KEY POINTS:
Most people say they hate office politics. When asked to describe politics at work, most people come up with a long list of negatives: power plays, gossip, competition, back-stabbing, hidden agendas and outright sabotage.
Politics is all about power and often about the misuse of power. Principled people mistrust power, fearing that it will only corrupt. Although that may sometimes be true, we need to understand and cultivate positive political power developed with highly moral and ethical intentions.
Politics are essentially neutral.
The morality and ethics of politics at work depend entirely on the intentions of those involved. In any organisation, office politics really refers to the informal ways that things get done.
Beyond the formal hierarchy and organisational chart, there are the interpersonal interactions involved in how resources are allocated, whose priorities matter and how decisions are made. Engaging in office politics involves getting and using power and, ultimately, power is about your ability to get things done.
It is essential that you recognise and learn to operate well within your organisation's informal political processes.
Seeking power is often considered "shady" and intrinsically immoral. Principled people worry about the ethics of gaining and using political power, fearing it is morally unacceptable and sure to corrupt. However, it is possible to harness power in the service of higher goals. Being powerless does nothing to advance the goals of principle. Take, for example, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. None of these leaders avoided gaining and using political power.
It is not only desirable, it is an important responsibility to learn to gain and use personal political power as a means to positive and principled ends.
What if you don't want to play? Many believe that if they keep their head down, do a good job and stay out of the way, they will avoid the politics altogether. This is a myth and a mistake. Office politics - the informal part of an organisation's operations - are unavoidable and inescapable. You avoid engaging in office politics at your own peril. You can easily become a victim of what you don't understand.
Your failure at the hands of political manoeuvres only results in your own suffering. Worse yet, your principles and values and the work that you care about may not advance.
So how do we begin to understand and use positive political power?
There are, according to Michael and Deborah Dobson, authors of Enlightened Office Politics: Understanding, Coping with, and Winning the Game - Without Losing Your Soul, six types of personal political power: role power, relationship power, resource power, rhetoric power, respect and reason and purpose.
We are strong in at least one or two of these areas. At the same time, we need to develop those areas where we are less skilled in order to gain balance and maximise our effectiveness.
Role power refers to the impact or power that is inherent in your position. Your role in the organisation is one measure of your personal political power. Relationship power is crucial. This is the power that comes from who you know and how you know them. The more people in the organisation that you get to know personally, the more allies and support you can expect to have. This source of power may be seen as manipulative.
We're not talking about getting to know someone to get their resources or contacts. It is important to be recognised as a dependable resource for others in order to develop mutually supportive relationships at every level in the organisation.
Resource power refers to what you control - material resources, access to others with power, time and money. This includes the power to approve someone's budget or to decide who gets access to everything from equipment, training, travel or parking spaces. Rhetoric power is the power you get from your ability to communicate.
If you speak and write well, you have the power to persuade or influence others. If you do great work, it can be lost on others if you can't get your ideas and your priorities across via effective communication.
Respect power speaks for itself. You are powerful, in one sense, according to the opinions others hold about you: your integrity, your dependability, your skills and accomplishments. In the interests of developing respect power, it is essential to develop competence, confidence, credibility and trust.
Finally, and perhaps most important, is the power you achieve via the reason and purpose you bring to your work. This refers to the power you get from being clear about your goals and your vision for your own contribution to the greater vision and mission of the organisation. There is nothing more powerful than a clearly focused goal based on a vision that includes higher moral and/or ethical aims.
Clearly, you don't have to be equally strong and powerful in all areas. These sources of personal political power are interactive. Developing strength in one area influences all the others; likewise, weakness in one area detracts from the others. If you are weak in rhetoric power, you may lack the ability to influence others and/or sell your ideas. If you are particularly weak in relationship power, you may become isolated or be misunderstood because others simply don't know you.
Perhaps the most important factor to consider when faced with office politics is that of personal responsibility. Whose job is it to provide a positive model for ethical political behaviour? Who is going to counter the complaining, the negative atmosphere and the helplessness that assumes that "nothing ever changes around here?"
The good news, and the bad news, is that we are the ones responsible for positive organisational culture change. It is often assumed that management bears the responsibility for change, however, most programmes aimed at "team building" or "visioning" fail to address the most important aspect involved in positive organisational change: personal action.
We are left with a promise and a challenge. The promise is that we can gain and use political power for highly principled ends and, in the process, have a profoundly positive impact on the culture of an organisation. The challenge is that this involves no small amount of courage. It takes strength and resolve to counter the negative influences and a toxic atmosphere at work. The decision to act can be accompanied by anxiety, therefore, it is important to look at and to confront what we fear. We may fear being alone and out on a limb as the sole positive voice. We don't want to be disliked, rejected or seen as foolish or wrong. In fact, it is important to maintain healthy relationships while, at the same time, going against the negative flow. This requires patience, tact and a sense of humour.
Positive personal political power - becoming "empowered" - involves taking a risk. It requires taking the risk to be yourself, to be decisive and act, to accept some anxiety along the way, and to overcome the illusion of helplessness. It is important to stop blaming others, our situation, or the "politics" that are inevitable. There is nothing more empowering than the decision to be authentic, inspired, and to work in the interests of principled goals and a higher purpose.
It is vitally important to learn to appreciate and practice positive politics in the interests of principles and ethics. With commitment, courage and bit of homework, it is possible to become empowered, find your own voice and learn to successfully manage the political landscape at work.
Louisa S. Walker, PhD, offers a one-day course in office politics called "Successfully Managing Workplace Dynamics" through the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Auckland. More information at http://www.cce.auckland.ac.nz/pdcourses.
