Be a PAL
It’s very useful for a supervisor to be friendly in addition to being professionally competent. However, unless s/he is a Politically Astute Leader (PAL) as well, both effectiveness and progression will be limited
Political astuteness and Niccolo Machiavelli, the person whose name is most frequently associated with it, have undeservedly poor reputations. Leaders (at least the ones who don’t acquire their positions by genetics or accident) should know that politics and power go with the territory "Whatever else organizations may be , they are political structures This means that organizations operate by distributing authority and setting a stage for the exercise of power" 1 Power is essentially the ability to influence people to do what they wouldn’t otherwise, for the benefit of the power-wielder’s goals A leader who cannot change the direction of people’s behaviour is not much more than a figure at the head of a crowd – pushed in the direction it takes One can be a manager (of sorts), a preacher and even a prophet(ess) without much political 'nous' or mastering the levers of power but, in a leader, such incapacities are an immediate shortcut to impotence if not disaster. Being a PAL is even more important in modern commercial organizations where " …responsibility and authority don’t always coincide….
Getting things done under circumstances where you lack direct line authority requires influence and political skills – a knowledge of organizational dynamics – not just technical skills and knowledge I hope this introduction has mitigated, to some extent, the distaste for political skills that HR professionals profess As practitioners, anyway, their skills are as good as the best! Let us turn then to some key steps to becoming a PAL before proceeding to the strategies a PAL can adopt and, finally, to the self-imposed restraints while doing so. To keep it all in the family, we can call these the MAA who nurtures PALs, the BAAP who emboldens their actions and the BETI who demands they stay within morally acceptable limits.
Mentors, Aptitudes & Associates (MAA)
The apprenticeship to become a PAL has three components. While they are listed in decreasing order of importance, the lack of any one can put paid to any hope of PALhood
Mentoring is as essential to becoming a potent PAL as a mother is to being born In fact, I do not know of a single successful PAL who hasn’t had a powerful and positively predisposed mentor Of course, this is not so obvious when pole-position PALs recount their apprenticeship days and achievements Debt write-offs are not the sole preserve of drought-stricken farmers in election years! A PAL-in-the-making can gain enormously from a mentor. There is no substitute for observing, at close hand, a proven PAL in action. No column, book or course can take the place of watching and questioning a master-artist at work. Even more important, perhaps, is the catapulting career-start the PAL mentor can provide. Once again, I know of no one who breasted the final tape without getting one or more such lap starts from mentors. Lastly, when the PAL apprentice starts making mistakes, as s/he must after being pushed into role-shoes several sizes too large, it is the mentor’s protective umbrella that prevents the budding PAL from getting knifed by jealous competitors or appraisal systems that can chop non-mentored mortals to mince With all of this debt, it is sad that each successfully developed PAL must cut that 'mentilical' chord as soon as s/he has wings or once the mentor’s star is in the decline It is part of the Faustian Triad to which a successful PAL must subscribe and I have elaborated on containing the consequential moral damage to the PALin-grooming in an earlier column Apart from mentor distancing, the aforementioned column deals with two other aptitudes a PAL must hone: the toughness to retaliate against injuries and visible confidence that verges on selfdeception. The nuances of both have been treated at sufficient length in that column so as not to bear repetition here. Let me touch on two other requirements for becoming a PAL. Emotional Intelligence is an acquirable and irreplaceable part of a PAL’s toolkit. Its limitations have been covered in a previous column 4 and there are plenty of how-to books and courses for aiding its acquisition. Lastly, we have ambition, which is a necessary energysource for all the other aptitudes. There are three Ds that can help in allaying the panic that grips people when they see naked ambition. Dissimulation is the first and easiest of these. Diversion of the ambitious impulse to some larger corporate purpose or social cause is another way to reduce the distaste personal goal-focus causes. A third D is to Distribute the action and fruits arising from ambition among several others, so that it is not seen to be concentrated on a single individual and occasion too much Brutus-ish worry or Cassius-ish envy The last part of PAL preparation is the identification and close binding of allies early on in one’s career (long before they can become threats) Each of these associates need not be a budding power player Several could just be purveyors of vital information, gateways to the ears of the powerful or trusted mediators with other coalitions Despite being lower in the PALling order, they are no less vital to ensuring the ascendance of PALs, while their contentment with lower spoil-share makes it possible to carry them long after the narrowing power pyramid causes other PAL associates to drop away or become threats themselves. Bold Attacks, Alliances & Perfidy (BAAP)
After the arduous apprenticeship necessary to become a PAL, it would be pointless to remain passive without ever seeing action. Moreover, it’s not as if one can opt out of the political hurly burly once one is in the upper echelons of the corporate world…
