
Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, speaking in the East Room of the White House in 2010. The slow pace of Mr. Obama's speaking, whether making casual remarks or more formal pronouncements, enables him to take the care required of someone whose every word is parsed by thousands of pundits. But more important, it leaves him a reserve to escalate his pace and intensity when he comes to important points in his speeches. Record one of them and pay attention to tempo when you listen to it. Photo by Bill Ingalls courtesy U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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
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Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
Devious Political Tactics: Divide and Conquer, Part II
- While most leaders try to achieve organizational unity, some do use divisive tactics to maintain control,
or to elevate performance by fostering competition. Here's Part II of a series exploring the risks of
these tactics.
Ten Tactics for Tough Times: I
- When you find yourself in a tough spot politically, what can you do? Most of us obsess about the situation
for a while, and then if we still have time to act, we do what seems best. Here's Part I of a set of
approaches that can organize your thinking and shorten the obsessing.
Exploiting Functional Fixedness: I
- Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that creates difficulty in seeing novel uses of things that
have familiar uses. Some devious moves in workplace politics exploit functional fixedness.
Capability Inversions and Workplace Abuse
- A capability inversion occurs when the person in charge of an effort is far less knowledgeable about
the work than are the people doing that work. In some capability inversions, abusive behavior by the
unit's leader might be misinterpreted as bullying.
Commenting on the Work of Others
- Commenting on the work of others risks damaging relationships. It can make future collaboration more
difficult. To be safe when commenting about others' work, know the basic principles that distinguish
appropriate and inappropriate comments.
See also Workplace Politics and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming October 4: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I
- Conversational narcissism is a set of behaviors that participants use to focus the exchange on their own self-interest rather than the shared objective. This post emphasizes the role of these behaviors in advancing a narcissist's sense of self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 4.
And on October 11: Self-Importance and Conversational Narcissism at Work: II
- Self-importance is one of four major themes of conversational narcissism. Knowing how to recognize the patterns of conversational narcissism is a fundamental skill needed for controlling it. Here are eight examples that emphasize self-importance. Available here and by RSS on October 11.
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