Workplace Politics

We’ve looked at the intricacies of handling information. However, the information that you handle is just a small subset of all of the information that is flowing around the company at any given time.

The word politics is defined by Wikipedia as the way that people living in groups make decisions. Building software is all about making decisions: what to build, how to build it, who should build it, how to market it and sell it, and also what not to build as a result.

However, the word politics itself probably doesn’t make you think of a political scientist observing behaviors in a local community. Instead, I assume you think of campaign trails, elections, and political parties. We are united and divided by differing ideologies. Companies have their own internal ideologies and culture that encode how they treat people, make decisions, and get things done.

Work, as in life, is filled with many independent actors in a complex system. Each actor is motivated by differing interests, passions, and values. Each is working independently toward the greater good of the company, and politics are what arise from the continual negotiation, persuasion, and debate of ideas.

The term workplace politics has often been used to describe purely negative situations such as those being taken advantage of, proverbial backstabbing, or people being poorly treated for the gain of others. I would say that is a subset of workplace politics: it can potentially happen, and it does, but it’s not the wave that you should be looking to ride. You can use politics for good.

Politics in the workplace are always going to happen. You shouldn’t choose to not engage with them, because if you don’t, then you’ll find that your career suffers as a result, especially as you spend more time in management. Instead, the art is to understand the politics of the workplace to discover how you can navigate them and use them to your advantage while at the same time acting for the greater good. Ego, power, unwritten rules, and implicit culture unmask themselves at higher levels of an organization, and you need to be able to harness them with a clean reputation and, even better, use them for the benefit of everyone else.

Let’s dig deeper into what they mean.

How Do Politics Arise?

Politics typically arise because of tension between different types of social structures:

• The org chart. This is the most obvious place where politics can occur. It could be debate between you and your boss about your own interests, or conflict between you and your direct reports. It also manifests in individuals reaching down or up through the org chart to promote their ideas and increase their influence.

• Close-knit informal groups. There will always be groups of people who are close to each other and protect each other through friendship, camaraderie, or shared interests. They have no formal power structure in the org chart, but they lobby and work together.

• Influential people. Singular influential people, who may have much more say than others because of their tenure, celebrity, or bargaining power can make situations political or difficult to navigate because of the difficulty of building consensus without them.

As you spend more time in a managerial role, you’ll see how decision-making is rarely an easy task. You have to navigate the structures and people just described in order to make sure that things move forward in a constructive manner.

Like in real politics, all political situations and negotiations involve an element of risk. How should you conduct yourself among the various groups lobbying for various, sometimes contradictory things? How does your team fit within all of this?

Getting involved in the wrong type of politics can be harmful, so you need to be able to protect yourself from the kinds of interactions that are toxic and only exist for those involved to be cliquey, spiteful, and malicious. However, getting politics right builds your authority, influence, and ability to get things done, opening up further doors in your managerial career.

Using Politics Positively

Let’s explore ways that you should use politics to your advantage. The word advantage is loaded. But what we mean is finding ways to positively increase your output as a manager, ensuring your team is well connected and exposed to meaningful and impactful work, and having a positive effect on the rest of the department and company.

Connecting with Teams and Groups

Who makes decisions in your organization? Who is influential? Who are the close groups of individuals that think similarly, and who are the rival factions? Identifying this up front allows you to navigate sensibly through the political landscape and gives you the best chance of knowing who to go to to build consensus on particular issues, and who to approach differently or even avoid.

Take note of the different teams and divisions. What are their priorities? What motivates them? What do they care about and what are they knowledgeable about? Which individuals have sizable influence and why? Is it because of their tenure or their technical prowess? By mapping out the organization and learning how it currently works, you can identify which groups and individuals you can collaborate with on different issues with the least amount of friction.

Once you’re done, set yourself a challenge to introduce yourself to them and begin building some connections. Remember that to have influence and to make an impact, you’ll need to win hearts and minds. You’re connecting with people to meet your colleagues, offer them your support, understand them better, and help them get things done, and vice versa. Positivity and kindness prevail.

Building Consensus

As companies grow in size, projects and initiatives move forward through collective effort rather than just the force of will of an individual. When working, you’ll need to understand that consensus—at least as much as you can get—is important. In small companies and startups you can just take the proverbial bull by the horns and do whatever you want alone with few repercussions, but larger companies are different.

You can start small and informal. Let’s use an example. If your team wants to do something dramatically different to the codebase for their next project, then it’s important to take as many people as you can along for the journey at the same time. It’s likely that your team won’t be the first that has thought of doing something like you’re proposing, so start by having some informal conversations with those that are senior, influential, and close to the matters at hand.

Assuming that informal conversations have been successful, then you can announce more widely that you’d like to try a proof of concept pull request, or even just write an idea paper for circulation. It’s important that those you initially talked to are able to sponsor your efforts and offer their support, and that any work that you propose is just that: a proposal. Build consensus by making others feel like they always have the opportunity to contribute to what you are suggesting rather than it appearing to be a mandate. It will unlock the ability to make wider-reaching decisions.

