1. Keep your hands above the table where everyone can see them. You’ve seen the scene in a wild west saloon. Two edgy gunfighters face each other over a table. The first one to reach down, even if to pick up a penny, gets shot. What this means in the SCA is make sure your motives are as clear as possible. Especially in tense times, try to make your statements as clear and unequivocal as you can.
2. A followup to one: Once you take a public position, give people a chance to line up behind it. Then, once you have supporters, don’t leave them in the lurch. If you are going to ‘move to the center’ (as leaders must do), make sure the people supporting your position aren’t left holding the bag.
3. Sun Tsu says: “Know your enemy as well as yourself and you need not fear the result of a thousand battles.” This applies equally to any political situation. For instance, you are the new baron and baroness of the barony of dishwater. Don’t ask for officers to resign and be rehired. This isn’t the British Commonwealth. Likewise, if you are the new head of an officer corps (as I have seen recently), don’t assume the staff is worthless. Scout, scout, scout. If people want to run to you and gossip, simply take in the information. It’ll come in handy.
4. When things are rolling your way, don’t stop them. The greatest ‘old fart’ trick of fighters is avoiding wasted motion. Leave flailing away to the youngsters. The definition of wasted political motion is jawboning an issue after it has already swung your way. At best it is a waste of time. At worst, you may annoy people enough that they don’t wish to give in to you and so swing to the other side. In other words, be a good listener as well as debater.
5. Another bit about scouting: look for a way to give the opposition a way to save face. Sometimes this is all that is stopping a situation from ending peacefully. Winning is about achieving the goal, not humiliating the enemy. Keep your eyes on the ball, always. Also, if your ‘side’ is winning but someone on your side is particularly galling to the opposition, get them out of the way if possible. Often the opposition is ready to fold but not if it means losing face to ‘that one person’ (usually the one who was first involved in the dispute for your side).
6. Don’t try to be ‘good cop/bad cop’ unless you’re really good at it. And you’re not really good at it. No one is. That only works in cop shows. Instead, just be straightforward and consistent.
7. You can’t make everyone understand your point of view. At some point you will have to learn to gracefully say: we’ll agree to disagree. This is better than belaboring a point until you lose your entire audience (or all your traveling companions).
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Royal (f)right
I wonder often, in this supposed royal right kingdom, how people reconcile the lofty ideals of justice and mercy with the notion that the king’s word is law, even though that word be abusive and hurtful.
The first and greatest feature of justice is that it protects the weak against the caprices of the strong. The strong need no further protection. The abuse of power by those in high places is the height of injustice, and has been accounted such in period and out. This is the very injustice that knights, and by extension all peers, pledge in their vows to prevent.
How is it, then, that the Crown is portrayed so often as the victim, whose sensitive rights and prerogatives need constant husbanding. Poor frail flowers. It always seems that the next line of retreat is that restricting the Crown’s rights somehow damages the ‘Dream’, that this is the suspension of disbelief we all must, evidently, maintain to keep playing this game. Yet, when in order to maintain this Dream, real people’s real feelings are hurt or abused, this is somehow discounted as the price of doing business. At least, then, it is more honest of those who say: “if you don’t like what happens, win Crown”. That is, of course, tantamount to saying that the strongest (literally) get to make the rules. That is also unjust, but perhaps not surprising.
If we must err on any side, let us err to prevent the weak from being damaged, not the strong. That is my ‘Dream’. And it isn’t the real world either.
The first and greatest feature of justice is that it protects the weak against the caprices of the strong. The strong need no further protection. The abuse of power by those in high places is the height of injustice, and has been accounted such in period and out. This is the very injustice that knights, and by extension all peers, pledge in their vows to prevent.
How is it, then, that the Crown is portrayed so often as the victim, whose sensitive rights and prerogatives need constant husbanding. Poor frail flowers. It always seems that the next line of retreat is that restricting the Crown’s rights somehow damages the ‘Dream’, that this is the suspension of disbelief we all must, evidently, maintain to keep playing this game. Yet, when in order to maintain this Dream, real people’s real feelings are hurt or abused, this is somehow discounted as the price of doing business. At least, then, it is more honest of those who say: “if you don’t like what happens, win Crown”. That is, of course, tantamount to saying that the strongest (literally) get to make the rules. That is also unjust, but perhaps not surprising.
If we must err on any side, let us err to prevent the weak from being damaged, not the strong. That is my ‘Dream’. And it isn’t the real world either.
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