Influence vs. manipulation

Last week's speaker was amazing. I was appreciative of his thoughtfulness and awareness of why he was doing the things he did. He's a great speaker for this specific class because he can cite leadership strategies, explain why he used the ones he did, and if they were successful. I appreciated his views as acting as a buffer for his staff, it's very true and the sign of a strong manager, whereas a weaker manager would duck out of the line of fire and let his employees take the heat. I liked his idea of taking a few minutes every day to ask, "what went well, what went poorly and how can I improve tomorrow." I have tried to do this daily since hearing that idea. While I do not have his high level job, or salary :(, one thing that our jobs have in common is that they are often self-directed. I have responsibilities that must get done; how and when they are done are my decisions.


Influence (or persuasion) and manipulation may be two sides of the same coin, the difference is the goal. As last weeks student presentation emphasized "be wary if someone is trying to convince you of something that benefits them." Every manager has the responsibility of persuading others to follow, and doing that by showing the goal or path, then modeling the behavior, leading with integrety. A good leader will not drag his followers like disobedient dogs on a leash, but convince them that they want to go in his direction. Laszlo, for examplem mentioned using different managment styles with different leaders, which is just good sense. In my opinion it's persuasion when the use of the different approaches for different managers results in the managers being successful which makes the department successful, demonstrating good leadership and management. I think of manipulation like car salesmen that have to "go see the manager" no matter what, the scary thing is that it still works. There is also the question of honesty within integrety. You can lead from a position of integrety, without telling all you know. Acting as a buffer, so everyone can work together sucessfully, you can use influence for the good.


The question of Google doing a manipulation "for our own good" is tricky? Is it like censoring results to skew results positive or negative or to slant them left or right? For "our own good" sounds like a decision a parent makes for a child unable to correctly reason through to the correct decision. I don't want Google deciding if I should get ice cream before dinner, and likewise if I do a search and the results exist, Google should provide them, or like they did in China explain that something has been censored, rather than show no results at all. If I did a search for "bomb making" and "nearby public transit" I would have a negative impression of Google if I could not access that information. Google could certainly make a case for squelching searches like that for general public good, but that conflicts with their mission of free information.