2nd Monday of Persuasion ends with the Hospital

I'm just walking out of my very intellectually stimulating Persuassion class at Harvard, where we spent the last half hour watching television commercials - when I see that I missed a call from Chris. I check my voicemail. He had left an urgent message that he was at the Harvard urgent care with Kalian because she had gashed her eye. Right outside my classroom, where everyone was congregating and waiting for our group study time, I screamed, "Oh, my God" and literally ran past everyone, down the stairs and out into the still somewhat balmy Boston early evening air - I ran as fast as I could through Harvard Square to the Medical Center, which is just about 5 blocks away. I was gasping for air by the time I got to the waiting area.

Well, Kalian did have a huge gash and bruising around her eye, but fortunately, the eye itself seemed OK. I breasfed her and then she seemed happy as a clam trying to walk down all sorts of hallways. Liam was climbing all over the place and it was a struggle to reign them in. Chris was understandably exhausted - he said he had already spent 15 minutes at Target earlier that day trying to extricate Kalian from a shopping cart, and she had hurt her eye by falling off of our bed and hitting her head on our side table. She and Liam were jumping on the bed at the time. A very kind doctor took us upstairs to an exam room, and Liam asked all kinds of questions.

"What's that?"

"A stethoscope"

"I have a stethoscope"

"You do?"

"Why are you a doctor?

"Well, um...hmmm...that's a good question - because of the Sandanistas and their Revolution."

Wow - piqued my interest but Liam wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

Kalian got the go ahead to continue to terrorize our lives and we came home. Had a nice evening with Liam after putting Kalian to bed. Fortunately, she's still easy as pie - although instead of just dumping her in her crib. I actually have to read a few books now to her before just putting her in her crib. 10 minute bedtime routine instead of 3, but I actually enjoy that time with her. Liam and I played with his new set of clay he got for his birthday and then off to bed for the ultimate book on labor and negotiation - Click, Clack Moo - Cows and Chickens who go on strike until their demand for electric blankets are met.

Speaking of labor....

CLASS JOURNAL
Wow - I had heard so much about Nixon's checkers speech but had never seen it before. It was so brilliant - almost makes me want to like the fascist bastard. I can't believe it was the first televised political speech - current politicians could learn a lot from it, but I'm trying to think how to condense it down to the 10 seconds a politician would have these days. That's why it was so great to have to keep our pitches down to 2 minutes last week.

What struck me the most about his speech was so counter-intuitive - not just retrospectively to see him so clever and deprecating (at least on the surface - he was actually in a more attack mode without making it seem so). But he just admitted just about everything under the sun. He somehow pulled off disclosing everything without coming off as at all guilty-looking - and it is all about perceptions - he also was able to make the audience incredibly active at the end (despite his fears to the contrary). I was expecting more of a Frank Borman presentation from Nixon after growing up with my first political awareness with Watergate.

As someone who used to videotape public officials for statements such as these, I was so shocked at Borman's demeanor. I doubt back then the video was a direct satellite uplink - most workers probably saw it taped, which meant Borman had ample time to listen to the (hopefully) directors/producers/aides to encourage him to be more likeable and not sound so threatening - so I wonder with this message if his top team/staff didn't understand or help him prep - and how other people aside from the so-called great leaders can support carrying out the persuasion principles - i guess likeability might be a little more difficult to be coach(though not impossible). This begs another question I have - how can we get support from our colleagues, co-workers, family members to carry out these principles on a daily basis - this mutual support could probably go a long way in learning to be more persuasive.

The credibility principle was paramount with Borman. Our group had an intense discussion on how to increase his credibility, especially in terms of who should present his talk. One person in our group argued that Borman plus other high level management people should speak and present the empirical facts of how too much money was being spent on labor. Hmmm (And during our discussion after the presentations, another student said that probably a lot of the employees weren't working very hard). Our group also discussed having Jane Do/Joe Schmoe average worker up with Borman. However, I said that this would actually reduce credibility - workers up there would be seen as scabs/sell-outs and the union would see this as a ploy. This whole issue of saliency related to credibility was very profound in all of the presentations. There is a lot I have to learn at the Kennedy school and in life, in general, but it was frightening how little people knew (except for one other person in our class from another country) about labor unions - and what would probably fly with them and what wouldn't (no pun intended. But I really struggled with a point someone else made in our discussion about how Machiavelli's point about loss - and when you're "liberal" or "lavish" with, in his estimation, paying workers too much, they will have a much harder time accepting a paycut - b/c they were paid too much. Again, this discussion was really difficult for me - that people felt like employees were being paid too much money (versus Borman raiding the company by buying airplanes from his industry buddies). I know this class isn't about discussing the merits of unionization, but it was a lesson in how to know if we know if we're being salient - especially in a situation like this - it's one thing if statistical studies have a controlled environment - but if you don't do polls after a speech, how do you know how effective it is, given other factors. Will your staff and you, who don't really understand labor issues, just think you did ok (or true with other constituents). It's why we need more diversity at the K School...