text: wat makes some people more influential in society than others? why?   i know a number of these people, and let me tell you: it's because they work hard at being influential; they don't work hard at working hard.  look around you, for example at the place where you work. your various bosses and managers: they are charming and "nice", but do they every actually do anything for anybody? i'm not talking about showing up with a box of donuts, or making one call, i'm talking about putting down what they are doing and spending some time working the phone to solve a problem for you? no, they don't.  in a meeting with you, do they spend time to teach you anything that they know? or, do they say to you, "very interesting what you've come up with, tell me more" and after an hour, you've done all the talking, you now have more action items, and now they know what you know, and you have done all the work.  other people just "like" them, and they take advantage of it.  there was an interesting article in the newspaper a few months back, about the tendency of (and these are official psychological disorders) narcissists and antisocials (formerly called psychopaths or sociopaths) to rise to the top of organizations. figuring out which one your ceo is is important. neither one of them cares about you, at all, they don't have that part of the brain, except the antisocial actually enjoys your suffering and will torture you.  i was watching the apprentice (yeah, i know, for shame) and i heard trump say how important loyalty is in business. and i got to thinking, who has trump ever been loyal to, in some way that put him out? i mean really, what he meant was, "loyalty to trump is very important in his business"