3 ms·
Yes, and this all cuts both ways. > There’s a difference between what should be and what is. Yes. For example, ideally less-powerful people should have great
by a_puppy 4y ago
Yes, and this all cuts both ways.
> There’s a difference between what should be and what is.
Yes. For example, ideally less-powerful people should have great interpersonal skills and would always phrase their insights in exactly the way that more-powerful people prefer to hear them. But in reality, they don't always have that level of interpersonal skills. So in order for more-powerful people to hear the important information, they need to be open to hearing it in ways that aren't exactly how they'd prefer to hear it.
> Taking your ball and going home isn’t necessarily the right path.
Yes. For example, if a manager is offended by how one of their employees raised a disagreement, criticizing that employee isn't necessarily be the right path. A better path might be for the manager to swallow their ego and listen to the concerns that are being raised.
> People are people and you need to play to their needs.
Yes. For example, less-powerful people are people, and more-powerful people need to play to their needs in order for the team to operate in the most healthy way.
To put it a different way: In healthy organizations, people with more power are expected to have better interpersonal skills, and to work well with less-powerful people who have merely average interpersonal skills. But in some organizations, powerful people are egotistic and less-powerful people are expected to work around their egos. These organizations don't function as well; average employees often don't have the special interpersonal skills necessary to work around a boss's ego, and so e.g. good ideas get lost because the boss doesn't want to hear them. If you're unfortunate enough to be an employee in one of those organizations, then the skills in this article are certainly valuable to know. But if you're a person with the power to influence the culture of an organization, you should avoid creating that kind of culture.
- usgroup 4y agoyou’re assuming that a person in power has an objective that somehow compliments them acting in an accommodating way: plenty simply do not.
- roenxi 4y ago> To put it a different way: In healthy organizations, people with more power are expected to have better interpersonal skills, and to work well with less-powerful people who have merely average interpersonal skills. On average. No reason that everyone can't have great interpersonal skills though - they're really useful in a professional and personal context. The techniques to influence someone from a position of weakness are exactly the ones for personal relationships too because they are gentle and work well over the long term. That being said, I think this HBR article is questionable advice. This is a random list of tactics that won't work without some sort of framework to link them strategically. The important thing is relation management, not how one disagreement plays out.
- jollybean 4y agoFor every 'issue raised' people in power have 5x of that to deal with one layer up, 25x two layers up and 100x 3 layers up. It's a steep pyramid and one of the hardest things for people to do is put their concerns in context. People tend to both under and overestimate the proportionality of their issue. People in power may be better communicators but they are generally much more busy having to contend with this stuff.