Most of your insurance clients don’t think of their actions in the workplace as political, but that is because their definition of politics is too narrow. In reality, any interaction between two or more people that involves an exchange of ideas, goods, or personalities is political. Here is what your clients need to know about the political skill to maximize their effectiveness in the workplace.

What Is Political Skill?

Political skill is a measure of how good a business leader is at negotiating interactions with partners, employees, and customers. Encourage your clients to read Gerald Ferris’s 2007 paper “Political Skill in Organizations,” which lays out the core principles of this idea. Ferris argues that leaders’ abilities to perceive what is going on, control their emotions, stay calm and friendly, and influence and guide others combine to make them more politically skillful.

At the end of the day, if your clients are good at working with people and able to put their goals before their emotions, they are politically skilled. This characteristic makes them more likely to succeed in internal and external business negotiations.

How Do You Develop Political Skill?

Certain traits make business leaders more likely to have political skill. For example, someone who is extroverted and self-confident is more likely to be politically skilled than someone who is introverted and self-conscious. These personality traits develop over the course of people’s lives and result from their life experiences and upbringings, so they can be hard to modify.

However, people who don’t currently possess political skill’s key characteristics can learn them if they’re willing to put in the effort. Partnering with business mentors who are already politically skilled helps your clients learn these characteristics. For serious self-confidence issues, going to therapy may help your clients address the root of their self-doubt. Taking courses on politics or reading books about leadership also helps your clients increase their political skill level.

What Are the Applications of Political Skill?

When your clients are politically skilled, they’re better able to negotiate new contracts with their customers. Being affable helps them put customers at ease, and staying in control of their emotions helps them keep their goals in mind. Their perceptiveness allows them to read their clients’ reactions to certain offers, even if those reactions are nonverbal. Together, these traits help your clients make the best deals and impress their customers.

Political skill also has applications inside your clients’ companies. When their employees have conflicting opinions about the right way to solve a problem, your clients’ ability to actively influence others helps them resolve the conflict without hurting anyone’s feelings. Their friendliness lets them put new employees at ease, and it promotes a workplace culture of acceptance.

About PGUI

Professional Governmental Underwriters, Inc., is a full-service risk management company dedicated to assisting public, educational and non-profit entities in the management of their professional liability exposures including educators liability insurance. We are dedicated to providing state-of-the-art professional underwriting management and loss control advisory services on behalf of our designated carriers. For more information, call us toll-free at (800) 586-6502.