Influence Versus Power

Bing Gordon is a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.  He offers his thoughts on the different types of leadership - - 

Early on, I learned that I'm better with influence than power.  And, in fact, I'm not power-hungry.  My sense is that to be a good operator you need to be power-hungry.  You need to care more about power than prestige, and probably more about power than money, and more about power than intellectual stimulation.  And people who are good operators tend to want power so they can get stuff done.  They want to wield it.

And there's a cost to having power, which is that the people you have sway over actually own you, especially if you're in a business where there are more jobs than there are good people.

I like having influence.  I like being with interesting people and helping them become better and being part of the flow of ideas.  And that's a little bit uncomfortable as a boss.  It doesn't make sense to people that the boss, who is kind of a figurehead and maybe a confidence-giving parent figure, just wants to be an experienced helper.  As a person of authority, I'm kind of teacher-consultant more than wielder of power.

The fitness function of a venture capitalist - - meaning the metrics of performance, the report card - - is pretty pure.  You show up with money and one way or another more money has to come back than goes in.  So I just do stuff I've learned over time and work with people who I like who are really motivated, who want to listen to me most of the time and take feedback and then make it their own.  And I work in areas that I want to learn about, areas that are fascinating, because fascination is a good thing.

It's better to work with people you would pay to be able to work with.  So if you're working with someone in an area that fascinates you, with people you can add value to and have good conversations with, who are capable and really motivated and you would pay to hang out with them, I'm pretty confident good things would happen.