Is Office Politics A Necessary Career Skill?
I like to look on Technorati for blogs I haven’t discovered yet, and I finally found someone who put a positive spin on office politics—or at least a neutral one. The truth of the matter is that office politics is simply a tool to get things done in an organization. Politics has to do with strategic influence. It’s about how to make sure your ideas are considered. Its about how to have an impact at work.
Office politics and a knife have a lot in common. Both are useful tools or destructive instruments, depending on the intentions of the person using them. If the intentions of the user are ethical and beneficial for the organization as a whole, there is nothing inherently evil about office politics.
You don’t have to like office politics, but you do need to accept it as part of organizational life. You also need to learn to use it for ethical purposes if you are going to be promotable. Employees who learn how to make politics work for them are promotable, pluggers aren’t.
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fran said,
Wrote on September 4, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
so how do you learn how to make politics? is it just about experience? nice blog. regards
John W. Burrows, Ph.D. said,
Wrote on September 6, 2007 @ 9:30 am
Great question. You have really gotten at my motivation for writing this blog. In some organizations, avoiding politics will get you eaten alive. In others, avoiding politics will just get you frustrated. As long as it’s ethical, and benefits the organization as a whole, politics is not necessarily evil.
The good news is that political savvy is a learnable skill. Like any skill, though, if you wait to learn it until you need it, it is probably too late.
I envision this blog as a “how-to” list, with input both from me and the readers. So stay tuned!
Office Politics: The Young and The Powerless « The Promotable Employee said,
Wrote on September 11, 2007 @ 2:01 am
[...] you buy into this notion of ethical office politics as a necessary skill set of the promotable employee, before entering the political arena it is a [...]
Idetrorce said,
Wrote on December 15, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce