To many, politics is synonymous to corruption, egoism, hypocrisy, and all the negative human attributes; thus, they try to abstain from it. The multi-billion Euro question that may be asked is; can we really do without politics? I do not think we can, because we are inherently political animals, therefore we directly, or indirectly participate in it. Quite often, when we seem to be passive, we are actually politicking.
All sectors of human endeavour with more than one person, such as in the public and private sectors, military, local and International NGOs and regrettably, many religious organisations are political entities—even in a family, we play politics. Thus, you cannot live without political influence and participation; more so, at your place of work, where you spend most of your time daily with other people, and whose effect is the determinant to your professional advancement.
Work-place politics is the most ignored, yet a major factor to professional success. Innumerable books have been written, seminars organised, audios, videos, and DVDs produced about many areas of success, yet very few are in the market about this subject; perhaps, it’s because very few people are interested in the field.
In some organisations, power play is obvious, while it is disguised in others, and your ability to thrive in office politics is not only directly related to your understanding of the game, but also how you play it.
What is Office Politics?
Most people define office politics as the means of manipulating situations, people, and using power and people to secure their desired position, gain from the situation, or even increase their power, image, and status within an organisation, to the detriment of others. This definition implies shrewdness, dishonesty, injustice, and all the negative human characteristics. However, this game should not necessarily be seen or played as this definition portrays, but should be seen as a means of persuading people to co-operate with you in order to use the limited available resources to realise a set goal for the corporate interest.
On writing this, I quite understand that we humans are intrinsically self-centred—characteristics that impel many to strive to attain their goals to the detriment of others. This article will show that we can always achieve our goals without necessarily crushing others on our path.
You may be wondering the reason this article has this title. It is because Office politics is as complicated as maze. For you to master it, you don’t only have to be interested in it, but you also have to be committed to mastering it. Furthermore, both the visible and the invisible rules, and the level of the playing grounds differ from one office to another, because no two offices are the same. Each organisation consist of individuals from different backgrounds, with different expectations, goals, motivations, and different approach to the achievement of their dreams, thus, the combination of all these elements create the difference in the dynamics of the game.
Why is Office Politics Necessary?
Humans were created not to live in solitude, but in relationship with one another, and with God—the reason that we are happier when we’re in other’s company, or when we’re in a community. With the limited resources available to us, and our egocentric nature, we feel compelled to consciously or unconsciously look for means of influencing anybody or group of persons that could be an obstacle to the realisation of our goal, or that could enhance the chance of achieving it; hence the application of politics. As this is done in a workplace, it is labelled “Office politics”.
We apply politics whenever we want an action to be taken, and even when we don’t want something done; for example, when we want a member of our family to shoulder a particular responsibility, like moulding the lawn or shopping. One of the examples in a corporate setting is when the management is confronted by an opportunity course—when the budget of a department is to be accepted instead of another one, due to insufficient resources. Another example is that when we want a particular employee to be assigned to our section instead of being sent to another.
The strategy we apply to achieve any of those objectives would be politicking disguised as lobbying, or persuasion. Our ability to succeed in attaining our goal will depend on either the application of our knowledge of office politics, or our rival’s ignorance of the game.
Understanding Office Politics
Our knowledge of office politics involves understanding the environment, the players, and the weapons necessary for the game. The environment is the organisation; the players are your colleagues: your superiors, peers, and your junior colleagues. The weapons here are your communication skill, and your personality.
The vision, goals, and the culture of your organisation are the elements that you shouldn’t take for granted. You don’t only need to know them, but you also have to understand your organisation’s approach, and strategies applied to attaining its goals, and visions. You have to realise that you’re a piece of the organisation’s vision and goals realisation’s puzzle; thus, the necessity of playing your part constructively, if you want to achieve your career’s dream.
Knowing your colleagues begins with your knowledge of human nature and their predicaments. This understanding will enable you to reason, and think from their perspective. It will allow you to perceive your colleagues’ feelings, sentiments, attitude, as well as their emotions. This will enable you to trigger and unlock the strong room of their motivation. Your access to their source of motivation equips you with the knowledge of how to get their support and co-operation to achieve your goals.
