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We are all
curious to know the
business (and the motivations) of others. As much as we wish to preserve or
privacy and keep our secrets, we want to be able to gather
instant on anyone and anything, even if this is not for any particular reason, or with any objective in mind at all. You might wish to take a peek at my article of earlier today on
IARPA, and then click the "BACK" button on your browser so that you can read this.
As a leader, a soldier, a
negotiator or as a strategic planner in business, you are always looking to obtain the "edge" by knowing more about the other parties of interest than they know about you. We like our adversaries (real or imagined) to be transparent to us, while we wish to to be poker-faced and opaque to them.
As a commander, it is often necessary for you to widen the gap to the greatest extent possible between how much you know about others, and how much they know about you.
Knowledge is indeed power (if acted upon). Additionally, it is a quirk of Human Nature that if others
think that you know more about them than you actually do, you will start with an advantage in terms of your powers of persuasion, negotiation and interrogation.
Lastly, your mystique (the aspects of you that arouse curiosity and stimulate imagination) adds to your magnetism. The more that people do not quite know about you, the more curious they become. But then, if you don't give them a bit of material about yourself to ponder (hints, references to things, quickly interrupted stories), and to "amp up" the curiosity coefficient, they might think that you are unimportant or simply a bore.
The idea is to drop adequate nuanced hints that those around you become obsessed with knowing more. They will be more attentive to you, will listen more carefully to you, and will be more forthcoming about themselves in hopes of drawing you out. You want those who follow you, or who deal with you in social or business commerce to think that you are a vast storehouse of valuable knowledge and that you already 'have the goods' on them.
A good bluff (i.e., having those around you think that you know much more about them than you actually do, or that you possess
information which could be tremendously valuable to them, were they to acquire it from you) gives you a strategic advantage.
Ask any seasoned
interrogator how much information others freely give away (to the point of confessing and surrendering all kinds of things) based upon some mere suppositions [hypotheses] on the part of the interrogator which he poses boldly to the subject as
if they were indisputable facts, instead of as questions. If one of his hypotheses proves remotely correct, it could serve as the lever to have the subject (or, in your case, your counterpart, your adversary, your charge, or whomever) believe that he or she is merely confirming facts that you already know -- and you are actually acquiring new information.
That is the most interesting and ironic thing about inconspicuously and seemingly effortlessly gathering intelligence as a leader; the more that others think that you already know, the more that they will tell you what you want to find out. The other part of the game is to keep them guessing about you ... who you really are, what you really know, and what your intentions might be. A good bluff can unlock many doors.
Cases-In-Point: How many times has someone told you, with conviction, that "I know exactly what you've been doing," or "I know what you you're thinking, and you might just want to reconsider before you make a big mistake," or, my favorite... "I think that you have something to tell me..." when you've just come in from somewhere.
Great revelations have come forth as a result of this type of presumptive
intelligence gathering -- stating a question as casually and offhandedly as a fact.
These ploys
consistently work in the ongoing interpersonal and societal game of
Intelligence versus Privacy.
Of course, you would like to have high-quality, reliable and detailed intelligence at your disposal prior to entering into any transaction, negotiation or other interaction, and you should, in playing your role, invest in intelligence-gathering strategies, alliances and technologies. But when you
do not have access to the information you truly want, let others believe that you do in order for them to confirm what they assume you already know.
If you appear to be a great "
knower of things" as well as a "
keeper of very valuable secrets," your power ranking will rise.
And if you just drop hints (
intimation instead of
information) about where you've been and about needing to leave for your 'next meeting' you ranking will rise further still.
You must learn how to act in order to play any role. And please, make no mistake about it -- you are always on stage. The world in which we live gives you no other option, with the exception of hiding in the shadows.
Practice.
Douglas E Castle
http://InfoSphereBusinessAlerts.blogspot.com
TNNWC Management Consulting Services
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| Intelligence Versus Privacy - The Game Of Power. Being a leader requires that you cultivate a tremendous understanding of behavioral psychology, and an accepting the fact that you are constantly on stage, playing a role. The loneliest and perhaps the most strenuous aspect of command may well be the fact that you can never step 'out of character' and into yourself. | |
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