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Enjoying Your Work Richard Brislin |
An awareness of
power tactics can be
helpful to employeesThe president of a brokerage firm, Janet Moore, established a policy of inviting one midlevel employee to each monthly meeting of the company's vice presidents. For the next meeting, Kathy Tanabe was invited, and Janet asked her to talk to colleagues about issues that they would like to see covered. Kathy did so and prepared a proposal for improvements in the company's medical care coverage benefits. Even though Janet preferred not discussing this issue, she agreed to put it on the meeting's agenda.
Janet scheduled the meeting for 11 a.m. on a Friday. She placed Kathy's proposal as the seventh topic to be discussed. Other items, higher on the agenda, included salaries, sharing of commissions when two people were involved in a sale, parking privileges and policies regarding sexual harassment in the workplace. The meeting continued until 12:30 p.m., and the senior people decided to break for lunch. While disappointed that her proposal was not covered during the meeting, Kathy was pleased that it had been scheduled for discussion.
Kathy has been the victim of a tactic called "agenda setting." Janet does not want to discuss the issue of medical care coverage, but she does not want to be seen as unresponsive to her employees' proposals. So she schedules the meeting at 11 a.m. and places a number of time-consuming items early on the agenda. From her experience, Janet knows that items such as the sharing of commissions and sexual harassment will generate extensive discussions. She also knows that by 12:30 p.m. people's hunger pangs will lead to a request for an end to the meeting so that they can go to lunch. Janet reaps two benefits. Employees see her as willing to listen to their concerns, and she is able to continue ignoring the issue of medical benefits.
This is the sort of tactic that goes right over people's heads unless they have a sophisticated understanding of power in the workplace.
I have seen this tactic used many times, and employees rarely see that executives implement it to ignore issues that they do want to have discussed. While there are no guaranteed ways to counter this tactic, the following scenario will sometimes work.
Kathy schedules a short meeting with Janet the next week. Very politely, she says: "Thank you very much for scheduling the medical benefits proposal on the agenda. It's too bad that we didn't have enough time at the meeting to cover it. I hope that you can put it higher on the agenda at next month's meeting." By making this suggestion, Kathy is showing that she knows about the agenda setting tactic, but at the same time she is being polite and showing respect for Janet's position. Possibly, Janet will recognize Kathy as being knowledgeable about power and will not use this tactic a second time. Janet may also improve her position in the company. The combination of "polite, respectful and sophisticated about power" is highly valued in organizations. Janet can show that she should be placed on the fast track for promotion if she deals with power tactics in a way that demonstrates her awareness and social skills.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
The purpose of this column is to increase understanding of human behavior as it has an impact on the workplace. Given the amount of time people spend at work, job satisfaction should ideally be high and it should contribute to general life happiness. Enjoyment can increase as people learn more about workplace psychology, communication, and group influences.
Richard Brislin is a professor in the College of Business Administration, University of Hawaii. He can be reached through the College Relations Office: cro@cba.hawaii.edu