Jeffrey Pfeffer
Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Jeffrey Pfeffer is an organizational behavior scholar best known for his research and popular Stanford elective on power and workplace influence. He has authored or co-authored 16 books, including 7 Rules of Power and Leadership B.S.
1shows
1appearances
23statements
8resolved
4supported
2contradicted
50%fully supported
8said about them ↓ Everything Jeffrey Pfeffer said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Pfeffer: Bill Gates stole the original code that built Microsoft
“People forget that Bill Gates stole the code on which Microsoft has built.”
Pfeffer: Attaining power is a self-fulfilling dynamic that erases past transgressions
“Life is not homeostatic at all. That life is actually self-fulfillment. If I believe you're powerful, you will become more powerful. If I believe you have no power, you will wind up with almost no power. And that therefore, it is all forgotten and forgiven.”
Pfeffer: Underrepresented groups will not succeed without power skills
“These are folks who will not succeed unless they learn power skills because the world is stacked against them in lots of ways.”
Pfeffer: Regis McKenna transformed Steve Jobs from an incompetent presenter
“When Steve Jobs began, Steve Jobs couldn't convince you to buy water if you were dying of thirst. He could not give a presentation to save his life. And Regis McKenna and his team took Steve Jobs under their wing and created Steve Jobs, a man who could sell an…”
Pfeffer: Professionals can possess institutional power or personal autonomy, never both
“You can have power or you can have autonomy, but you cannot have both.”
Pfeffer: Trump only faced intense scrutiny after becoming president
“Donald Trump has done for 40 years what he's now being accused of doing. You know, the tax stuff, all this stuff. He's been a grifter all his life. But when you become president, people are going to look at things that in the past they would not have looked at…”
Pfeffer: Professionals must suspend judgment of colleagues on their critical path
“If I decide that Lenny is Whatever set of bad adjectives you want to use, dumb, incompetent, immoral, whatever. My ability to build a positive relationship with you and you are, you remain on my critical path becomes almost zero unless you're a better actor. I…”
Pfeffer: Competence without visibility will not advance your career
“If you have visibility without substance, people will know you're like useless. But if you have substance without visibility, no one will know the substance that you've got.”
Pfeffer: Institutional rules exist primarily to protect entrenched incumbents
“The rules were made mostly by the people who are favored by the rules in place.”
Pfeffer: Appearance and vocal tone matter far more than substantive content
“There is some evidence that suggests we respond mostly to how people look, secondarily to how they sound, and by far the least important to the content of what they say.”
Pfeffer: Research shows political skill correlates with higher salary and lower stress
“Gerald Ferris developed a scale of kind of political skill, and a bunch of, he and a bunch of his colleagues over the years did a lot of empirical research that demonstrates that political skill is associated with a lot of positive outcomes. Salary. Getting pr…”
Pfeffer: People confuse power as a tool with how it gets used
“I see people with hammers hitting other people on the head. That does not mean that a hammer is not a useful tool. You can take a screwdriver and stab it into somebody's belly. I have a very dear friend who we'll probably talk about later in the podcast. Laura…”
Pfeffer: Successful executives master hiding their true opinions of colleagues
“And as I have taught senior executives over the years, it is absolutely clear to me that one of the skills that they have mastered is they have a skill that you cannot tell what they think of you. And that's important because I need your collaboration. I need …”
Pfeffer: Derek Kan managed the US budget six years post-MBA
“He wound up at the end of the Trump administration as the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. And since typical of the Trump administration, by that time there was no director, he essentially ran The six trillion dollar U.S. Budget. This is…”
Pfeffer: Projecting self-doubt causes others to doubt your qualifications
“Don't think of yourself is not deserving of the job that you hold, because that attitude will leak out, and other people will say, you know, if Lenny doesn't think he deserves the job, then maybe I shouldn't think he deserves the job either.”
Pfeffer: Jason Calacanis defies standard VC models with solo, high-volume bets
“There is a conventional wisdom in the venture capital industry which he defies almost completely. You know, he makes a lot of little bets, not a few big bets. He is he runs a very lean operation. He doesn't have a lot of partners. He doesn't have actually any …”
Pfeffer: Mobilizing power to deliver results compounds authority and resources
“So to the extent you mobilize your resources and get things to happen, You will get more resources. People, people want to be associated with success. To the extent that you become successful, more people will want to work with you. To the extent that you get …”
Pfeffer: High-Level Power Imposes a Heavy Price on Families
“What is it like to be the child? What is it like to be the significant other of these people? And you know the answer to that because you can see the suicides, the divorce rates. There is a price that not only you pay, but a price that your family pays.”
Pfeffer: Student became Romney's economic policy head for a class project
“And in 2012, his doing power project was to get appointed to be Mitt Romney's, it was Mitt Romney was running for president, to be head of economic policy for the Romney campaign. Believe it or not, he was offered the job. Believe it or not, he turned it down”
Pfeffer: Keith Ferrazzi became Deloitte's first CMO via brand initiatives
“So my friend Keith Ferrazzi, when he started at Deloitte Consulting, did not do the spreadsheet stuff that he was, by the way, not very good at and didn't like. He started the Lincoln Quality Award. He decided to try to take Deloitte's Brand recognition from a…”
Pfeffer: Tristan Walker joined Foursquare by proactively signing Starbucks unprompted
“Tristan Walker, who wanted to get hired at Foursquare. You know, he sent emails to the founder, the find, the founder ignored him. So Tristan Walker did something I think very bold. Tristan Walker began signing up partnerships. So one day the founder says, hol…”
Pfeffer: People overestimate how many requests it takes to get help
“So my colleague, Francis Flynn, Frank Flynn, wrote an article with Vanessa Lakin titled, if you need help, just ask. And it turns out people overestimate how many people they're going to have to ask to get help.”
Pfeffer: Diverse weak ties provide non-redundant information unlike close networks
“The people to whom you are strongly tied, your family, your spouse, significant other, your friends, Your work, the people who work with you at work will probably, because they are close to you, know the same things and the same people that you do. So to the e…”
The other half of the tape: Jeffrey Pfeffer's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 3 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Lenny Rachitsky 8
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Lenny's Podcast 8
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jeffrey's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business | 1 | 23 | 50% 4/8 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |