Soft Power

Read time 3 minutes.

Implementation time: everyday, ongoing.

ROI: Job Security

Tip#1 Do not make your employees or boss angry with your new found insights.

Be very aware of the robustness your power and influence “Invisible Balance Sheet.” Zealotry is resented and punished in organizations. Tip #2: Be wary of leadership & management training that is “soft.”

Ken Blanchard tells a story about why managers trained in the “soft skills” often get fired. Basically, it was because they acted in an imprudent way. Just out of the “warm & fuzzy” training program they foisted their nice-feeling skills on employees. People resented and dismissed them as being irrelevant. The newly trained managers did not understand the cultural power and influence dynamics.

Employees and boss reacted:
“What the heck are you doing, what happened to you?” The result: suspicion. “Hey this is not part of our culture. Have you changed the rules? I don’t like this “warm, fuzzy” stuff!” Result: Gossip and a loss of power and influence by the manager. Most often the manager cannot hold the “soft” behaviours in “tough” situations so they quickly resort back to their old “cold & prickly” behaviours. Result: Resentment that people have been used as guinea pigs in a bad experiment. The “soft” trained managers feel betrayed by the training and develop a resentful cynicism about the “warm & fuzzy.” Result: Cynicism about training in general. Despair at their lack of ability to work more effectively with people. Fear at their all-too-obvious loss of power & influence. Tip #3. Engage Your Boss — Don’t Alienate Her/Him

Since most companies are run on fear-based management, if a manager attempts to use her/his “”soft” approach, the people who are generating fear-based behaviours will drive the manager out of the organisation.

Why? First because in a fear-based culture, “soft” is seen as weak and the weak will not inherit the power.

So what do you do?

Tip #4. Do not attend seminars that are mostly or solely “soft-based.”

Make sure you check to make sure that any seminar is at least 50% hard on issues while teaching people how to be “soft” on people. The kind of “soft” that teaches people how to increase power & influence – the Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines way.

Tip #5. Make sure the leadership/management seminar deals with and respects the role of position, power and influence in a company.

Tip #6. Never attend a seminar as the only person from your division or unit. Make sure you have a colleague to work with post-seminar. Better yet go with 3 or more. The company is wasting your time and its money sending solo’s.

Finally – and this is the most important.

Tip #7. Have a discussion with your boss before the seminar about her/his objectives for you.
How does this fit in with your professional development plan. Get specific. Make an agreement that you will tweet your learning’s to your boss regularly during the seminar. Be strategic in what you tweet. That you will agree, with your boss’ sanctioning, to share your learning’s within 7 days upon returning to work (this is why its useful to go in pairs, so you can partner on the presentation); and That you and your boss develop an agreement to meet once a week to explore what you learned and how you are using it in the workplace. All of the above 7 tips are designed to increase your power and influence in your workplace. These actions will have a tendency to reduce, somewhat, the fear-based culture, at least in your business unit.

If your boss will not agree to talk about and/or participate in the above 7 tips, you will be putting yourself in jeopardy.

By: Dr. Jim Sellner Ph.D.