The Best Way to Play Office Politics

[Music] welcome to the hbr idea cast from Harvard Business Review I'm Sarah Green I'm here today with Linda Hill and Kent linebach authors of being the boss the three imperatives for becoming a great leader thanks so much to both of you for joining us pleasure pleasure so in the book when you talk about managing your network which is essentially it sounds like interorganizational politics what's one of the biggest mistakes that a new manager can make I can tell you the mistake I made which was don't do it um I just kind of refused to do

all that stuff to me organizations were political and I didn't really want to have much to do with any of that and it was did not help me took me a long time and I'm not sure I ever completely learned the value of doing that but it was difficult I just simply thought it was a waste of time didn't didn't want to do it I think that's a huge mistake how come so many managers seem to have the same impulse of it's a waste of time and and I don't want to deal with it I

think in fact many managers think that way because they think about power being sort of corrupting you that it's a bad thing and that you don't want to be using your power playing with those politics instead of appreciating that organizations are inherently political entities and they are political because of uh the of three sources of of conflict that are just built into organizational life we have diversity of perspectives we have a need to work those through because we're interdependent and of course there's going to be inevitable conflict and we have to make tough choices about

the scarce resources in an organization and those are the the factors that actually create the political dynamics that you need to pay attention to so unless you pay attention to those and understand how to use them constructively you actually will find yourself being powerless and not being able to get done what you think is the right thing to do so if you want to behave ethically and in in a productive way for your group you actually need to pay attention to those and use those Dynamics to get things done as opposed to being afraid of

them or ignoring them because it's impossible Linda actually points out something very useful that I had actually never thought of um but powerlessness corrupts the lack of power corrupts if you don't have power then you can't stand up for what you believe is right in an organization and how many people through history have we seen who said I had to do it they made me do it they had no power now Kent at the risk of getting a little bit personal since you brought up your own sort of experience there um I just want to

ask do you find yourself often in a position of powerlessness by not sort of paying more attention to the the politics of the company I probably wouldn't have described it as powerlessness though that probably was what it was I simply found that some things I really wanted to get done didn't get done I didn't build Bridges to other people I didn't make allies of other people I thought uh if they can see the light then good for them if they can't see the light well they must be dumb they must be dense there's something wrong

with them didn't work all that well well let's get into then maybe a little bit more how people in a position like that could build those bridges I know in the book you talk about the need to build actually three networks um um can you maybe talk a little bit about what those are and and we can then get into sort of how we might go about doing that why three well I think a couple of things are important to keep in mind I think one of the reasons why people actually ignore or don't pay

attention to politics is they sort of see their job as just managing their team they think about the people that they have formal authority over and they think they're supposed to focus their attentions there and not appreciate that you need other people for a range of things which is why there are three networks you want to pay attention to you need one group of people to help you sort of get your job done in a daily way and I get your job done I should say the team's job done because you're responsible for what the

team is doing so that's your operational Network then you need your strategic Network and that is a network that you use to really help you keep track of what's really going on to scan the environment and know what the opportunities are that are out there that your team might take advantage of or the the challenges or the threats they need to prepare for so that's your strategic Network that you sort of developed to help you prepare for the future which you always must be thinking about in our very Dynamic business environment and then the last

network is really your developmental Network who do you need to know and be in connection with and have a relationship with to help you continue to grow and develop because fundamentally we're very practical Learners we're very social Learners and we only learn from our our really our work experience and to get access to the kind of work experience you need you need to have the right relationships because what you know determines um what you who you know determines what you get to do and what you get to do will determine what you get to know

so you have to worry about that developmental Network as well when you're talking about these different kinds of networks how do you decide who gets to be in them how how do you know who should be in your developmental Network versus your operational Network um there's there can be overlap obviously amongst these three networks and so to the extent that you can create that overlap or that overlap exists it makes it easier because they all take time and energy to cultivate you don't just say by the way you know I guess when we were were

