Owl, Fox, Donkey Or Sheep: Political Skills

Management Education and Development. Vol. 18. Pt. 1. 1987. pp. 3-19

Owl, Fox, Donkey or Sheep: Political Skills for Managers

SIMON BADDELEY AND KIM JAMES - Institute of Local Government Studies,

University of Birmingham

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a model the authors and their colleagues have been using to develop political skills as an increasingly important element of management education. We suggest why the teaching of political skills is still approached with some timidity, even in the field of local government where there are increasing demands for officers to be 'politically sensitive’. We describe a model containing two dimensions relating, first, to the skills of 'reading' the politics of an organisation and, second, to the skills an individual is 'carrying' into situations which may predispose them to act with integrity or play psychological games. The two dimensions are tightly integrated but allow us to separate out four types of behaviour - innocent, inept, clever and wise which an individual may adopt in different situations. That these are behaviours and not fixed traits is a critical distinction, helping us to develop wise behaviour in managers by concentrating in our training on the way the dimensions of 'carrying' and 'reading' are combined.

Introduction

Political skill is the elusive and increasingly demanded ingredient of success and survival in organisational life. This paper attempts to describe political skills and our approach to teaching them. The animals in our title are intended to provide a vivid visual reminder of the context and content of the four behavioural styles we shall be presenting. Hayes (1984) describes politically competent managers as people 'who expect to experience resistance to their attempts to get things done, but nevertheless keep on taking initiatives, carefully selected initiatives, in ways that eventually tend to produce the results they desire'. By contrast politically incompetent managers 'behave like bulls in a china shop, upsetting others and creating unnecessary resistance to their proposals'. We would add to Hayes' definition of political competence Lee and Piper's (1986) view that this is a skill exercised in the context of 'political pluralism'. From this perspective organisations are seen as being composed of individuals and groups who pursue their own goals with the power at their command using strategies which they perceive as appropriate. Since different goals are often incompatible, organisational conflict is seen as inherent and neither 'good' nor 'bad'.

Examples of political incompetence include the manager with a reputation for dynamism, brought into a large and unwieldy organisation to get it back on the rails, who soon resigns with the complaint that he or she is not being allowed to manage; or the manager who blithely and enthusiastically pursues a pet project without recognising the growing strength of a coalition of opposition; or the manager who bluffs a resignation threat and finds it unexpectedly accepted. Politically incompetent managers such as these may find that while they enter jobs fired with enthusiasm they have a propensity to leave them the same way.

‘Politics' has become an enticing frontier for management education. The literature increasingly states its importance. For example: "….growing attention has recently been directed to organisational politics - tactics for seizing, holding and using power…." (Baron, 1983). 'The kind of manager that prospered in the '60s and '70s will not necessarily do so well now. ….Political and survival skills are likely to become increasingly prized amongst managers. If Management Development is to maintain its place as a viable management activity it must adjust to the changing trends' (Molander, 1986). But despite growing reminders of the need to be aware of politics there is a scarcity of guidance on the actual skills involved. Unless management educators address the issue of political skill, 'political incompetence', as a description of failure, may become a catch-all like 'pilot error' - a phrase which locates the fault with someone who is often no longer around and gives the semblance of understanding to a mystery.

Problems of Developing Political Skill

Why is political skill rarely a subject of training courses? We think it is because there are points of view which get in the way of developing models of the skills that are needed:

- The political arena of organisational life reflects a breakdown of managerial rationality. Thus Mintzberg (1983) writes: ' ...politics refers to individual or group behaviour that is informal, ostensibly parochial, typically divisive, and above all, in the technical sense, illegitimate - sanctioned neither by formal authority, accepted ideology, nor certified expertise (though it may exploit any one of these)’. Management in these terms dislikes whim but abhors political whim.

-  It is inept to discuss how one uses power: 'Those who know don’t talk, those who talk don't know' as Stokeley Carmichael said in the '60s.

-  'You either have political skills or you haven't'. You can’t train for 'nous'; it is not a technique.

-  Political skills are inferior to interpersonal skills when one is trying to build a team - often a vital objective of management training. Thus David Casey (1985) argues that: 'It requires a huge effort to abandon politics, say what you mean, express feelings openly, engage in open warfare, trust your colleagues, speak your mind. ...’

-  'Don't talk politics or religion at table'. It threatens conviviality.

-  Engaging in politics, particularly if you have tied your credibility to professional expertise, may be morally compromising. Thus Robert Lee and Peter Lawrence (1985) conclude their book on the exercise of politics in organisational life with the sentence 'We hope you will find the political insights gained in this text of use in your battles with those of lesser honour'.

-  Politics may involve individual self-interest at the expense of the organisation. Thus, even Hayes (1984), who argues for political competence in managers suggests 'managers can be too political in the sense that they may pursue their self-interest without paying any attention to the interests of others or to the survival and growth of the organisation'.

-  There is an uneasy relationship between politics and psychology; one person's neurosis is another person's political oppression. For example, women's behaviour labelled neurotic by men, can also be viewed as individual expression of an invidiously powerless position in society.

