Shadowing Practice: Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Why don't
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people have power?
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And having answered that question now approximately a billion times, I am pretty well ready to answer it for you, which is the biggest barrier,
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I think, for us having power is, of course, ourselves.
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We are our own biggest barrier to having power.
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We are oftentimes not willing to do what it takes or to make the trade-offs required to have power.
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We limit ourselves by being afraid to take chances or to fail.
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So many of my friends graduate from Stanford Business School and they follow the well-trod paths of their predecessors, you know, which has never made much sense to me,
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which is why would you go to the same firms
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that hire all of the best and brightest from all the same schools
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that you're graduating from go find the niche isn't
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that what they teach you in competitive strategy but you know
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so we we oftentimes aren't willing to take the chances required
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uh we worry excessively about what others particularly peers think about us
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we want to be liked by everybody or loved even
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and therefore you know and it's a very interesting fine line that you want to walk.
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Obviously you want to be liked and you want to be popular, but on the other hand what I try to teach the students
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and what I try to get them to understand is that
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if you think about it in a very simple common sense way your peers, your direct hierarchical peers are also your competitors.
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If you think about you know you're going to start off day one class of associates at a law firm,
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class of people at Goldman or Morgan Stanley, class of people at McKinsey, Bain, BCG.
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All of these firms have an up or out.
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And even if they don't have an up or out, sooner or later some of you are gonna get promoted to the next level and some of you won't.
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So it is in fact the case that your peers are also your competitors.
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And so maybe, you know, need to think about them in a variety of different ways.
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We're reluctant to accept status and hierarchical differences.
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My friend and colleague Deb Grunfeld, who teaches here, will tell you we live in a hierarchical world, and we're oftentimes uncomfortable with hierarchy.
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Many of us are counter-dependent.
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Certainly describes me, which is why I've got a good job at Stanford Business School.
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We don't like to have people telling us what to do.
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Many of us, so we rebel against hierarchical authority.
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Other people get in positions of power, and they say, why do I have the right to tell people below me what to do?
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And they try to give up their power.
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So I think we're uncomfortable in hierarchy even though we live in hierarchies all the time.
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We see the world as fair and just, and therefore we are less vigilant and strategic than required.
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One of the common things when I teach people the cases that I teach them about, is I often get this comment, well you know, these people will get it in the end.
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So I don't have anything to learn from them because sooner or later their bad behavior will catch up with them.
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In fact, because the world is not a just and fair place, every religious tradition that I know has some account balancing scheme.
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To deal with it, you know, later on.
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You know, in some cases it's heaven and hell, in some cases it is reincarnation, in some cases it's karma,
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and every religious tradition has this for the same reason.
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Because it isn't, you know, it isn't a just and fair world, and so how do we make sense of this except by having some account balancing scheme.
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But this makes us, I think, because we believe in a just world, we oftentimes don't pay attention to the more interesting people in the organization.
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In the early 1980s, I visited at Harvard Business School and taught their version of this class, which by the way is not nearly as good,
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called Power and Influence with my dear friend and colleague John Cotter.
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And John would say to the students, and I think he was completely right, he'd say, you know, he'd say,
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you all want to learn from the people who look brilliant and have amazing levels of interpersonal skill and have succeeded.
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He said, the people you really ought to learn from are the people who look to you like they have no skill whatsoever, either interpersonally or in business,
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but have nonetheless have made it to the top.
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They have something else.
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And it would be interesting in some ways to learn what that is and how they are maneuvered.
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His point being that anybody can succeed if you are a genius and fabulous and successful and interpersonally competent.
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But it takes real political skill to succeed when you have none of those attributes.
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And he, by the way, is right.
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And the insight is important.
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To be able to learn from all kinds of people.
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And to be able to accept all kinds of people, which I think we don't, because we see the world is just.
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We become way too judgmental.
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We are willing to make the trade-offs required to acquire power, being liked all the time versus getting things done.
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I think that's, I can still recall being on a dean search committee many years ago, and there was a comment that the preceding dean was a nice person,
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but we weren't going anywhere, and as I pointed out, the nice thing about being dead in the water is that no one could complain about the direction.