Your greatest weapon in office politics is your personality, and communication skill. People are generally attracted to understanding, respectful, compassionate, humble, and people who are always ready to render services to others. These will be buying you respect, appreciation, and at the same time a strong personality, whom people will always strive to be identified with, and this includes accepting your opinions and ideas.
Your attractive personality would be crown with an excellent communication skill—your ability to listen to others, and then think, and present your ideas from their perspective. This will make your rivals not to feel humiliated, which are often the case, but believe that you understand, sympathise, and identify with their plight, and can help them to attain their goal, if they co-operate with you.
Why you should be interested in office politics
Many people believe that knowledge is the yardstick for the attainment of success. This is rarely the case, because there are innumerable very knowledgeable individuals in the world; yet, only very few arrive at the top of their professional ladder. The main reason is that those successful ones have realised that only knowledge, or even being excellent in their profession isn’t enough for professional success. For you to lift up your head above all your colleagues in today’s competitive world (besides being excellent in your field), you surely need to know what others ignore, or be an expert in the area that others are mediocre—knowing your organisation very well, and also having the type of personality as stated in these pages. With excellence as your password, and the application of your knowledge of your organisation to your advantage, the realisation of your career ambition is certain. Without office politics, this isn’t possible.
Furthermore, professional stress is one of the main predicaments facing workers today, irrespective of their field of endeavour. Many employers are laying more and more emphasis on higher productivity, but providing less resource. This puts pressure on almost all the employees of the organisation; consequently, the inexperienced bosses, and the ill-intentioned ones pass this stress to their subordinates. In addition, quite often, some organisations can even provoke stress to increase productivity. This is where your knowledge of office politics can be your ally, because with your knowledge of it, you will know how to handle your boss and your colleagues; thus, you will rarely be stressed; even when you are, you will know how to manage it effectively.
Do you know that accumulated professional stress can cause physical and psychological illnesses such as anxiety, insomnia, severe stress, which could incite hypertension or hypotension, neck, or back pains, stomach upset, and hypochondria? Sometimes, persistent worrying could also bring about sicknesses like gastro-intestinal palpitations, and muscular fatigue. Understanding office politics and knowing how and when to apply its implicit and the explicit rules will surely immunize you against most office stress provoking situations; consequently, you will never suffer from any of the above-indicated sicknesses and their derivatives.
Your knowledge of office politics is rooted to your ability to analyse, and understand people and situations. This involves understanding people’s emotions, behaviours, and their sources of motivation, which are indispensable to having meaningful relationship with people, and getting them to co-operate with you, to bring about the realisation of your dreams and aspirations. This is the wisdom of the ages. Thanks to your expertise in office politics, you can acquire this ability.
Playing office politics without crushing Anybody
It is very important to realise that any achievement that is to the detriment of anybody instead of bring happiness, will give birth to the feeling of insecurity, suspicion, and anxiety; sometimes guilt; consequently unhappiness.
In office politics, the starting point is know and do the right things when entering a new Department or starting a new job. The wisest action is to take a low profile—observing, listening, and studying others’ words, actions, and reactions, for you to understand the power play of the department or establishment.
With the understanding of your environment, the usual action would be the implicit declaration of your alliance. Quite often, most people lean on their immediate boss, Head of department, or identify with what seems to be the most powerful faction, for survival or career advancement. The disadvantages of this option are:
- Generally, you have to be a zombie to be in those people good books, so that you could be recommended for promotion whenever there is a possibility.
- No matter how careful or clever you may seem to be, you will definitely make enemies faster than you can ever imagine.
- As nothing is permanent, should the situation change, you will inevitably face the repercussion of your previous choice.
- You would be seen as lacking self-confidence, and personality—even those whose tune you dance to, will rarely trust and respect you.
- Most of the time, the people you lean on are very undependable, because to them, egocentricity is the name of the game; therefore, in time of need, they will rarely be there for you, except if they will gain from defending you.
- It is the factory of gossiping, and character assassination; thus, it often generates suspicion and tension.
The picture portrayed above is common in organisations where work-place politics is very flagrant, and the management of such organisations are dominated by mediocre. As these types of leaders cannot compete due to their incompetence, lack of self-confidence, and their feeling of insecurity, they resort to seeking alliances as a security measures, and also fragmenting the loyalty of the employees. The victims of this manipulative stratagem are often with the same personality as the plotters. An entity dominated by leaders as described here; rarely employ very competent people for fear of competition.
