Definition
Power and attention refers to the well-documented relationship between social power — having control over others' outcomes — and the systematic narrowing and self-centering of attention: people in positions of power attend less accurately to others' emotions, are worse at perspective-taking, and are more prone to interrupting and dominating conversations.
In Focus, Goleman draws on this research to make a pointed argument about leadership: the very structures that elevate leaders tend to degrade the attentional capacities — social sensitivity, empathic concern, other-focus — that make leadership effective. The implication is that maintaining these capacities under power requires deliberate counter-measures, not just good intentions.
Why it matters
How it works
The attention-resource account
One mechanism is straightforward resource allocation: people with lower social power must monitor high-power others carefully to predict their behaviour, avoid sanctions, and identify opportunities. This necessity sharpens social attention. Conversely, people with high power are less dependent on specific others and have less reason to invest cognitive resources in monitoring them. Over time, the neural circuits for social perception may literally become less exercised.
Keltner's evolutionary framing is complementary: across species, dominant individuals pay less attention to subordinates, and subordinates pay close attention to dominants. This is a functional asymmetry that serves adaptive purposes in stable hierarchies but creates problems in organisations where leadership effectiveness requires accurate understanding of subordinates.
Mimicry suppression
A more specific mechanism involves automatic motor mimicry — the unconscious tendency to mirror the facial expressions and body posture of people we interact with. This mirroring is a core channel of emotional resonance: feeling what another person feels is mediated partly by literally mirroring their physical state. Research by Galinsky and colleagues found that power reduces mimicry, and that reduced mimicry reduces empathic accuracy. Leaders who no longer automatically mirror their teams are receiving less real-time emotional information.
The interruption pattern
Conversationally, power asymmetry appears most clearly in interruption patterns. High-power individuals interrupt more, are interrupted less, and maintain longer conversational turns. This is not merely about social norms; it reflects an attentional dynamic in which the high-power person's internal agenda takes precedence over incoming social information. The result is a reduced flow of authentic feedback from subordinates — who learn quickly to tell powerful people what they want to hear.
Counter-measures
Goleman argues that leaders who understand this dynamic can actively compensate: deliberately seeking out dissenting feedback, creating structured channels for upward information (anonymous surveys, skip-level meetings), practising mindful attention to others' facial and vocal cues, and cultivating humility as a sustained cognitive practice rather than a moment of reflection. Leaders who preserve social sensitivity under power are, by the research, more effective — not just more ethical.