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Get started on your content marketing journey today.
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Strategy: Creating Value Inside Your Company
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Leadership with Passion through Kokorozashi
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We’ve all seen a politician waffling in their reply to a straightforward question. Being diplomatic with your words can come across as meandering or evasive, but it’s often a calculated response to a complicated network of connections. This also applies to large companies where links between departments can sometimes be difficult to navigate.
Sure, we all think we want the leader who’s a straight shooter. However, a more nuanced managerial style cultivates professional relationships, fosters an inclusive work culture, and boosts employee engagement. So while “political savvy” may get a bad rap, Dr. Jane Horan argues, it’s an essential skill moving forward. She is on a mission to reframe the term as a positive skillset for both organizations and individuals.
Getting Started in Asia
Hello and welcome. My name is Javier Mata. I lead content development for GLOBIS Unlimited. And today I’d like to welcome Dr. Jane Horan. She is the founder of the Horan Group, which is a strategic consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations make more engaged, inclusive, and savvy workplaces.
And today we’re going to be talking about the importance of political savvy and other topics related to this.
But first, just to get us started, Jane, could you share your key experiences and some of your passions with us?
Dr. Jane Horan: Absolutely. Thank you, Javier. I’m delighted to be here with GLOBIS. When you said key passions, actually, political savvy, is it!
But let me tell you a little bit of my background. I started my career in Changsha, Hunan Province, then moved to Hong Kong and worked for some pretty big, iconic brands, always in organizational development or talent development. And that is actually where I landed on political savvy. And seeing the importance of this word that nobody likes as a critical leadership skill. So my experience has been all across the Asia-Pacific region, just to kind of give some context on it.
What is Political Savvy?
I know the topic of political savvy, as you just outlined, is close to your heart and I think you’ve even written a book related to it. But just to get us started, could you explain what is political savvy?
Dr. Horan: What I mean by political savvy is, first of all, it’s a leadership competency. And if I were to sum it up in one word, it’s being Maze Bright. What does Maze Bright mean? Maze Bright means looking at the organization and all the interconnections inside those organizations. How, you know, finance connects with strategy, connects with HR, connects with marketing. All of these are interconnected.
And then the other one is: What are the informal networks and influence networks that help make decisions, drive change, move projects forward or behind? So that’s what political savvy is. It’s kind of, I think the best word is Maze Bright. Looking at it from all these interconnections and moving from that point on.
Shifting Impressions from Negative to Positive
One connotation that I think surrounds the term political savvy is it kind of has a negative connotation sometimes with people. Could you just expand on that?
Dr. Horan: Yeah. And that’s an absolutely great question. I think I’d throw myself in that too.
So political savvy is part of every single leadership competency of organizations that I have researched. But it’s not necessarily taught inside organizations. And I think it’s because it has that negative connotation.
But if you look at any competency framework, just like one that we all know, driving results, there’s a negative side to driving results. If you just drive, drive, drive results and forget about the people and the process, that’s negative.
But driving results always come out as positive, whereas political savvy starts off as, ooh, negative. And we have to weave people around to see the positive side of it. So I’ve been on this mission to get people to reframe their thinking on it and see the positive side of it.
And there’s definitely benefits to careers, to leadership and to organizations. So I don’t know if that answered it properly, but it is on every single competency framework that I’ve found.
So it’s an essential skill even if people might avoid it essentially,
Dr. Horan: Yes.
The Benefits for Organizations and Individuals
Okay. And talking about political savvy before we jump into like individuals and how they can develop their political savvy. What does political savvy mean for organizations? The big picture. Why is it important for organizations to have a politically savvy workplace?
Dr. Horan: Yeah, I want to take this in two directions.
One is organizational savvy drives efficiency. So say you’re running a change project. Which seems like everybody’s running a change project all the time. Who is it in that organization that you need to have in your stakeholders’ network, whatever? Who’s resisting? Who can you go to for advice rather quickly? So there’s a bit of a networking side of this.
So understanding it from an organizational point, it drives efficiency.
It also enables innovation, right? So if you’re pitching a new idea, you’re sure you have both the resisters and people who are going to challenge you in those conversations. And it also is critically important for navigating careers.
The other part of it is, the second part that I want to say is, I was in talent management and organizational development. I found that a lot of organizations kind of looked for this skill when they were deciding on talent and who’s moving forward in leadership.
And at the same time, because it’s a bit nuanced, it wasn’t really necessarily called out. So you have to kind of understand the underpinnings of savvy. So it’s:
1) For efficiency, innovation, careers
2) For ensuring you have the right talent, that you’re not overlooking people, and you’re bringing the right the right group of people ahead