Playing Powerfully is an approach to being powerful that places responsibility before dominance, maturity before entitlement. It's a book about how to use power better by thinking less about yourself and focusing on the bigger picture. If you're like me or the people I work with, I think you'll find that this approach to social life can change everything: not only your comfort with power, the quality of your relationships, and your success and influence in all kinds of roles, but also the way the groups you're part of function. When individuals stay focused on collective outcomes and on raising each other's performance, it creates psychological safety, fosters dexterity and resilience, and reduces status and power contests so that energy can be directed toward group goals. While this may be an exaggeration, I believe that more people playing powerfully can benefit society as a whole. By learning how to use power better and more broadly, we'll be better equipped to prevent the abuse of power that can make all kinds of social institutions toxic. Most books about power are about winning battles with others. But this book is about winning battles with ourselves.