MILLENNIALS' GUIDE TO WORKPLACE POLITICS: What No One Ever Told You About Power and Influence

FOREWORD

Dear Reader,

As a Millennial working in the corporate sector, I made a mental choice not to engage in workplace politics. I decided that I would double-down on my strengths, develop my weaknesses, and grow in new ways. But as for engaging in office or workplace politics? That was a strong no for me.

Or so I thought.

When I decided that I was going to enter the marketing world as an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, I knew it would be uncharted territory. Marketing isn’t seen as an essential skill or ability to the competency development of an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist. In fact, many Industrial-Organizational Psychologists struggle with helping others to understand what they do. I always hear comments like, I don’t know how to explain Industrial-Organizational Psychology, my family thinks I’m like Human Resources, or Industrial-Organizational Psychology is too complex to break down. But if I was going to truly carve out a niche for myself and be able to coach Industrial-Organizational Psychologists on how to brand and market their services, I needed to learn from the best. So, I used LinkedIn to connect with the president of a prominent marketing firm and bartered for a 6-month engagement with me coaching junior executives and him coaching me on all things marketing consulting. As a result of this successful set-up, I was hired into a full-time position.

As I became immersed in the culture of the company, I had my original goals in mind: (1) double-down on my strengths, (2) develop my weaknesses, and (3) grow in new ways. But after being thrown under the bus for something that had nothing to do with me, I realized I couldn’t escape workplace politics. It was apparent that I lacked the awareness and skills I needed to deal with team members who didn’t operate with the same principles I did.

So, when I was invited to review this new book on workplace politics, I knew it was time to get equipped and empowered to approach this topic head on.

What you are now holding in your hands not only educated me on workplace politics, but also has added a critical component to my personal and professional development. For too long, leadership and self-help books have led me to believe it's as simple as using a model, following the latest thought leaders, or getting a coach. This is not another one of those self-help books. This is a survival manual and tactical strategy plan to properly engage with workplace politics in such a way that you grow and develop as an early career leader.

The authors present clearly defined workplace politics: the good, the bad, and the questionable. They also present a solid case for why you should engage in workplace politics and practical ways to navigate this arena. This book has empowered and equipped me to handle workplace politics that are inevitable and work with my team and my leaders for lasting change within the organization and within myself.

Dr. NaTasha Jordan, PhD

Director of Consulting - The Sasha Group

INTRODUCTION

When we say the word politics, some of us bristle, conjuring up images of the dirty politics used in backroom self-serving decision-making. When we say, I’m not going to play games and involve myself in politics, what we really mean is I’m sick and tired of unprincipled and amoral politics and I refuse to engage in that kind of abuse of power. The term politics has become mostly overtaken by negative, sometimes abusive, political tactics that are associated with selfish pursuits of personal power. Many of us want to push politics as far away from us as possible.

We define workplace politics as the processes and behaviors between people in a workplace that include power, authority, communication, and networking to create change that benefits the organization or people within it. Workplace politics, moreover, are part of everyday life. Talented managers and leaders who do not engage in work politics often get left out of the important decision-making process and fail to progress or thrive in their career. Politics come in many forms, with the self-serving, cutthroat type being only one – and that is an unhealthy type! There are also positive, honest politics that can help you become a better leader when used appropriately. All politics can be intentional or unintentional. This book will help you take a more intentional approach.

We have worked in organizations collectively for more than 40 years. We have seen elegant and powerful positive use of politics:

We have also seen self-serving and cutthroat politics damage staff, the organization, and even customers:

You do not have to sacrifice your values and morals to be successful at work politics! Work politics don’t have to be corrupt. In fact, some of the most successful managers and leaders use positive, honest politics to both further their career and successfully support their organization in meeting its goals, while still holding on to their values. Furthermore, dishonest politics are often used to protect a small inner circle of people who already have most of the power or advantage. If you are not happy with the current politics at work, engaging in office politics is a critical aspect of developing personal and professional growth, as well as creating positive culture change.

Let’s first define what politics really are.

Formal politics refer to how governance structures are set up and how these structures help systems make decisions. Usually, you find these formal politics within more structured, formal, regulated work environments, like federal and state government work. Formal politics can include developing formal policies, passing laws, and promoting and moving forward specific views about how to improve systems.

Informal politics are the underlying invisible structures that also influence decisions. These include how you form alliances, exercise power and authority, protect and advance ideas or goals, and negotiate to access the resources needed, such as information and connections, to aid in decision-making.

Put together, sometimes politics can be another way to view the culture of an organization. When you see people spreading rumors, withholding critical information, gossiping, undermining one’s credibility (e.g., blaming, interrupting, condescending, patronizing, exposing, teasing), bullying, playing one person against another, and excluding others purposefully from access to information, people, and other resources, you may feel like negative, dirty, or dishonest politics are at play. Keep in mind that not all these actions have bad intent. Sometimes they are an outcome of bad results. For example, if a boss inadvertently pays too much attention to the people pleasers or too little attention to good ideas, employees may decide to circumvent current procedures through actions such as these, which are then perpetuated and made worse over time.

