Managing Politics at Work

Every one of you will have stories to tell about workplace politics: how people you trusted let you down, how you misread the political motives of some of your colleagues, how you were surprised by the political intentions of colleagues you had previously judged to be nonpolitical, how you failed to understand who had infl uence over which aspect of a key decision or how you couldn’t fi nd colleague support for your preferred outcome over a particular decision. You’ll have many other variations on these themes as well. Each of you will also have stories to tell of situations where you used your political management skills effectively to get things done: where you made sound judgments about which more infl uential colleagues to approach for support over a particular issue, where you worked long and hard to presell your proposals to other colleagues and formed effective and infl uential alliances, where you handled the controlling behaviors of colleagues effectively or where you successfully confronted someone who tried to take your personal power from you. You’ll have many variations on these themes too, but, at the end of the day, it’s what you learn from the situations that haven’t gone your way that will enable you to identify and handle similar dynamics differently and better in the future.