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And that as soon as you start the boat, metaphorically speaking, someone will say, regardless of the evidence and the data, this isn't how I think we should be going.
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And so there is this issue of, you know, if you wanna be liked by everybody, don't do anything.
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As soon as you make a decision, some people will like it, and some people won't.
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How we spend our time and focus our attention.
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Strategic versus fun interactions and relationships.
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Are you willing to pay the price of having power?
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And there's an enormous price for having power.
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My dear friend Rudy Crew has been through at least two, maybe three marriages.
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You know, he works all the time.
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Most successful people that I know have to work very, very hard, and that's true whether you're running a nonprofit or a for-profit.
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You look at the people who go into government, and the one thing you can say, you may like their policies or not like their policies, they're all working enormously long and hard hours.
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To be in a position like this, you have to pay a price.
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You have to decide, am I willing to work this hard
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and to interact with people who I need to interact with rather than the people who I perhaps want to interact with.
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You know, so I like to tell people I'm in a job with relatively low interdependence.
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I can have lunch with my friends.
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If you want to have power, you need to figure who you need to have lunch with metaphorically,
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strategically, in order to get things done and build the relationships that will make you successful.
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And I, you know, I would come into class and we'd teach on Monday and Friday and, you know, it became like a joke finally when I would say to the students, I'd say, well, how did you spend your weekend?
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And they would kind of look at me like, you know, what kind of a doofus is this?
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We spent our weekend, you know, partying or skiing or doing whatever they do with their close friends, with their roommates, with their colleagues.
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And I pointed out to them that if you spend all your time with your current close friends, how do you ever make new ones?
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And in fact, there's a lot of research that shows
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that the most useful ties that you will develop are the weak ties.
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Because your friends travel pretty much in the same social circles you travel in, and therefore they can provide you mostly with redundant information.
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if you want non-redundant information, you need to get out of your comfort zone with the people that you normally associate with.
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Thank you all for being here, and thank you so much for inviting me.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't”. This video has 88 sentences and 1442 words to shadow. The speech runs for 8:01. The speaker talks fast, about 180 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| hierarchical adjective | /ˌhaɪəˈɹɑːkɪkəl/ | Pertaining to a hierarchy (a ranking). |
| oftentimes adverb | /ˈɔf.ənˌtaɪmz/ | Frequently; often. |
| hierarchy noun | /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/ | A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks. |
| colleague noun | /ˈkɒliːɡ/ | A fellow member of a profession, staff, academic faculty or other organization; an associate, a workmate. |
| interact verb | /ɪn.təˈɹækt/ | To engage in communication and other shared activities (with someone). |
| interpersonally adverb | In an interpersonal way. | |
| metaphorically adverb | In a metaphorical manner; not literally; by means of metaphor. | |
| redundant adjective | /ɹɪˈdʌn.dənt/ | Superfluous; exceeding what is necessary, no longer needed. |
| competitor noun | /kəmˈpɛt.ɪ.tɚ/ | A person or organization against whom one is competing. |
| enormously adverb | Extremely, greatly: to an enormous degree. | |
| excessively adverb | /ɪkˈsɛsɪvli/ | To an excessive degree. |
| interdependence noun | The condition of being interdependent. | |
| interpersonal adjective | Between two or more people. | |
| judgmental adjective | /ˌd͡ʒʌd͡ʒˈmɛnt(ə)l/ | Of or relating to judgment. |
| precede verb | /pɹɪˈsid/ | To go before, go in front of. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). |
| point out verb | To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body. |
| start off verb | To begin. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be liked · are maneuvered · being liked |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has never made · have succeeded · have made |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who look · people who go · people who I |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 30 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, isn't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- Long words — get the stress right: hierarchical /ˌhaɪəˈɹɑːkɪkəl/, hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, competitor /kəmˈpɛt.ɪ.tɚ/, excessively /ɪkˈsɛsɪvli/, reincarnation /ˌɹiːɪŋkɑː(ɹ)ˈneɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like hierarchical, oftentimes, hierarchy.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.