Nancy Pelosi Is A Genius At This Controversial Workplace Habit
President Joe Biden shocked the world last month when he dropped his reelection bid. According to reports, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of the key people in a behind-the-scenes campaign to encourage the president to step aside.
Pelosi has downplayed her influence and has declined to share what she talked about with Biden in private conversations. But it’s clear she is laser-focused on a Democratic win in November and she did not see that happening with Biden: “We did not have a campaign that was on the path to victory,” she told reporters in August.
Being at the center of a monumental U.S. political decision is nothing new for Pelosi, who is currently a Democratic representative from California. Pelosi, who was the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives, has served in Congress under seven presidents and brokered sweeping legislation that overhauled health care and consumer and finance protection.
Members of her own party have called her “a heat-seeking missile when it comes to winning congressional races.” Her Republican opponents have called her “one tough cookie.” On social media, people have positively compared her reported influence on Biden to that of a “mobster.” What would Pelosi call herself? A winner.
“I have won nearly all of the legislative battles that I started ― and those that I haven’t I characterize simply as ‘not yet achieved,’” she declares in her new book, “The Art of Power.” It’s a bold claim that her consistently effective caucus leadership backs up.
“[Pelosi] never took anything to the [House] floor she didn’t think she could get through,” Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, told HuffPost. “She uses both carrot and stick. I think that’s part of what makes her successful.”
How does she do it? Pelosi’s book was written before Biden stepped down, but it does offer glimpses into how she amassed the kind of influence that could push a president to act. Whether you like or dislike her, Pelosi knows how to play politics — and that’s something many people are still resistant to do at work.
Office politics — which is simply the power of influence and relationships at work — often gets associated with negative words like “dirty,” “unfair” and “unnecessary.” When women have heightened office politics at their job, studies show they are more likely than men to report high levels of stress and job dissatisfaction. But not Pelosi.
Here are two takeaways from Pelosi’s book that you can use to navigate workplace politics like a pro, regardless of whether you are a politician:
1. Know when and how to leverage relationships to get the outcomes you want.
One of Pelosi’s signature accomplishments as House speaker is corralling 220 progressive and conservative House lawmakers to vote for the Affordable Care Act in November 2009. During the ACA fight, she would make phone calls to 50 different caucus members in one day.
And if you were a House member who was reluctant to vote in favor of health care reform, she would recruit people to help convince you. Take what happened with Joe Donnelly, who was a Democratic representative from Indiana at the time.
Pelosi writes in her book that she called the Rev. Ted Hesburgh, a former president of the University of Notre Dame ― a school located in the Indiana district that Donnelly represented. She asked for Hesburgh’s help with spreading the message that the bill would not violate the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion.
Later, Pelosi said she overheard House members gossiping over how she got their votes: “I heard Joe [Donnelly] say, ‘You should hear what she did to me! She had Father Hesburgh call me and say, “The Speaker and I need you to vote for the ACA.” What was I supposed to do?!’”
This example highlights a long game. Pelosi cultivated a relationship over time that she could leverage at the right moment with the right person to get what she most treasures: their vote.
Journalist Molly Ball, who authored a biography on Pelosi, told Vox in 2020 that Pelosi focuses on the “hard power” that results in votes and less on the power that results in social media popularity: “She learned earlier in life that people see you differently when you have the authority, when you have the votes. And that goes all the way back to the ’70s in San Francisco when she was appointed to the Library Commission. As a woman in 1975, nobody necessarily listened to her when she opened her mouth, but people had to listen to her when she had a vote.”
Good leaders are great at knowing when to use both hard power tactics — bargaining chips, ultimatums and holding people accountable — as well as softer power tactics like persuasion, building alliances, and finding out what motivates people, said Lisa Zigarmi, an organizational psychologist who co-authored a Harvard Business Review article on how women can get more comfortable with office politics.
And if you want to follow in the lead of skilled political operators like Pelosi, you can’t just rely on softer power tactics like negotiation. You need to be ready to draw a line in certain situations and set ultimatums.
“The most skillful leaders match the power tactic that’s required to the situation, and they’re masterful at doing that. They don’t apply leverage when the leverage isn’t required,” Zigarmi told HuffPost.
In the workplace, this might look like learning to build alliance with co-workers on issues you care about, so you can get the buy-in to turn your ideas into solutions and to get your complaints heard.
Pay attention to what your peers and manager complain about, and how they make decisions. Do they value personal connections, or big-picture stories, or hard data? Everyone has a preferred communication style at work, and learning how to tailor your idea into their language can help sell it to them.
2. Know your ‘why.’
In her book, Pelosi is consistently on message about why she is in politics: “You have to be able to throw a punch ... For The Children,” she writes. The three most important issues facing Congress? “Our children, our children, our children.”
It’s this clarity of purpose that she advises other aspiring politicians to get if they want to be effective: “When I speak to women or others who are considering running for office, I tell them that it is not a decision for the faint of heart,” she writes in her preface. “So, when you decide to run, you must know your ‘why.’ Why are you running? What is your vision, knowledge, and judgment?”
And that’s good advice for any kind of leader. “You are more likely to be used by someone who is playing politics well if you don’t know what you stand for, if you don’t know what you believe in, and you don’t have a sense of ... what am I trying to achieve in this organization?” Zigarmi said.
In the workplace, this can mean learning how to make networking more authentic to who you are. Networking can be what helps you land a job or a project, but it can feel draining if it’s done in a way that feels fake to you. So make it enjoyable to meet new people.
Research what you may have in common that you can bring up as an icebreaker, and ask yourself what do you like to share about yourself as you get to know someone, career experts suggest.
Ultimately, you can’t sit out office politics, so learn to play it on your terms.
If you want to be a successful leader, you need to understand that great ideas are only as good as the people willing to help you execute them. So if you are someone who finds this kind of behind-the-scenes campaigning to be “icky,” reflect on why that is and where you learned that growing up, Zigarmi suggested.
“It is very advantageous for people to switch into a player-versus-pawn mindset,” Zigarmi said, noting that it is “more powerful to play than abstain.” It’s what can help you actually achieve your ambitions.
Take it from Pelosi, who has been and continues to be skilled at the game and plays politics on her own terms. “Well before the day of the vote, I knew that I had the votes” is how she describes knowing that she had enough people in her favor to win the speakership race — a classic confident Pelosi move and one we could all learn from.
“Understanding who are the decision-makers, understanding how decisions get made, understanding the culture of a place is really critical if you’re going to be successful in any organization, whether it’s in government ... or if it’s in business,” Walsh said.
CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, a prior version of this story incorrectly stated that Pelosi has served in Congress under four presidents. She has served under seven presidents.
