Some questions on power dynamics

Post Reply New Topic

When is tact socially effective, and when does using tact make you look weak? More explicitly, what exactly is tact, from an instrumental perspective?

When does backing down gain you support, and when will backing down backfire?

How do you gain the respect of others if you have nothing to offer them?

I'm sure that well applied tact is almost always appreciated, and I don't see how it could be seen as weak. Perhaps if comes across as hedging? I have a hard time with it because my brain just doesn't process subtlety, but I'm not in the majority.

Backing down will gain you support if it gains recognition or sympathy from others. It's situational though. There's a chance of seeming cowardly, or not invested in what you are advocating. It's a tough call.

Gain the respect of others by recognizing what you have to offer is a person of value. Again, in business situations it seems more like scrambling to find what the other party needs.

You might find more helpful answers on a different forum.

No, it mostly comes across as weak if the appropriate thing to do was engage in a dominance display. I'm just very bad at understanding when dominance displays are necessary and when they're bad idea.



"It's situational" is exactly what I'm asking about, though. Which situations does it work in? What are the parameters? How does one tell?



Just because the other party needs something, does not mean they want it from YOU. And if they don't want it from you, then you are not a person of value.



That's somewhat frustrating. Is there a way to determine which forum is most relevant to a particular question?

NT/AS forum possibly? You're asking the vision impaired for photographic imagery here.

Thank you, I will try that.

Hrm, I'm not seeing any such forum listed here; are you suggesting I look for a forum outside wrongplanet?

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt102721.html

Outside WP might yield better results also.

I think you're confusing tact, politeness and submissiveness.

Tact is knowing at a precise moment in a precise situation how to behave in order not to alienate others and if possible, gain their positive regard. So tact is always necessary in relating, unless you purposefully want to alienate someone.

Submissiveness is expected when you need the other more than they need you at a precise moment in a precise situation . If you're submissive when you're the one in power, you get taken advantage of and rejected for not taking the place that corresponds to you in the hierarchy, aka being weird.

By the way, I'm the one who started that thread (the hotline) years ago, under my previous nickname. However, NTs will be of little help on this topic, because these things are completely intuitive (and therefore unconscious) for them. They have no idea at a conscious level that these things are going on. It'd take a rare NT to agree to do the hard work of bringing all this into their awareness (from their intuition). I never found an NT willing to do such hard work for me.

I'm not sure I'd agree on that. Given the amount of difficulty in training individuals (who presumably have a mix of neurotypes) to exercise leadership, it appears to be more of a skill, and one that usually requires conscious decision making.

Actually, probably several skills wrapped together, but that's for another day...