In psychology, to display affect is to express one's inner feelings or emotion. But just as humans can lie with words, they can also intentionally display false affect. When they do, the affect display is incongruent. Masters of incongruent affect can gain advantages in the workplace by adopting an affect consistent with organizational power beyond their current status. These power pretenders can gain advantages because people who are relatively unfamiliar with the power affect are less able to distinguish the incongruent power affect from the congruent. In this state of confusion, people confer on power pretenders more deference than is their due, and thus mastery of the incongruent power affect begets power.
To avoid confusing the incongruent power affect with the real thing, begin by learning to recognize how the powerful express their power.
- Demeanor
- Generally, the powerful move slowly. They carry little with them — no cases, few devices, sometimes not even a pad. They stand or sit erect but relaxed. They behave like professional poker players when the stakes are high, exhibiting extraordinary personal control.
- All this can change in an instant. When it changes, it changes in a controlled manner, to some new state of control.
- Facial expressions
- On cursory examination, the powerful seem to be expressionless, but they often match the iconic expressions of power that we see in film and in many politicians, especially post-election. Think of political leaders addressing their nations on television, or of actors who play those roles. They're calm and alert, focused and engaged, but not inordinately so.
- To detect the facial expressions of power, begin by recognizing your own responses to them. When you next notice that in yourself, carefully observe the person who elicited that response.
- Gaze and glares
- Acknowledgment of others through engaged but nonthreatening eye contact is the norm in most societies, though the definitions of "engaged" and "nonthreatening" do vary somewhat. The effects and likely intent of an eye engagement depend on the culturally neutral forms available. It's likely that they're similar to your own, because most of us spend our lives in our cultures of origin, or cultures closely related.
- Eye contact Generally, the powerful move slowly.
They carry little with them — no cases,
no devices, sometimes not even a pad.outside the neutral band — either too little or too much — can be intimidating. Someone who refuses to look at you while engaging others with pleasant directness could be trying to isolate you. Someone who engages in overly aggressive, overly direct or even threatening glares might be doing the same.
Expressing power is usually a choice. Why would anyone do that? Almost certainly, it will not lead to an outcome best for all concerned. Outcomes biased in favor of the powerful are less likely to advance the group than are outcomes arrived at collaboratively. Almost certainly, expressions of power are intended to benefit those doing the expressing. When next you notice an expression of power, consider whether the power is real, or merely an expression. Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
- Empire Building
- Empire builders create bases of power within the larger organization. Typically, they use these domains
to advance personal or provincial agendas. What are the characteristics of empires? How can we navigate
through or around them?
- Pariah Professions: II
- In some organizations entire professions are regarded as pariahs — outsiders. They're expected
to perform functions that the organization does need, but their relationships with others in the organization
are strained at best. When pariahdom is tolerated, organizational performance suffers.
- Backstabbing
- Much of what we call backstabbing is actually just straightforward attack — nasty, unethical,
even evil, but not backstabbing. What is backstabbing?
- The Discontinuity Effect: What and Why
- Counterproductive competition is more likely in group-group interactions than in one-to-one or one-to-group
interactions. Why does counterproductive competition happen?
- Clouted Thinking
- When we say that people have "clout" we mean that they have more organizational power or social
influence than most others do. But when people with clout try to use it in realms beyond those in which
they've earned it, trouble looms.
See also Workplace Politics and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
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- When task-oriented work groups address complex tasks, they might form subgroups to address subtasks. The structure of the subgroups and the order in which they form depend on the structure of the group's task and the sequencing of the subtasks. Available here and by RSS on December 18.
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