2014 National Convening Skills Presenations National Convening 2014 | Page 4

basically she was right. A woman seeking public office still has to play against
the gender stereotype that women are
soft. So Hillary Clinton spent a good deal
of her campaign proving that she was
tough and experienced. That meant that
Obama was able to be the candidate who
could use soft power. He could appeal to
people with a message of hope, a new
beginning, a new future.
I think business is ahead of politics
in this respect. If you look at the literature on management, you’ll find a great
emphasis on soft power – for example,
on how managers can motivate and persuade people to deliver the results they
need without resorting to carrots and
sticks. The prevailing view in business is
that networks are supplementing hierarchies and so organizations are becoming
flatter. As a result, business leaders need
to exert more soft power. You don’t see
that at all in the literature about politics.
In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine,
a congresswoman, and she said, “You’re
absolutely right about soft power as
an analytical concept, but it’s a losing
term on the political horizon because no
American wants to vote for somebody
who is ‘soft.’”
How did you learn about soft power?

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I learned a lot about it when I joined
the State Department, in 1977. I had no
experience in government and no experience in management. I was a professor,
and the only person I managed was my
secretary – and some people thought
that was the other way around. My first
assignment was to lead an interagency
committee to slow the spread of materials that could produce nuclear weapons.
My inclination was to try to do things
myself. I quickly learned that if I did that,
I would drown. I needed others, but I
couldn’t give them orders because as a
State Department officer I had no authority over people from departments
like Defense and Energy. I had to attract
people and make them want to help me.
Another important lesson I learned
was that government is an oral culture.
It produces reams and reams of paper,

9/26/08 6:34:45 PM