younger we used to say will you be my friend you can't really walk up to someone and say will you be my mentor you sponsor me will you do this for me you can't sort of do it that way you have to cultivate and build some credibility with that person first so to figure out who should be in those networks what you first need to be clear about is what are you trying to get done and where are you trying to go and unless you have an understanding of what the plan is for the group

and what the plan is for your own developmental needs then you're not going to be in a very good position to figure out who in fact you should be targeting to try to build relationships with and then you got to make sure you can kind of create the opportunities to BU build those relationships in a in a real way and that means um sort of thinking strategically that maybe you might want to be on that task force even though it feels like a waste of time it might be a way for you to figure out

what's going on in another part of the organization to meet some different people so you're not just talking to your friends and you get access to maybe a person who's important in another part of the organization that's going to be very important for the future of your group so you need to think a little bit strategically about that you also need to understand the company and where it's trying to go because your plans need to fit with the company and you need to you need to understand uh how the company is going to work in

the future you need to understand how your group's plans fit with that and if you don't is that you know perhaps indicative of a bigger problem or is that kind of the kind of thing you could figure out by paying more attention to your network to get that kind of information flowing to you well I think sometimes we act as if you can come up with what your plan is by sitting at your desk and sort of writing out oh this is what I see it's like an analytic task but it's much more than an

analytic task you need to go out and collect information from all the various constituencies who you're dependent on and your group's dependent on and that are dependent on you so that you can do that alignment so that you're making sure that your priorities are consistent with the priorities of the other people in the organization and that they actually understand what your priorities are so when you go to ask for that big favor they know you're well intended they get what you're about as opposed to feeling like you're You're simply trying to force them to do

something that is in your interest that they don't even understand what you're talking about because you haven't bothered to build a relationship with them and to collect information from them about how your needs either are consistent with or need to be reconciled somehow with their needs I think that's an important point because you don't you can't create a good relationship by only seeing someone when there's a problem problems are not a great way to build a relationship you need as Linda says to create the relationship and then the problems get seen and dealt with in

the context of a relationship that already exists I think what happens uh for people like me is that we all create networks we don't live in our offices and never go out but we create networks with people we have to deal with we have no choice to do the work and we create networks with people we like and the people we don't like we don't want to bother with and I think one of the points we're making is that you can't you don't have the Liberty to make that kind of Distinction you need to identify

the people that you need to do your work and who need you because they're going to make demands on you and you need to consciously go create relationships with them and the personal chemistry doesn't have a lot to do with it I mean you may want to have a beer or a coffee or whatever with some of them not with all of them but uh you need to have a relationship and it doesn't have to do with personal chemistry and I think that's quite important to pay attention to particularly now that we have global companies

it's always easier for us to build relationships with people who are quote like us independently whether we like them or not that are more like us on the various characteristics that you know demographic characteristic same culture whatever it is but if you only build relationships with people who are like you your same culture your same kind of background in a global company then for sure you're you don't have those relationships you need to get the job done and impl ing a global strategy so you're going to have to figure out how to build a relationship

with people who might you know be across on the other side of the globe who have grown up with a very different perspective about Authority about time about a whole range of things and you need to work all of that out with them when there's not a whole lot of urgency so that when you really get down to working on an issue or a problem or taking advantage of an opportunity you you understand each other so I'd like to we sort of been talking about how the manager in this case sees other people but actually

one of the things youc enourage people to do in the book that I think is really useful is to sort of turn that lens around and ask well how do people see me do they trust me do they like to deal with me um what are some signs that because it's kind of hard to be honest with ourselves on this topic what are some signs that people might not trust you or might not like dealing with you even if they like you as a person I think one of the examples we use in the book

which uh is an incident I always like to use is when you go to a meeting and you discover that that some of the people had a meeting before the meeting and didn't include you they decided what was going to come out of the meeting of the larger group and you weren't part of that and you're not part of it for the reasons Linda said you're not considered powerful maybe people don't like to deal with you it it's it's rare if someone likes you that they cut you out uh usus the other way around you

