InPower Women Essentials: Office Politics ???????? – A Game Worth Playing? (Part 1)

Let’s dive into a topic–office politics–that many women “hate,” but which can actually become a key to our success when we reframe a “game rigged against us” into “a game worth winning.” ~ Dana Theus

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DON’T OPT OUT OF OFFICE POLITICS ???????? –??AT LEAST NOT BEFORE YOU LEARN TO PLAY THE GAME

Early in my career, I played in politics as an international policy analyst for telecommunications companies. I was more interested in the substance of policy than the game of it, but I found the game of it pretty interesting, too. What I did NOT find interesting was the game of politics between the people in my own office, which seemed much more ruthless than the politics of Washington DC, Brussels, and Tokyo.

Office Politics can make you sick.

Office politics was responsible for way too much angst and stress in my life for too many years. It made me not want to be a manager. I was sick a lot in ways I recognize now were a function of too much stress (and allergies I didn’t know I had–modern medicine, FTW!)

I did, eventually, get over that hesitation and found managing people more rewarding, in part because I’d learned to play the game of politics enough to help my teams succeed. I learned to manage and lead people by looking out for their best interests in the company culture and triangulating the company’s goals with theirs, coaching and guiding them. I helped them when they got stuck. I turned out to be a decent manager.

But playing politics UP the chain still daunted me.

Playing Office Politics UP is different than playing it down.

I got on well with my peers and superiors, but I struggled to figure out how to advance. I noticed the competitive nature of the leadership team, and it turned me off. Why couldn’t we all just get along? Who cares about winning the CEO’s approval this week? I wanted to earn it by doing the best work possible.

And the CEO took advantage of my work ethic. He gave me reasonable raises, mentoring, and credit for what I did well. But not a promotion to the executive suite. When I asked him why, I could tell he did not know how to tell me the truth. I thought it was because I wasn’t willing to play the game.?

And I didn’t care. I decided that I knew I could get through the glass ceiling if I wanted to. I just didn’t want to. I quit, and he hired me back as a contractor for my historical knowledge and insight, working fewer hours for more money. I took it as a win and moved on.

Office Politics is a game you can win, but first you have to play.

As my career matured and I did get into the executive suite, I learned more lessons. It turns out that in a functional organization, top leadership succeeds by doing work unique to its level.?

• Being strategic in the treetops, not the weeds
• Working smarter, not harder
• Leading up, down, and out to the external market
• Playing your position on the team with other execs (and passing the ball when it will help the team)
• Setting priorities and saying ‘no’ more than saying ‘yes’

And, effective executives learn to use politics–the understanding of human dynamics to achieve a goal–to win for yourself, your team and your organization.?

It turns out that politics–in an office, an industry, a country, or a family–is simply the system of learning how that group of people agree to play together. It’s little more than a system of informal and formal rules regarding who can win, how they can win, what we do with the people who don’t win, and how we’re penalized if we break the rules.

If you don’t know the rules, you can’t win, so you don’t want to play. But once you learn the rules you can decide if you want to play because you’ll have a better chance of winning.

And not every game feels like a set of rules we want to bind ourselves to. Some games are?rigged against you, especially if you don’t present as a white male (and some games don’t particularly help all white males, either.) There are plenty of games that don’t feel ethical, aligned with our values, or supportive of being who we want to be in the world.?

So you have to find the game of politics you want to play in, but when you’re there, if “getting ahead” in any form is your goal, you have to learn to play.

There is no office that does not have politics. Pick your game.

After many years in business, here is my advice as an executive coach and a human.?Learn to play the game.

Give yourself the benefit of learning the rules and finding out if doing what it takes to have a shot at “winning” is aligned with who you are. Many of my clients are surprised that once they know the rules and get in the game, they win more often than they ever thought they could.

Also, give yourself permission to opt out once you know the rules and have played a little bit. Whatever game you move onto–and you ARE moving on to another game–you’ll be a better player for having practiced on another field.

A final thought on competition.

You’ll note that I position business as a game to win in this note, but don’t mention competition prominently. Competition is its own subject, which maybe we’ll cover in the future, but in essence, I believe these three things are all be true:

• Organizations and the ascension to leadership are inherently competitive - they exist in the game of scarcity where there are winners and losers.
• Organizations also exist in a larger environment of abundance where people can switch from one competitive environment to another to change their fortunes.
• Human dynamics–from which office politics emerge–reflect both these truths and can become dysfunctionally competitive, or functionally competitive by leaning heavily into collaborative cultures.

The difference between creating a dysfunctional culture of office politics and a functional one??

Leadership.

Choose the environment you want to lead in, and then lead.?

COACHING QUESTIONS

Go deeper into this topic by setting your phone timer and spending at least ten minutes thinking/journaling on these questions:

• Do you feel like you have a chance at “winning” the office politics games you play?
• When was the last time you “won” and why? Lost?
• Looking back on those experiences, what rules were you following (or not) that dictated the outcome?
• Looking back, what could you/would you do differently? Why?
• What do you think of this article? Why?
• If you think of politics as “just a game” does it make you more or less comfortable with the idea of playing it?
• What game are you playing today? Are you playing to win??
• What game do you want to play in tomorrow? How can you prepare yourself today, to win tomorrow?

Want to talk about it? Bring your thoughts on the above to our next InPower Women’s Mastermind meeting where we’ll discuss this and more.?

Join us on MARCH 20th @ 12pm EASTERN: Office Policitcs: A Game Worth Playing [Mastermind Zoom]. Rethink the games of office politics, what it takes to win, and whether it’s worth playing the game where you are right now.?- Learn More & Register

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InPowering Powerful Women,

Dana Theus

Executive Coach

InPower Coaching

Look for part II of the InPower Essentials newsletter next week!

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