Power and its potential to corrupt those who hold it remains a topic of considerable debate. Leaders, by definition, must have power, but that same power may impede their ability to lead in a way that best serves their followers, the organization, and society. Typically, this tension is studied from the perspective of the leaders' power and its impact on behavior. We take a different approach and look at the influence of followers, their behaviors, and how those might shape leaders’ beliefs about power and subsequent behaviors. We theorize that followers who flatter leaders and conform to their opinions (yes-people), even though lower in formal power, shape leaders’ construal of power and subsequent self-interested behavior. We experimentally test the full causal chain to show that followers’ opinion conformity and flattery, labelled as ingratiation (Park, Westphal, & Stern, 2011), cause an increase in leaders’ construal of power as opportunity and a decrease in their construal of power as responsibility, which leads to more self-interested behaviors and intentions (Study 1A to Study 1C). To increase the external validity of our findings, we conducted a recall experiment (Study 2) and a field survey conducted in India (Study 3).
