How Political Skills Can Make you a More Effective Manager

This election day, besides voting, I’ve been thinking how political skills, such as framing, coalition building, and conflict negotiation, can help nonprofit leaders become more effective. Office politics are often seen as a nuisance and distasteful consequence of organizational life, especially for people of color fighting for more just institutions and systems. Yet, if you have more than two people in a group, you’ll have to deal with limited resources, tough decision making, and office politics.  In this blog, I’ll share my own experiences, make the case for embracing and navigating political skills in a positive way, and some helpful resources.

Mastering Office Politics

Adopting a political mindset to organizational work isn’t easy. We all want to believe that our organizations are fair and democratic, and that as hard-working professionals, we’ll get recognized for our work based on merit. Unfortunately, that isn’t true, especially for women and people of color. Issues of power and authority reflected in society seep into our organizations, even ones with a charitable or public service purpose. In one nonprofit I worked in, people of color held several high-ranking positions but were rarely part of the critical decision-making meetings and water cooler conversations that propelled the organization’s work forward. Several of them shared their resentment for being treated as “the help” when their education, competence and experience was as competitive as their white counterparts but didn’t know how to address what were clearly subtle acts of exclusion.

Women and people struggle with office politics. Studies have shown that:

·       Women often overlook the importance of office politics and rely on accomplishing tasks as the primary means of advancing their careers. Women, the study found, are reluctant to engage in office politics and often find it distasteful.

·       Another study of black men working in Predominantly White Organizations (PWOs) showed that they were less likely to call out racial microagressions because they did not want to be perceived as “too sensitive” even though the long-term impact of such incivilities took an emotional toll and impacted their ability to perform their work

·       Latinx social workers in Toronto found that they struggled to speak for themselves and the voices of disenfranchised communities they served to their male dominated nonprofit organizations, adding to a sense of powerlessness, stress of working long hours and low wages, according to another study.

For women and people of color, playing office politics can be a double-edged sword, according to an article by Harvard Business Review. Professionals are more effective when they have strong political skills but can backfire because the same skills challenge stereotypical expectations. Women, for example, find it difficult to draw attention to accomplishments because it goes against the traditional gender stereotype that women should be self-effacing.  Another study showed how people of color were viewed as less effective by their bosses when they promoted diversity and equity efforts.

Building Positive Political Skills

In the same way national leaders build coalitions, are skilled at framing issues, or effectively deal with conflict, nonprofit managers must rely on similar skills to be effective. I teach a graduate level class on organizational change and have my students take a leadership assessment based on Deal and Bolman’s Reframing Organizations. The questionnaire asks you to describe how you behave at work based on four orientations: analytical, relational, political or cultural. Most of my students work in the health care, nonprofit or government sector and tend to score higher towards an analytical or empathetic orientation. Given very few students identify themselves as having a strong political orientation, I use this tool to discuss different strategies for developing political competencies.

Here are some other tools I’ve found helpful:

·       Go big and go together - Having struggled with in my career, I've come to realize that it's impossible to get anything accomplished on your own, hoping individuals will join you on your journey. No one can move an idea alone. Unless you're cognizant of how office politics affects your ability to garner support and accomplish meaningful work, your impact will be diminished. Research has also show that developing your political skill also reduces stress and enhances performance, reputation, promotability, and career progression at work. 

·       Work on Your Framing - Another important political skill is framing. Knowing how to use the right words to gain support and momentum. The continual application and use of this approach, relative to office politics, can help you actively refine your aptitude and pragmatic use of this skill. To increase your influence, one of the most important skills in my opinion is the ability to frame.  Polls show Americans are more supportive of the Affordable Care Act than ObamaCare even though it’s the same legislation, for example. Read Gay Hill T. Fairhurst’s, “The Power of Framing,” which provides an overview of the creation of the language of leadership which helps professionals strengthen their framing skills.

·       Community Organizing @Work - I’ve taken my fair share of community organizing trainings and feel that the skills I’ve learned in agenda setting, relationship building, and active listening are also important within organizations. DYCD produced a website tool kit, written by Community Resource Exchange, to help nonprofit leaders start and strengthen strategic partnerships. The toolkit has simple exercises, links to research, and documents anyone can use to help you assess, evaluate, and improve internal and external partnerships. Sometimes, however, the path forward could be as simple as a cup of coffee with an important leader within your organization which can make a stark difference when you need allies to support your work.

As you get bombarded with news alerts, while you're waiting in line to vote or having your favorite show interrupted by a campaign ad, take a minute to appreciate the thought and skills that go into these strategies and think about how you can integrate some of these skills it into your work in order to be a more effective non-profit professional.