer qualities start to fade. Research shows that the powerful are more likely to engage in rude, selfish, and unethical behavior. This tarnishes their reputations, undermining their influence, and creates stress and anxiety among their colleagues, dragging down their teams' engagement and performance. Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor who has studied this phenomenon in a variety of professional settings, describes how executives can avoid succumbing to this syndrome. The first step is developing awareness: being attentive to the feelings that accompany a rise to leadership, practicing mindfulness, and looking for warning signals in your behavior. The second is to remember and try to practice the three ethics of good power--empathy, gratitude, and generosity--in your interactions, meetings, and communications every day.

What do exhilaration, stereotyping and poor table manners have in common? What do embarrassment, the advantage younger siblings enjoy over older ones in understanding others' mental states, and the complexity of Supreme Court justices' decisions have in common? The answer is simple: power. Power is a basic force in social relationships and the dynamics and structure of personality. But as central as it is to social life and to theoretical inquiries in the Social Sciences, it has received only sporadic attention from psychologists. The authors show that we are beginning to understand how power influences cognitive processes such as stereotyping, complex social reasoning, moral judgment, and inferences about non-verbal behavior. They also look at how power influences social behavior, including emotional display, behavioral confirmation, familial aggression, hate crimes, sexual aggression, and teasing. Our understanding of how power shapes situations, groups, and cultures, they argue, ultimately rests on a formulation of how power - and powerlessness - shape the psychology of the individual.