In the course of Self reflection I am currently following, we talked about organisation politics in last session. One of the discussions we had was on the relation between political awareness and acting out of different intents, shown in the schematic below:

What you want to be versus what you are
At some point we talked about in which quadrant we are as a person. Every person has a dominant quadrant, where he or she acts most of the time. We found out that it most of us had a preferred quadrant we would like to act in, but we shift to different quadrants in different circumstances. Most of the times those 'circumstances' are emotions we have. For example, people who are politically aware, may lose that completely when they get angry and shift from the wise to the naive quadrant. In my own experience, I have concluded that the stronger the emotions set in, the bigger the risk that one shifts to a more self centered and political unaware behavior.

How people see you
The above theory gets even more complex by another factor: Other people. When a person (let's call him Rick) wants to act 'Wise' to another person (Let's call her Alice) and Rick tries his best to do so, it will only have the desired effect, if Alice indeed experiences it as 'wise' behavior. If Alice experiences the behavior as self centered, it will be experienced as sly, and the effect can be counterproductive on the intentions that Rick had.

You can find out how your behavior influences others by:
- observing the reaction (either verbal or non-verbal) you get on your actions
- talk about how your behavior with the other person (if the relation allows it)

Conclusion
In conclusion, it is very good to:
1. think in which quadrant you want to act
2. learn what effective behavior is in the desired quadrant
3. always take into account that the way you act is experienced might differ greatly from what you try to achieve.