The Political Game
Politics is much harder than business. –Warren Buffett
Politics is how we play the game of life
At its most basic, politics is how we human beings play the game of life. We express what we want and others express what they want. Together we negotiate what we are willing to do to get what we want. We first learn to negotiate during childhood. Few of us think of crying, shouting, or pouting as political tactics or our family as a political form. Political tactics may not seem like politics when children use them, because they are, well, childish. A temper tantrum is a childish tactic. However, a child who finds such tactics effective may retain them as part of the adult political repertoire.
Whenever persons interact, politics occurs.
The tactics children use to get what they want become more complex and socially sophisticated as their spheres of influence and action grow, but individual adaptations differ. If the child becomes particularly adept at influencing adults and peers, we may find him or her taking leadership roles in school groups, sports, or social activism. A successful leader hones political tactics the same way a child hones skill at basketball or soccer, by doing more of what succeeds and less of what fails, getting ever better at the game.
Every influential politician came to power by practicing tactics successful in their culture. Just as some children enjoy basketball and become especially adept at ball handling or enjoy singing and master music, a given child may enjoy leading or influencing others. Parents, depending on their own needs and background, may have ambivalent feelings about their budding politicians’ willfulness, stubbornness, occasional deceitfulness, self-centeredness, and so forth. It takes patience and insight to help a young leader practice political skills of tolerance, decisiveness, inclusiveness, empathy, and foresight while constraining or extinguishing negative behaviors. Poltical skills can improve with study and planning. Read more to learn to be more efficient and effective at politics, with integrity and honor.
Politics involves mature coping skills
Those who cannot manage themselves cannot do positive politics. Good leaders, i.e., good politicians, have learned to keep their head when chaos breaks out. In addition to mature coping skills, positive politics requires that a person value leadership and negotiation as tools for achievement. Unfortunately, over the years many Americans have come to see even the word “politics” as sordid. In the American Middle West where we grew up, most spoke of politicians as liars and cheats—with the occsional exception for any politician they knew personally. Perhaps this attitude prevails in your neighborhood or your family as well. Seeing all politics as negative politics, inclines us to ambivalence at best and, at worst, a revulsion against anything that smacks of political maneuvering or bargaining.
Techies, who value intelligence, efficiency, and “facts,” often suffer political revulsion and, as a result, may be exceedingly poor politicians. Such persons, though clever, honest, and diligent, often lose round after round of negotiation when, in their minds, they “speak only the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” It seldom occurs to them that their “truth” may not be “the truth” for others. They may perceive the situation as “fact sharing” rather than as negotiation and be perplexed why “the facts” don’t “speak for themselves.”
Yet some Americans from the Middle West -- as well as the South, the East, and the West -- seem to be born diplomats. Ken’s coffee cup defines a diplomat as “Someone who can tell you to go to Hell and make you look forward to the trip.” Some of these political winners may seem to inherit their skill, but all have learned.
You can learn Politics
Between the truth-telling techie and the diplomat are all the rest of us who sometimes do well and sometimes not so well when we play the political game. Science fiction author Robert Heinlein once wrote, “Politics is the only sport for grownups.” Like any other sport, we can learn politics. Few of us will ever play politics with the proficiency of a President or golf like a PGA Champion, but with study and practice, we can improve our game. More importantly, we should all try to improve our game because positive politics played well makes life more enjoyable and safer for those around us as well as for ourselves.We should study politics in all its forms because politics affects our lives every day. We will always have the give and take, always the interplay with others. When the process turns nasty, we may give it a bad name such as weaponization, manipulation, fear-mongering, or war. When the process goes well, we give it a good name such as coordination, charity, or peace. Whether nasty or good, it is politics.
Fundamental to learning Positive Politics is learning our definition of certain common terms. Consider us as teaching Political Science 101, complete with terms, such as politics and power, that have special meaning, meaning that may differ from what you expect. Easily the most important definitions on which we base our discussion are terms we define in the Principles for Positive Politics.
