Last week I ran a session on organisational politics for a group of senior account executives seeking to position themselves as strategic trusted advisors to their clients. I based it on a model of political types from Professor Kim James at Cranfield School of Management.
The model uses two dimensions (one about political skills, the other about how they are deployed) to create four types, one in each quadrant. These are the Wise Owl, the Clever Fox, the Innocent Lamb, and the Clumsy Bull. (NB The original model used a Stupid Ass, but I have found the Clumsy Bull works better in my work.) Just introducing this model gives people a helpful language to explore their attitudes about themselves and others in the political game.
However, when this work really comes alive is when we start to explore what happens when you put people into each quadrant. It turns out it's another example of the "what you see is what you get" effect (see earlier blog post). Even more interesting is that your own stance with others changes depending on how you are seeing them, and that you can also change your stance more consciously if you deliberately use the metaphor (eg deliberately decide to take your stance in the Wise Owl quadrant).
Since engaging in politics is often about managing negative assumptions and an unhelpful mindset, ie managing your emotional limbic brain not your rational neo-cortex, I find the approach of using visual and physical metaphor incredibly powerful in effecting real shifts.