Consortium of mediocre drives away the competence. Such organisations have a very high rate of personnel turn-over, because besides repelling the proficient individuals, those who choose to abstain from their game are sandwiched; consequently, they leave, seeking for a job with a convivial environment, where they can optimise the exploitation of their potential.
On the other hand, organisations with competent leadership will always seek to employ very proficient employees, and they will always encourage competition both on the parallel and horizontal echelon. Unlike the previous type of organisation, there is a level playground for the flourishing of initiatives, and not only encouragement for creativity, but also rewarding it.
In organisations where politics is obvious, people are divided into the naïve, spectators, players, manipulators, and the experts. The naïve are those who are unaware of what is going on, but only doing their job innocently. The spectators see what is happening, but decide to abstain from it. The players are the colleagues who are not only aware of the game, but are actively participating in one way or the other. Experts know what is at stake, the rules of the game, and are good at applying both the implicit and the explicit rules to get whatever they want. The manipulators are those who believe that they can get whatever they want, by any means, irrespective of who may get hurt on the process.
With this knowledge, the next issue is how to handle different people such as your boss, superiors, peers and junior staff of your organisation. Many bosses see themselves not as a leader, but one that order, and push people around without any respect, and many of them expect their subordinates to worship them like a god; else, they descend their hammer on them. Good bosses see themselves as leaders who are there to plan, supervise, co-ordinate, and motivate their followers, to achieve the corporate goal. Leaders under this group could even sacrifice their personal resources for the interest of their section or department. Followers of a good leader are happy to take any order or instruction, even if that will imply foregoing their pleasure or time. In this case, meeting the set target seems natural.
If you have a good boss, you need less energy and effort for the attainment of your goal, because he or she knows dedicated and efficient employees, and endeavours to award them accordingly. However, should you need a special attention; you could always seek his or her attention privately, to communicate your message. For your message to be received positively, it’s advisable to present it in a way that would seems to be benefiting to the section or department, or even the organisation.
Conversely, should you have a difficult boss; first, try to understand the reason for the difficult behaviour. If he or she generally behaves reasonably, then the difficult behaviour could be due to stress. Nevertheless, if it’s a catalogue of hostile, abusive, and humiliating behaviour irrespective of the amount of stress in the office; then you’ll need more effort and energy to bring about a change. The first approach should be to meet him or her privately, when he or she seems to be less stressful, to express your feeling about his or her action or reaction. Be careful not to attack his or her person; else, he or she will become defensive, and your approach will be counterproductive; try to express your concern for the particular action or reaction. Nevertheless, should your repeated attempts to get your concern addressed are rebuffed, then you may have to seek counsel from the Trade union, a trusted mentor, or human resources professional, to evaluate your options, or for their intervention. If it’s a very serious case; perhaps, you can apply for a departmental transfer or even look for a job somewhere else.
Furthermore, be aware that, quite often, some credit to your achievement might go to your boss. While some of them will attribute it to you, others will claim it. Nonetheless, whatever the case, your boss will realise how good you are, and will always want you besides him or her, because he or she can count on your competence.
Your relationship with other superiors should be that of politeness and respect, because they might become your boss in the future. Never criticise your boss to anybody—not even to other superiors, because it might get to your boss. However, getting close to a superior could allow you to know what is going on behind closed doors; thereby, enabling you to act appropriately. Nonetheless, never use an interrogatory approach; else, he or she could be suspicious of your intention, and become less open. In addition, it’s better to avoid the expression of your political opinion or political affiliation at work, because you don’t know that of your superiors. Some superiors could be very cruel with those whose political opinion or affiliation is different from theirs.
Be very cautious while dealing with your colleagues, because, first, some of them may be the mirror or transmitter of the management; thus, never criticise anybody in the office, or entertain such behaviour, or listen to gossips; otherwise, whatever you said might be amplified, and then directly or indirectly transmitted to the person. However, should you hear anything, just swallow it, and never be a messenger—transmitting it to anybody; not even your best friend, because it could rapidly spread like a wild fire. Should this happen, it would be very damaging to your veracity, and trust.
