Owl, Fox, Donkey or Sheep: Political Skills for Managers

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a model the authors and their colleagues have been using to develop political skills as an increasingly important element of management education. We suggest why the teaching of political skills is still approached with some timidity, even in the field of local government where there are increasing demands for officers to be 'politically sensitive'. We describe a model containing two dimensions relating, first, to the skills of 'reading' the politics of an organisation and, second, to the skills an individual is 'carrying' into situations which may predispose them to act with integrity or play psychologi cal games. The two dimensions are tightly integrated but allow us to separate out four types of behaviour - innocent, inept, clever and wise - which an individual may adopt in different situations. That these are behaviours and not fixed traits is a critical distinction, helping us to develop wise behaviour in managers by concentrating in our training on the way the dimensions of 'carrying' and 'reading' are combined.