You cannot escape politics
We have to use power to achieve goals. Since we cannot avoid the game, we will be more satisfied when we play politics well. Positive approaches bring greater results. While we believe that politics, even office politics, can and should be positive, Lawrence B. Serven, author of The End of Office Politics As Usual, hinges admirable outcomes – the best possible business decision” on getting rid of politics altogether. Serven asks his reader to diminish political behavior and instead focus everyone on doing the right thing, on making the right decisions for the organization as a whole. The problem is that politics is how we to get others to focus on what we think is important and to define what is right. Only through political interaction can leader and led come to share the objectives Serven says will remove politics. Without doubt, the greater the agreement on objectives, the easier group decision making will be. But power calculations will always permeate goal setting, and the process continues while making daily choices regarding how to pursue group objectives.
In contrast to Serven’s “flee politics” approach, Robert Greene, in his book titled The 48 Laws of Power, promotes the position that success requires aggressive, even abrasive, participation in office politics. Success requires that one control others and that one achieves control through ruthless, deceptive, and amoral action. Among the Laws that Greene proposes are #3 Conceal your intentions.... #15 Crush your enemy totally.... #11 Learn to keep people dependent on you. Although Greene describes instances where powerful people have used these tactics to their advantage, we contend that such negative control strategies sow the seeds of failure, whether as future subversion or revolution. In any organization, positive politics promise greater, healthier efficiency and effectiveness.
Believers and Doubters
To accept that politics is the name of the game of human interaction will better equip us to select the strategy and tactics to cope with challenges. The positive perspective this site offers will speak to two fundamental outlooks on politics: idealist and realist, or what Ken calls harmonist and contentionist. The realist/contentionist may seriously doubt that politics can be positive. For a political scientist (not a philosopher) the realist-contentionist speaks with the moral authority of a strict parent figure seeing the threat of coercion infesting every situation. The realist/contentionist might say, "While in the short run some people will get hurt, in the long run when a strict standard of behavior is set and adhered to, the nation as a whole will be better off." Security, duty, and order are critical concepts for a realist. Fear hems in hope. The idealist/harmonist, on the other hand, says that harmony, empathy, and nurturance are primary. Hope conquers fear. Following the nurturing parent model, the idealist believes that children obey out of respect for a loving parent, not from fear of punishment. Idealists concentrate on education, institutions that help cooperation, and setting a good example. But trusting others does not guarantee that others merit that trust.
In the US, the traditional Republican party speaks more to the realist and the Democratic party more to the idealist. However, each of us is an individual, with individual predispositions with respect to politics. Increasing numbers consider themselves Independent. Both realists and idealists may try to renounce all politics. Both realists and idealists can see that many issues may arise from the system and not from perverse individuals. Both realists and idealists get frustrated and want to pound sense into someone. The same person may struggle with both realist and idealist notions, unsure whether a rough situation is a crisis or an opportunity. We hope to help the idealist and the realist understand themselves and each other and learn to build success together. We champion neither and both the harmonist and contentionist. We champion positive politics rather than negative politics. We offer ideas from the Machiavelli of The Republic rather than the Machiavelli of The Prince.
Negative politics may produce short-term advantage for individuals but will leave the community worse off. It rewards, yes, but at the expense of greater advantage, longer term. As Henry Ford understood, a worker producing a good he cannot afford or is otherwise unwilling to buy will not contribute maximum benefit for the enterprise, including longer-term benefit for the few. The psychology of fear sets one up for a self-fulfilling prophecy: treating someone as a threat tends to make them a threat. Cooperation and productivity decline; everyone loses.
While realists may be more prone to espouse negative politics than idealists, idealists seem prone to their own set of ineffective tactics. Idealists often demonstrate and pontificate without thoroughly understanding the “reality” that makes positive politics actually work. Running on half-baked notions of goodness without strategic thinking can leave the idealist vulnerable, handicapped in both achieving goals and in remaining positive. A special temptation for idealists is to hold that those playing negative politics are, shudder, “evil.” Acting from this outlook will undercut positive politics and become its own self-fulfilling and self-denying prophecy. Believing that all persons should be “nice” does not make them so; more importantly, their disagreeing with you does not mean that you cannot work with them. Through positive politics you can learn to understand and bridge disagreements to be more successful.