Informal politics can occur in a variety of ways and on a continuum. For example, politics includes both hones vs. dishonest interactions to achieve outcomes that are either focused on personal gain vs. community (ie: team, organization, group) gain.

Here is one way to break these informal politics down. In the figure below is a matrix of low to high honest and low to high community.

On the right side you have the high honesty politics. Someone who engages in honest community-focused politics would use effective methods of negotiation, persuasion, influence, and advocacy to achieve goals that aligned with the company’s mission and values. Laws and policies that are developed to support those efforts would make a positive difference for many people, through honest means. Someone who engages in honest self-focused politics may use those same methods of effective negotiation, persuasion, and influence, but for the purpose of personal promotion or advancement, which may or may not benefit a larger group or community.

On the left side, you have dishonest politics. When you have low honesty (often seen in places that have low psychological safety), it can be played out at either an individual level (self-focused) or community level. So a Vice President of a company who wants to demonstrate that her product line gets the best results might use dishonest community-focused politics through coercion and bullying to reach the outcome. In this box, the leader may believe that the ends justify the means. And if she was just focused on getting a bonus or promotion for herself, then she may engage in dishonest self-focused politics by throwing people under the bus or making backroom deals for her own personal gain and power.

Common elements in honest politics are strong positive communication, effective problem-solving skills, developing strong relationships, supporting and advocating for others, and creating effective positive organizational change. It’s often the self-focused, dishonest misuse of communication and strategy for personal gain that ruins good politics and are most harmful to people as well as the whole organization. 

It’s also helpful to have emotional intelligence (the capacity to be aware of, control, and express your emotions, as well as to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically) and to create a workplace with psychological safety (an interaction between you and your environment that enables you to be your professional self and speak up without fear of negative consequences to your self-image, status, or career).

In Millennials’ Guide to Workplace Politics, we teach you proactive strategies to create the self-awareness, emotional intelligence, network, communication skills, problem solving skills – as well as an environment with psychological safety -- to strengthen yourself and your team so you can manage self-focused, dishonest politics better. Given that even the best intentions won’t protect you from difficult people, we also discuss reactive strategies to help you address negative politics head-on when needed.

Mira Brancu, PhD

Jennifer Wisdom, PhD MPH ABPP

February 1, 2021

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

If you’ve read Millennials’ Guide to Work: What No One Ever Told You About How to Achieve Success and Respect, or Millennials’ Guide to Management and Leadership: What No One Ever Told You About How to Excel as a Leader, you know how this works. Millennials’ Guides are not books best read cover to cover. We encourage you to review the table of contents and identify a challenge you are currently having or recently experienced. Turn to those pages to start finding a solution!

Each challenge includes a brief description and many possible solutions that you may want to try. Many times, you can see success after trying one option. You’ll see some solutions repeated across different challenges because they’re likely to be helpful for many problems. For complex challenges, you may want to attempt several interventions at the same time.

It’s important to have patience and give the solutions a little bit of time to work. Some ideas that you try won’t solve the problem but will make it a little better--that’s still success! If you don’t feel comfortable trying a solution or if it works partially or not at all, try something else. Some of the solutions are very low risk, such as changing your expectations of the other person. Others can appear more challenging, such as directly discussing a problem with a colleague or negotiating with a competitive colleague. Start with solutions that feel like lower risk to you and work your way up to more challenging solutions.

In this book, we share how to navigate workplace politics. We will provide examples for how to distinguish between proactive and reactive (or defensive) politics and what to do about it. In addition, we have separated the book into three sections: how to take proactive measures, when you need to be reactive, and when to consider letting go or leaving the organization due to an untenable situation. Ideally, you always want to start with setting up as many proactive measures as you can to create the strongest infrastructure for yourself and your organization.

The few basic rules of work will never steer you wrong--especially as managers and leaders:

1.      Never say anything bad about anyone at work to anyone at work. (Do your venting at home or with friends.)

2.      Write emails and chat messages as if they will be printed in the newspaper, broadcast on social media, used in a court case, or forwarded to others included the person who are talking about (because they might be).

3.      Be honest and diplomatic with everyone, including yourself.

4.      Be patient. Sometimes people are working on your behalf to make things better and you don’t even know it.

5.      Be curious about yourself and seek constant self-improvement.

6.      Remember that we all have struggles. Be kind and respectful.

7.      These skills do not come naturally to most people. That’s okay. Practice to get better.

8.      Practice healthy skepticism and perspective-taking at work. Not everything can or should be taken at face value. Exploring what other people might be working toward and understanding what their needs are helps you gain greater control of your work life. 

As you work through possible solutions, you’ll get better at reading situations, responding to people you work with, building networks and connections, and applying solutions