It has to be pointed out that sometimes, some gossips could be very valuable. Those are professional ones, and doesn’t involve any form of character assassination. Example of a positive gossiping is the one that could enable you to learn about your organisation’s modification of political tide, or the modification of the unwritten rules of the game. Another example is the news of a possible merger or acquisition, or news of a possible vacancy in a more attractive post that might interest you. While these gossips might seem interesting, you have to ascertain the validity of the information. Again, you have to make sure that the provided information ends with you.
It’s very important to recognise that some of your peers may secretly be having their eyes on the higher step of the ladder, and they wouldn’t mind stepping on anybody to get there. However, integrity, sense of responsibility, excellence, and assiduity should be your trademark. Never take any issue personal. Whenever there is a misunderstanding, always attack the issue, and not the person. Be aware that in your organisation, like in any other social sphere, sometimes, there are the bullies, the gossips, the busybodies, and of course, the honest and kind-hearted individuals. Irrespective of the situation or the person, let your greatest ammunition be your integrity, compassion, the serving spirit, understanding, and the ability to control your emotions.
Your junior colleagues should be treated like your peers. Many people tend to ignore or under rate the importance of their junior colleagues. First, they are as important as any other person in the organisation. Second, sometimes, they can be your greatest ally. Third, your junior colleagues could render unimaginable services to you when you least expect it. Do you know that, usually, juniors staffs tend to be the most knowledgeable ones related to office politics? The reason is that quite often, when they are where issues are being discussed, their presence is being ignored; thus, they overhear the plans.
Ultimate source of success
Many people believe that their professional success depends on their boss or superiors; consequently, they do lip service to them—some even worship them. This is ignorance, because your success depends on nobody, but on God, who is the Creator of everything. Don’t forget that your boss whom you depend on for your success depends on another person. If your boss cannot be sure of his or her success, how can he or she guarantee yours?
If your success comes from God, why then should you not depend on Him, but on an individual or group of people who are surviving by the Grace of God? People can disappoint you, but God can never, because he is a faithful, loving, caring, and merciful Father. The list of His attributes is endless. He is willing to grant all your requests, if you put Him at the centre of all your daily undertakings.
How you can depend on God, you may be wondering. The starting point is to realise that you can do nothing without him—that implies accepting His supremacy. Then you have to accept Jesus Christ, His son who came and died for your sins, resurrected on the third day, and later ascended to heaven, to sit at the right hand side of his Father to intercede for your sins as it’s stated in the Bible. After acknowledging this statement, all that you have to do is to invite Jesus Christ into you life as your Lord and Saviour, and ask Him to take control of all areas of your life: family, job, emotions, finance, health, etc. with this, you will surely see how your life will take a different dimension. This will start by the sensing of peace, joy, happiness, and sense of security, no matter the circumstance.
Be assured that God loves you very much, in spite of who you think you are, but he loves you so much that He doesn’t want to leave you as you are, but wants to change you from the inside out. He’s interested in changing your character.
If you accept what has just been pointed out, repeat this statement after me:
My heavenly Father, I acknowledge that I was born and brought up in sin, and I have sin against you (cite the sins), so I pray that you should forgive me all my sins; also, grant me your grace to forgive all those who have offended me in any way, in Jesus. I acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and I invite Him into my life, and accept Him as my Lord and Saviour, who came and died for my sins. I humbly ask you to fill me with your Holy Spirit, so that He’ll protect, guide, and lead me each day of my life in Jesus name. Amen!
I am absolutely sure that if you sincerely repeat this many times with all your heart, and really believe in the power and authority of Jesus Christ, after awhile you’ll definitely sense the difference in your life.
Conversely, if you don’t accept my proposition, I implore you that, when you retire to the solitude of your bedroom, to ponder about your situation. If you’re happy with your present circumstance, then you can ignore my suggestion; else, perhaps it will be better to heed to the advice advocated in these pages. If I may ask you, if you ignore my suggestion, what do you think your situation will be within the next three, five, or ten years? I doubt very much that there’ll be any improvement. It’s up to you!
If you need more information about this issue, I suggest that you contact the pastor of your local church. I strongly believe that he will be very happy to help you.
I pray that the Almighty God; the Lord of Hosts grants all your desires according to His faithfulness, and May His grace abide by you, and above all, May He reveal Himself to you. Amen!
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