The Presidential Appointee's Handbook by G. Edward DeSeve

Author:G. Edward DeSeve
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Self-Awareness

Another key ingredient of leadership of oneself is the ability to win others over to your ideas and initiatives.8 This has been referred to as the art of woo. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa, the main prophets of wooing, define it as follows: “So what is Woo? It is relationship-based persuasion, a strategic process for getting people’s attention, pitching your ideas, and obtaining approval for your plans and projects. It is in short one of the most important skills in the repertoire of an entrepreneur, employee, or professional manager whose work requires them to rely on influence and persuasion rather than coercion and force.”9

Shell and Moussa present five styles of woo across two dimensions. The dimensions are volume and orientation. Next time you are in a meeting with a group of peers, listen to the volume of each person’s presentation. Are they loud and strident or quiet and contained? Or are they somewhere in between? Which approach seems to be working? Do individuals seem to be able to modulate their tone in response to the attitudes of those they are seeking to influence? In your own interactions what is your volume and do you adjust it to meet the situation? Maybe consciously adjusting your own volume, up or down, could help you become more effective.

On the second dimension, are you primarily self-oriented or otheroriented? In some cases, self-orientation seems most appropriate. Secretary of State Alexander Haig certainly felt that way when he famously announced “I am in control here” after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately for Haig, his assertion was overly self-oriented, and his understanding of the Constitutional line of succession was erroneous. Other-oriented individuals will seek the audience’s viewpoint and mold their presentations to the interests of the group they are addressing. But before we too quickly conclude that one technique is better than another, we should consider that both have downsides. In his book The Lonely Crowd David Riesman suggests that overreliance on other-directed social orientation could lead to dysfunctional conformity.10 The key skill is to find a balance that is true to your inner principles while fine-tuning your argument to the audience.

The five styles of wooing are similar to the typology created by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and refined by the psychological theorist Isabel Briggs. According to Jung’s and Briggs’s typology, all people can be classified using the following four paired sets of criteria: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. From these the Myers–Briggs type indicator was developed.11

  Extroversion/introversion defines a person’s source and direction of energy. The extrovert’s source and direction are mainly in the external world. The introvert’s source and direction are mainly in the internal world.

  Sensing/intuition defines a person’s method of perceiving information. Sensing means that a person believes mainly information he or she receives directly from the external world. Intuition means that a person believes mainly information he or she receives from the internal or imaginative world.

  Thinking/feeling defines how a person processes information. Thinking means that a person makes a decision mainly through logic.

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