Being Yourself

Appearances and interactions are important. You need to be yourself in a consistent manner to ensure that you’re able to engage well with others and represent your teams correctly and respectfully. Don’t pretend to be somebody you’re not. Don’t act a part to attempt to impress. Just be you. That’s more than enough. You’re great.

Always be open, transparent, respectfully critical, and clear on where you stand. Have the confidence to be open to being proved wrong and to be accepting if you are. Be open to disagree and commit to initiatives. Never push agendas for the sake of serving only one’s self. Fundamentally your means of conduct comes down to the Golden Rule: treat others how you would wish to be treated yourself, and set the bar high.

Additionally, remember that when you become a manager, whether it’s right or not, your position in the org chart grants you more power and you must wield this power respectfully and wisely. In the game of politics, you must make sure that your relationships with particular staff are never seen to be favorable or unfavorable for personal reasons, otherwise you can be seen to be cliquey or nepotistic and this will make you less trustworthy. It may also bite you in the future. You need to engage equally and fairly with all, regardless of your personal relationships with them.

Disagree and Commit

Nobody will agree on everything, especially when the subject is complicated, such as how to rearchitect an application or which project should be prioritized highest. Thankfully, there’s a principle that can help you. To disagree and commit is to state that a group hasn’t achieved consensus on a decision that’s being made, but once the decision is finalized, they’ll commit to following it. This avoids the lack of consensus carrying over beyond the decision boundary, preventing progress.

Building Your Network

Previously we’ve talked about building a network of peers from different areas of the business to share information, get feedback, and sound out your ideas. In workplace politics, your network of peers is important as it allows you to be more broadly informed about how the wider business feels about your own initiatives and priorities. It also gives you a chance to trial ideas before taking them any further, allowing you to initially operate in a safe, cross-disciplinary setting. Continually foster this network and use it to make yourself a better manager.

Using Politics Negatively

We’ve explored a number of ways in which the politics of the workplace can be used positively to both your advantage and the advantage of everyone else. That’s awesome. But there are many negative ways that you can engage in workplace politics that will at best result in conflict and at worst have a negative impact on your career. You don’t want to do these. Let’s look at them.

Misuse of Power

While your new-found managerial seniority may allow you to just tell people what to do, without winning hearts and minds, you’ll gradually erode your respect in the eyes of your peers and ultimately your influence. I like to imagine each manager having an energy bar, like in a video game, that is depleted when a controversial override on a decision is made or an unpopular direct order is issued. You must use overrides tactically and sparingly. The bar replenishes when you move forward with your team in a congruent manner where they are motivated to go on the same journey as you.

Level-Jumping

I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of going over someone’s head to their manager because it’s quicker and easier than going via the chain of command. Now, there may be times that this is quick, easy, and convenient. But the person being left out in the middle feels awful. Perhaps things are going on in their team, division, or department that they are none the wiser about. Sometimes you may have a good relationship with your manager’s manager or even be friends outside of work, but you need to make sure that you go via the proper channels and bring your own manager along for the ride. Otherwise they’ll feel like somebody else is influencing their destiny behind their backs. (An exception to this rule is skip-level meetings, where a manager will have occasional check-ins with their direct report’s staff to see how they’re doing.)

The same is also true for those who run a large organization with many layers of management. If you’re going directly to the direct reports of your own direct reports about issues that should really involve the person in between, then you’re meddling and it shows disrespect for the person being left out. Could you not delegate this to them? Why not? Could you not coach them to do so?

Being Unprofessional

I’m sure that this goes without saying. If you wish to be influential and effective as a manager, then you need to engage with others professionally, respectfully, and kindly. This may be in contrast to how you feel in particular situations, especially if discussions are emotionally loaded, but you owe it to all that you interact with to be open, honest, transparent, and without ulterior motives. You need to operate for the greater good.

Those who are unprofessional erode the trust that the organization has in them, and in higher levels of the org chart where trust is of utmost importance, those who cannot demonstrate it will find themselves unable to progress their careers. Karma always comes back around.

Going Rogue

If you think that the best way to demonstrate how good your idea or initiative is by just doing it without anyone knowing, then it’s likely to cause much more conflict down the line than if you’d built consensus in the first place. Going rogue is similar to building up technical debt: it gets worse the longer that it continues and it’s harder to back out from.

For example, if you thought the best way to make big architectural change in the codebase was to do it silently rather than taking everyone else along for the ride, then you may find yourself unpopular when those controversial code changes end up being forced through because of an impending deadline for a feature, or even worse, blocking the whole deliverable.

If you’re unable to build consensus, then maybe your idea or initiative isn’t as good as you originally thought it was. Use the opinions of others to balance your own views and reveal your biases. You’ll be better for it.

Personal Gain

The last negative area should come as no surprise: you should not use workplace politics for malicious personal gain. Bending ears to force through your candidate against the will of others so that you get the referral bonus is a terrible and unethical thing to do. Using your influence to force others into situations they don’t want to be in for your own gain is also seriously bad juju. Abusing your position to make others feel small, powerless, or marginalized is the worst form of politicking and will always catch up with you. Just don’t. Ever. You are here to serve others, not yourself.