Learn to Thrive with Office Politics | Workplace Politics 101
Step-by-step process to spot & deal with workplace politics. Shortcut to know basics of workplace politics that are learned with years of experience.
Introduction
This article is for all straight-shooters like me, who are frustrated with people doing politics at work. If you are new to the workforce, you probably wouldn’t have learned this in your college and/or any corporate training or induction program.
Practising workplace politics effectively comes with experience, for some people it never does! This article will give you empirical guidance to spot and cope with workplace politics starting today!
Step 1: Accept it!
First of all, you have to accept that workplace politics is real. The careers of most people in your organisation are dependent on what goes on and off the workplace.
There is nothing bad or evil about it. It is basic human nature. Everybody does politics at the work at different levels. Even you would have done it without even realising it. Being polite to an incompetent colleague at work is politics. Not critically criticising one’s shitty idea in a pitch meeting, for example, is Politics! So yeah! In any kind of corporate firm, at any position, at any location, in any team or part of any project, I am afraid you will encounter workplace politics.
You have to get better at this because it is the best (if not only) way for you to take charge of your own career advancements. Accepting it and embracing it with open arms will help you grow faster as a leader and as a person.
The sooner you accept workplace politics, the sooner you will get better at it
Step 2: Keep it to yourself
Using the term ‘politics’ in a workplace environment is taboo. You must not discuss it with anybody. Not even with your closest colleague at work or even your boss. You don’t need to prove to your boss that you are capable of spotting or doing politics. When you get good at it, the impact of your extended capability will do that for you. And the biggest piece of advice is not to complain about other people doing politics to anybody. By doing that, one can instantly realise that you are still naive and it makes you vulnerable.
Whining about workplace politics to others immediately proves your naivety
Step 3: Be very careful about your Perception
As you know, your perception is what other people think you are against who you actually are. Once built poorly, it is extremely hard to change it. Not impossible though! (let us keep this as the scope of one of my future articles).
Do not take it lightly. Especially, if you are new to an organisation. You have to be extremely careful about how your perception is getting built. It is a make-or-break kind of situation in some cases. Perception can be built in two ways; a) Directly: when other people build a perception about you after working or interacting with you one-on-one. b) Indirectly: perception is built when other people talk about you to others.
The latter type of perception building is very common with top management people, with whom you don’t interact often. There are exceptions though. But for most people, it is easier to build a mental image of a new employee using feedback from 3rd person, rather than by interacting with the employee themselves. So always be aware of what your colleagues and your boss will perceive if you half-assed your presentation or came to work late once.
I know it is a horrible cliche, but it perfectly fits: “First impression is the last impression”
Step 4: Stop accessing situations in binary terms
One of my most challenging tasks was to stop thinking in binary terms. “If he does not agree with my marketing plan, he is evil”, is a star-studded example of how a binary thinking mind works. Like probably many of you, my brain was hard coded to infer binary conclusions in a knee-jerk reaction way after any event. Either it was good or evil, zero or one, true or false, angel or demon, helpful or a damn prick.
There is a scientific explanation for why some of our minds work this way. If you want to get deep into this, I would recommend reading the international bestseller, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman.
The short answer to that question is: We are lazy! We do not want to work too hard on a decision. It took years for me to train my mind to a) step back, b) analyse the motive (covered in the next step) and c) plan the next action. Nothing that happens in a workplace should result in a binary conclusion.
Every decision has a degree to it. Even your attendance at work is not binary. Let us try it with a simple riddle — If you came to work on a weekend, just to press a ‘restart’ button on data servers, will you call yourself present or absent that day? I know some of you will reply to this question instantly in a knee-jerk reaction kind of way 😎. Think again! This time, evaluate both sides properly.
My verdict: You are not present, because you didn’t complete your mandatory 6 hours in the office. And you are definitely not absent! You trashed your weekend plans, got ready, and took a bus to work for a work-related work. (you saw what I did there with ‘work’?😉). So what’s the answer? — “It depends”. Yes, the answers depend on factors like, who is asking this question, your close friend or your boss? How critical that task was? Even on factors like, do you get paid for extra work on a weekend?
Our brain tends to be lazy while making any decision
See, even in such a simple scenario, I proved (yeah, I kind of did!) that there is nothing binary about anything. To expand your perspective window, you must consider multiple factors around the subject before concluding anything about anybody. Only then you will be able to answer the mental question — “Why?”. (see below step)
Step 5: Ask yourself, Why?
After you start by default assuming, that there is no binary conclusion to any situation, you will naturally start working on the question of why. Why they did what they did? Let us consider an example. To the fans of the popular sitcom, FRIENDS, it may come as an easy one.
In mid of season 3, Ross Gellar started feeling insecure when Rachel was keeping busy with her new job. After Rachel missed an anniversary dinner, he got mad and in a very insensitive way he blurted out, “I feel, I do not have a girlfriend anymore, Rachel”. I think it was super hurtful and a stupid thing to say to your girlfriend.
Rachel finally landed herself her dream job and just a few days in, she was gallantly working hard on a logistics crisis. But instead, of asking himself the question, “Why Rachel couldn’t make it to the anniversary dinner?” He quickly assumed that Rachel doesn’t want to be his girlfriend anymore.
The lesson here is that before hurriedly jumping to conclusions, which probably would be a binary one, ask the question of why a person is behaving in a certain manner. The reason could be anything. Maybe your boss has made the same mistake in past by executing a similar idea that you are now pitching to him. Probably that is why, instead of admitting his past mistake, he is critically criticising your ideas in front of other senior stakeholders.
Hiding his past mistakes doesn’t make him an evil prick. A bad leader? — maybe! He probably would share his learnings with you in a one-on-one session. So, before reacting you must try to empathise with the person and understand the “why” part of the problem. Only then you can take effective action on the problem.
The answer may come to you quickly or in some cases, you might have to probe for it from somewhere else. You can get in touch with the concerned person’s colleague or even that person themselves to find the answer. Don’t ask directly though, but try to probe indirectly.
If you know the motivation of a person’s behaviour, it will be easier to predict them and influence their decision
Well, I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I did writing it. I am sure, many of you can now start analysing events in your corporate life with much more clarity. This article alone, I am afraid, will not help you become a ‘master of puppets’ at your workplace (yep! I am a Metallica nerd). But it will help you spot and cope with politics at your workplace.
Your work from today probably will feel much less toxic in comparison to yesterday. Follow me to be notified about my next set of articles on how to effectively use workplace politics to your advantage. I will use semi-fictional stories to take you through some of the experiences to make sure, you don’t make the same mistake that I did.
I will wait for your comments and feedback on this article. I would love to read about some of your experiences at work after reading it.
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