You can't switch on the TV without seeing slick-looking politicians, and Gordon Brown. If it's not a party conference, it's a crisis. If it's not a speech, it's an interview. Men and women in suits try and get us to vote for them, give money to them, trust them, or all three at the same time. But what would happen if you behaved like a politician at work?
The methods Brown and Cameron and Obama and McCain use are designed to get their messages heard and paint a positive picture of one view and a negative image of another.
This is clearly the very definition of a transferable skill. It can be applied in interviews, promotions, meetings and even everyday interactions. You could probably even use political speak to justify control of the TV remote - who could resist a Martin Luther King quote in a passionate case for The Simpsons rather than the news?
So next time your boss asks a question that flummoxes you at work, perhaps you could use the same tactic. Try an age-old politician's technique and say: "That's not really the issue, what's more important is ... " before going off into something unrelated that makes you look better. Like how nice your shoes are. If that doesn't work, try the John McCain method of question answering, which is to stretch the truth into a fiction that even a quick Google search would expose, but trust that your boss hasn't got time to do so and must take your word for it.
Failing that you could pretend you haven't heard, then wave at them happily as many politicians do when getting on to planes. If they insist on an answer read a prepared statement on the topic and refuse to take any questions. Perhaps even direct them to a spokesperson who can look harassed and continually repeat a line denying that the report hasn't been finished, and promising to look into its whereabouts in the fullness of time.
The problem is that in any world outside of the sound bite and spin culture of Westminster or Capitol Hill, you'd last about five minutes. Your colleagues would just shout at you and demand actual work rather than photographs of you with disadvantaged children distributed around the building. But there is one shining example to all of us, and that comes from the American election.
We've all felt like Sarah Palin at some time: that growing realisation you are out of your depth in a new job, but can't tell anyone because it's gone too far. She'd doubtless always dreamed of getting to the top in American politics. But going from being mayor of a town with less than 10,000 inhabitants to being the governor of an isolated state with roughly the population of Leeds, she must have dismissed these dreams as unrealistic. Just like you or I might dismiss fantasies about Nobel prizes for literature or running a record label.
So when the call came in asking her to become vice-presidential candidate she leapt at the opportunity. She thought it would be fine to answer questions on foreign policy and complex economics. And like any of us in a similar position - whether in accountancy, PR or tree surgery - it's too late for her to tell anyone the truth and she must now brazen it out.
The lesson to be learnt here is that it is often best to 'fess up and admit your shortcomings. Maybe if she'd mentioned that she doesn't read any newspapers and only got a passport last year they'd have trained her better. So if you're reading this, and someone has just asked you to do something you have no idea how to do, but probably should, for goodness sake ask someone. Or risk being relegated to Alaska forever more.