All of these beliefs or myths have an element of reality and truth but need not inhibit the development of political skill. A model can be described which takes account of these objections and which helps managers to survive politically. But being interested in political skills solely as a means of survival is not enough. Being politically skilled means being able to manage the requisite variety of your organisation. It means you can make the most of the multiplicity of experiences, abilities and perceptions of the people you work with. Politics is not something to which you resort when management fails. It is, on the contrary, at the very heart of management.

Perhaps one of the greatest inhibitors, though, is the idea that the political skill we are referring to is the same as the behaviour of Politicians. It is not. Some Politicians are politically skilled. Some are not. The same goes for managers. We are not looking for a model of some ideal politician but for a model of political skill.

Local Government as an Arena for political skills

Local Government, where we do much of our work, provides a fascinating area for examining this phenomenon. Because it has both real Politicians and professional managers, so managers have to operate within an overtly political environment and also manage the usual organisational politics. This is made even clearer by the current polarisation of local government politics which has precipitated a professional crisis for many local government managers. They had become accustomed to clear cut rules about the respective roles of officers and elected members. The rational, professional, bureaucratic elements of local government which are an important source of its reliability and strength, have encouraged the local government officer to remain innocent of the need to become 'street-wise' about what is afoot. But as Sutherland (1986) has observed: 'Staff employed within the system are squeezed between economic austerity and political hyperactivity, and as a result more and more interest is being shown in the skills needed to marry the political process to service delivery on the ground'. This distinction between being a Politician and being a politically skilled manager is exemplified in the way Councillors have described what they want of a politically sensitive officer. In this grey area the bemused manager is likely to be told that they should be a number of things they might not have thought their contract required them to be.

Thus, Lady Porter, the Leader of Westminster City Council:

‘A politically sensitive officer is somebody who has breadth of vision…. who's interested in what goes on…. who is broad in every sense, so that they are able to see that when they give a response, or they act in a certain way in response to what the members ask for, they should not be one-dimensional: they should realise "why are they asking me this? ….what a daft thing to ask! ….. ah, no, of course it isn't, I realise that such-and-such is going on … that concerns them”.’

Or Councillor Brian Green, Leader of St. Helens Council:

'You can sense when an officer is taking instructions from you and going away and working quite hard at doing exactly what you want him to do. The reason you can tell the difference between an officer who does that and one who is politically sensitive, not necessarily sympathetic, is someone who'll go away and do what the members request of him…. but equally think about what he is preparing and if any other options are spotted along the way will actually come back and raise the question with members. You can very soon sense when an officer is politically sensitive and also in fact, when he is politically sympathetic, but sympathy shouldn't necessarily be confused with support.’

That the need for a politically sensitive manager is not confined to local government is encapsulated by Michael Spungin, a leading Nottinghamshire Councillor who describes the politically sensitive officer as:

'Someone who would have risen to the top in almost any business he came to choose because he has got the intelligence to recognise the more delicate touches and also someone who is prepared to be - I won't say "rubberlike" - but certainly sufficiently resilient to bend with whatever political climate he's faced with'.

These statements1 provide clues, but are certainly not definitions of the skill we want to describe. They do not give clear guidance on what the manager is supposed to do. Yet, we may credit the overt Politics of local government for articulating, even to this extent, the concept of the political manager. In many businesses even these clues are absent. The expectations described by these councillors are often left unspoken.

1.These views were expressed during interviews by Simon Baddeley and Chris Game at the University's TV and Film Unit and in the case of Lady Porter in the Westminster Press Studio.Developing a Model of Political skill

It is difficult to arrive at a model of competence in this area because of some basic conventions of management education; in particular the distinction made between cognitive and experiential learning. Skills teaching in management education uses experiential models and tends to treat cognition as an addendum. For example, the management of potential conflict would be taught differently by a psychologist and a political scientist. The psychologist tends to operate on the basis that human differences can be resolved by resort to a repertoire of interpersonal skills - the ability to listen, to be assertive, to manage feelings, to intervene appropriately while the political scientist might rely on an analysis which deals with relative access by the parties concerned to resources, to knowledge, wealth or class background, or, with government policies.

Given a conflict between a member of clerical staff and director in which the former says he or she is unable to negotiate properly over a difference of approach with the director, the political scientist may be addressing their relative position powers while the psychologist may be working on the director's listening skills and the clerical officer's assertive skills. Both approaches are equally valid, but the separation of academic disciplines tends to be carried over into course design. This leaves the choice of approach or the means of combining them entirely to the student.

The obligation resting on management educators in teaching 'political skills' is to present a useful way of integrating cognitive and experiential learning. This is less a theoretical problem about explaining the real world than a problem of how management teachers have tended to chunk the real world to aid learning. Analysis can be an escape from feeling. But conversely, preoccupation with feeling can be an obstacle to political awareness.

The class of skills we need to develop must enable managers to address the following sorts of questions:

·  How do I deal with a manager from another department who will lose in a budget battle if I get what I want?

·  At what point in a meeting do I voice objection to a senior manager’s proposal? Is it stupid to do so?