can be competent but not nice to deal with in which case people will cut you out you need to see yourself as other people see you and you need to as Linda U I think always talks about you need to understand how you make other people feel when they're with you that's that's a point of view that most of us in management don't often take it's uh how how do people experience you and how do people experience themselves with you is one of the things we tried to explore a fair amount in that in the

book and to help you really to force you to kind of think about that but those are hard questions and so you constantly need to be checking in and getting feedback on that and one of the um one of the things we talk about in the book is about what happens if you're a competent jerk which is a a very technical term that came was that one of my colleagues actually came up with and what you find is if you're a competent jerk when people think you're competent at first they will deal with you and

you will be a part of a network people will come to you but the more you abuse them or the harder they find it is to work with you they don't care how competent you are they kind of act like they work with you but they don't they avoid you and you are no no longer included and what you will discover is that you will lose your confidence because again we really get our confidence from other people from interacting with other people that's where expertise comes from and if you're isolated you are not going to

have the latest expertise you're not going to know what uh is really important or how to use that information most constructively in your organization so in essence that means if you are feeling isolated and left out of decisions and instead of assuming that there's a cabal or or some sort of conspiracy maybe you just need to look at your own actions and ask well am I the best person to deal with I think that's what I think we'd both say on the other hand I don't think neither one of us are naive there are organizations

that are political in the negative sense of the word and I recently was counseling a a pretty senior executive about this and he was describing what was going on with his bosses above him and I said you know what in this kind of situation you keep your head down and you get to work because you do at times find yourselves in situations that are horribly ugly people have lost sight of the organizational interests are being very self-interested and it is only self-protective to kind of keep yourself out of that don't think that you can beat

other people at the game because it does become a game that and you are not going to win that game so there are moments when you kind of do pull back you stick with your group and you do your thing which is maybe the other reason why I think people sometimes steer clear of sort of the politics because when they think about them they think about that ugly sort of dark side of it that can happen there are people who um get their entire satisfaction at work out of the organizational politics out of beating other

people they don't care about the company they don't care about the mission they don't care about what anybody's trying to do they simply want to win it's it's another arena in which they can compete and beat someone else uh the only way you can deal with those people though is to have your own source of influence in power the way to deal with them is not is not I'm not talking about dealing with higher ups the example Linda just gave there are situations where you need to just stay out of it but in general the

way you deal with people who try to abuse their influence in the organization is you need to have your own influence simply hunkering down and doing the work and assuming that everyone will recognize uh the right answer good work and all of that will speak for itself uh sad too often is not the case and I think what we say in the book is that if you really want to do this right you're thinking about building long-term relationships Partnerships and by definition when you think that way if someone's going to be your partner for some

period of time you a little bit nervous about doing something that doesn't take into account their interests and frankly you need to be reciprocal in your in your relationships if you're taking all the time and never giving that isn't fair and vice versa because that's not what work relationships are supposed to be like so I think you always start with some self-awareness of how you're perceived potentially if you can figure that out and sometimes we need to Simply ask and if you're sort of worrying about it chances are you know you do have a problem

a little bit if you if you find yourself you said how do you know that it's not working right well if you find that you're blindsided and you frequently don't know what's going on uh you're not talking to the right people and that's bad for your group this is not about your career this is about making sure that your group has the right expectations set for the group and the right sort of resources again so if you find that you never have what you need Etc then you got to ask yourself is that because I'm

not doing my job as the as the manager whose responsibility is to create the conditions necessary for my group to be successful and if you're not doing that then your group can't be successful and they're very dependent upon you to help them with that so you cannot afford once you move into management to ignore that responsibility well it's a tough problem and certainly there's a lot there to think about thank you both so much for talking with us today thank you thank you that's Kent Lineback and Linda Hill and the book is being the boss

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