Do You HATE Office Politics

I certainly hated it when I was still in the corporate world and I did my best to pretend it didn’t really exist. The reality is that every organization has some form of internal politics and you ignore it at your peril.

As Niven Postma, the author of the book If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Do You, explains, if you don’t take the time to understand the politics within your organization, it’s like playing on only half the playing field. She shares that every organization has a formal side and an informal side. An example of the formal side is a formal meeting and the informal side is the informal discussions that take place before and after the meeting.

I was once in a very awkward situation where one of the people in a regularly scheduled meeting, immediately shared everything that was discussed with a regional executive who would then weigh in via email on anything he didn’t agree with. If we were talking about any topics that we knew he had strong feelings about, we would tend do this in informal discussions outside of the main meeting, rather than in the meeting. It was a very unhealthy work environment, and I was thinking of leaving the company, when a wonderful thing happened – the regional executive left the company and we no longer needed to have our off-line meetings.

Postma also explains that it’s important to know the difference between an enemy and an adversary. An enemy is someone who unconditionally resists you, no matter what you say or do, whereas an adversary is someone who conditionally resists you. If you can take the time to understand their position, you may even find you are able to turn them into an ally.

She recommends that while it’s important to understand our personal values, sometimes our behaviour may need to flex, based on the context we’re in. It's true that being totally authentic is a wonderful feeling, however you may want to think about how you express your opinions, and you may choose to show up slightly differently than you typically would, to take account of the politics of the environment you’re working in.

Postma says that while all offices have politics, the level of politics in organizations ranges from minimal, to moderate, to highly politicised, which can be very challenging and she says can tend to be more common in older or highly matrixed organizations.?

She says that there are also some companies which are pathologically politicised. If you’re in this type of toxic environment where there’s constant and unrelenting abuse, where employees are feeling fearful, unable to speak up and voice their opinions and have no sense of personal agency, her message is - this is not normal. Her advice if you find yourself in one of these situations is GET OUT!

If you find yourself in an unhealthy work environment, I invite you to go to my website Best Rest of Your Life Coaching and book a 20-minute confidential call with me to discuss your situation. I’ll probably have a few words of advice and if you’d like additional support, I can help you make a plan to exit your current environment on your own terms and transition into somewhere much more uplifting.

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