Four Ways to Navigate Office Politics (and make it a Happier Place).

Funny thing about Office Politics - we always end up using schoolyard analogies to understand and relate to them such as

"Bully"

Picture: Diego Grez

Bullies - or people exerting power for sadistic enjoyment - and rivalries between people competing for prestige, find their way from the sandbox to the boardroom. It's like we never left High School. Or did school indoctrinate us so well that we know no other way(s)?

Some folks think High School is a hotbed for shame, isolation, fear and need for identity, which stay with us through our adult life.

And we bring this to the Office as well, even as supervisors, where ethical and identity issues continue to clash.

I read an article on 'doing the right thing', where the author, a department head, was supposed to give raises on merit, but found other department heads competing with him for a 'prize pot' of money to be divided amongst the lucky few.

Trying to argue on merit, the author found push-back, and was confused : why not just award the best employees?

Yeah, you might groan, 'Office Politics'. But what if your job was at stake?

The author had to resign.

We clearly need ways to maneuver these ethical death-traps.

What can we do to Navigate Office Politics?

1. Rules are Different from Norms

Written rules are clear- they are like the law, and must be followed... right?

Not always.

Norms, or unwritten social rules of behavior, often take over when rules are not enforced.

So, if you have meetings, and tell everyone to be there on time, but don't say anything when people are five minutes late, you allow a norm to supersede the rule.

In our featured article, the rule was to raise employee pay on merit. The Norm was to do so... to a point... but then ensure each department had a fair share of raises, more so for morale and face-saving for the executive. The author was unaware of this.

And so he engaged in conflicts that upset the 'established order', and eventually lost him the goodwill of the firm.

2. Disagreement is often less based on Task, more on SocioEmotional components

How often have you argued with a friend or significant other, not knowing why the argument started in the first place?

In this clip from the SitCom Everybody Loves Raymond, it's all about the concrete task- a can opener- and how that one object gets everyone upset.

Or is it?

Our author thought he was fighting for raises based on merit, which was correct, but only to a point.

Like the Barones in the video, he later saw how perspective changes our actions, and how perspective is greatly determined by actions of the past - in other words,their Pain has a Context.

The Family members each have a conflict-based relationship, which colors their interpretations of the story and outcome.

You may think it's about the matter at hand, say merit-based raises, or as in the video, a can opener. In reality though, the entirety of a group's history of association, power-imbalances and need for face-saving governs a lot of decision making.

3. Understand peoples' reactions to their pain

High School arguably teaches us to harbor shame and hurt, but this article in New York Magazine tells us how we react to it in very different ways:

Most of us, says Brown, opt for one of three strategies to cope with this pain. We move away from it, “by secret-keeping, by hiding”; we move toward it, “by people-pleasing”; or we move against it “by using shame and aggression to fight shame and aggression.” Whichever strategy we choose, she says, the odds are good we’ll use that strategy for life, and those feelings of shame will heave to the surface, unbidden and unannounced, in all sorts of unfortunate settings down the road.

The perspective we take is informed by conflict avoidance capacity, and in many cases, creates default positions for us to react from called latitudes of acceptance, rejection and noncommitance. Each of these then has trigger situations and thoughts that create conflict (rejection) or agreement (acceptance) - in this case, the author's brow-beating of his colleagues was a violation of the norms, undermined their leadership effectiveness ("your team isn't good enough for raises") and his inability to trade-off per norm led to their superior downgrading the author's goodwill.

So when his job was on the line, no one stepped forward to help.

4. Change through Acceptance

One of the hardest things is trying to institute change in what appear to be unhealthy business practices.

Here is a novel idea - change these unhealthy practices by first accepting them. Norms are entrenched in the Culture of the Organization, and any 'outsider' trying to change things will immediately and summarily be dealt with. But accepting the norms, at least at the onset, gives the new person a chance to apply these steps and understand the core behind the bad practices. If the core is healed through stronger collegiality, the Culture is easier to fix, because this time, you won't be alone.