Healthy Influence Blog

Through the primary season Barack Obama is doing a nice impression of Ronald Reagan. Nobody could lay a glove on Reagan and Obama is proving as elusive. In the 1980s, critics called Reagan the Teflon Candidate, then Teflon President because criticisms never seemed to stick to him. Now, Mr. Obama appears to have studied at the foot of the great man and learned many things. The first lesson is this: If they can’t hit you, they can’t beat you.

So, why is Mr. Obama so elusive a target? And, more importantly, how do you hit him?

One answer to both questions emerges from an old line of communication theory related to leadership. Back in the 1950s, a couple of management professors, Tannenbaum and Schmidt, developed a model that had four types of LeaderComm: tell, sell, consult, and join. The four types refer to philosophy and style leaders may develop. The labels mean pretty much what a dead level decoding takes from it. Tell communication is direct, simple, power-based. Sell communication persuades from power as the leader motivates supports for a decision that is going to be made anyway. Consult communication holds the ultimate choice for the leader, but actively seeks input and support from followers. Finally, the Join occurs when the leader follows the followers in their choice and uses the leader positional resources to implement that choice. Clearly the four types vary on two dimensions: Dominance and Relationship.

You don’t have to watch the three leading contenders, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton, and Mr. McCain, more than a few minutes to discern their natural LeaderComm styles. Both Clinton and McCain operate most frequently as Tells. Sure, they will use Sells or Consults, but when you close your eyes and think of them, you see and hear the Tell. By contrast, Mr. Obama is the grooving embodiment of the Consult style.

Just think about that contrast in styles for a minute.

Tell leaders come across as authoritarian, disciplined, power-oriented, dominating, strong, hierarchical. Consult leaders, by contrast, come across as relational, provisional, open, trusting, collaborative.

What happens, then, when Tells criticize Consults? That’s easy: Tells look mean, authoritarian, and traditional while Consults look assaulted, attacked, and aggrieved.

The reason this occurs is not because Tell attacks are wrong or even badly stated. It occurs because while the Tell attack aims at the Consult’s arguments, the Tell attack also unintentionally offends the Consult’s relational ties. Because the Consult style seeks and validates input from followers, Tells can never just attack the Consult’s competence or character without also attacking the Consult’s audience.

Further realize that the blunt, simple, and brief communication style of Tells further works against effective attacks against Consults. Tells will focus on the fundamental issues from a power perspective – what’s the controlling legislation, what are the key facts on the ground, who’s in charge, who are the good guys and the bad guys, what’s the history – and ignore the relational element entirely because from a Tell’s perspective, relationships aren’t as important as the dumb policy statement made by the Consult.

Therefore: When Tells attack Consults they must show relational awareness first.

Let me demonstrate how to do this through the words of another writer. Stephen Hayes has already sharply observed a key Obama consult tactic. When I taught this tactic many, many years ago I called it ERA as both an easy mnemonic and a silly pun on a hot political issue of the day, the late and largely forgotten Equal Rights Amendment (and that tells you way too much about how old I am.) The ERA communication tactic is a three step dance. First, you offer an Empathy statement. Second, you pivot with a Rationale statement. Third, you get to the real point, your Action statement. Mr. Hayes has already provided a perfect illustration of this with Obama, so I’ll quote at length.

His rhetorical gimmick is simple. When he addresses a contentious issue, Mr. Obama almost always begins his answer with a respectful nod in the direction of the view he is rejecting — a line or two that suggests he understands or perhaps even sympathizes with the concerns of a conservative.

At Cornell College on Dec. 5, for example, a student asked Mr. Obama how his administration would view the Second Amendment. He replied: “There’s a Supreme Court case that’s going to be decided fairly soon about what the Second Amendment means. I taught Constitutional Law for 10 years, so I’ve got my opinion. And my opinion is that the Second Amendment is probably — it is an individual right and not just a right of the militia. That’s what I expect the Supreme Court to rule. I think that’s a fair reading of the text of the Constitution. And so I respect the right of lawful gun owners to hunt, fish, protect their families.” [This is the empathy statement, right?]

Then came the pivot:

“Like all rights, though, they are constrained and bound by the needs of the community . . . So when I look at Chicago and 34 Chicago public school students gunned down in a single school year, then I don’t think the Second Amendment prohibits us from taking action and making sure that, for example, ATF can share tracing information about illegal handguns that are used on the streets and track them to the gun dealers to find out — what are you doing?” [A nice statement of Rationale]

In conclusion: “There is a tradition of gun ownership in this country that can be respected that is not mutually exclusive with making sure that we are shutting down gun traffic that is killing kids on our streets. The argument I have with the NRA is not whether people have the right to bear arms. The problem is they believe any constraint or regulation whatsoever is something that they have to beat back. And I don’t think that’s how most lawful firearms owners think.” [The payoff – the desired Action]

Now, I can’t believe that anyone associated with the Obama campaign, indeed anyone in politics, has heard of my ERA idea. But, you don’t have to be a Rocket Scientist or have a doctorate in Communication to see how this ERA communication tactic is the marker of Consult LeaderComm. That first Empathy statement by design includes the “other guy” in a thoughtful, emotional way. “I feel your pain” is another variation on it. But what has this got to do with attacking Obama?

Tell leaders should employ ERA as a template for their attacks on Obama. They should use that Empathy statement to directly address Obama’s supporters in both a thoughtful and emotional way. Only after making those Empathy statements can the Tell leader (either Clinton or McCain) move to their Rationale and Action statements. Please realize that if Tell attacks do not address the relationship issues, attacks on Consult leaders will either backfire or be seriously weakened.

Further understand that ERA tactics in attacks mean that the attacks will require more time to deliver. Normally attacks are short and sweet, direct and jugular. You just look for the opening and jam it in. ERA style attacks, by contrast, will require considerably more thoughtfulness, planning, and setup.

Please realize that I am not saying that Tell leaders should never directly attack Consult leaders. Whether the attacks are direct statements against the competence or character of the opponent or longer ERA approaches should depend upon the issue at hand. When it appears that the Consult position does not have a strong relational element to it, then direct attacks should function as they always do. By contrast, when the Consult position does include that relational decision, Tell leaders must isolate the Consult leader from his followers before making the attack.