Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
Great Leaders understand that office politics is always detrimental to the team.
Employees want to work for an organization that values their contribution and tells them so. They also want to work for a company that is customer focused. Yet, far too often, office politics can get in the way and the internal relationships take precedence over valuing employees and the customer. This episode of the Manager Mojo podcast offers valuable insights for when politics rears its ugly head, the cause, and how to correct and turn it around. Prove your great leadership by leading an organization that values its employees and the service to customers is first priority.
Read the transcript here: Leaders understand that Office Politics is bad!
We’ve all been in companies where politics rears its head everywhere you turn. Some companies seem to be run totally by politics. Let me give you some of the examples that I’ve seen where politics has come into play and it’s affected the performance of the company.
In some of the extreme examples, I’ve seen a company where people would actually sit around and they kind of spy on other people and they watch for something they’re doing wrong. They couldn’t wait to go ‘tell’ on them because they caught them doing something they thought was wrong. They didn’t think anything was wrong about doing that. That is what’s so bad about it.
How could that exist? It only existed because management encouraged and allowed it. That’s office politics and it’s not fun.
Here is another example. You are a person who has done well. You’ve had a great performance, and yet somebody else who appears to have a better relationship with the boss, but doesn’t have anywhere near the numbers that you do, gets the recognition or the promotion. You know what I’m talking about.
When I start talking about politics, people understand. It’s hard to describe sometimes, but I bet we all have our expectations of what politics is. So what I want to talk about is when politics is allowed to flourish in a company and it becomes more important than performance. There are consequences to the business and to the individuals involved. So let’s talk about that today.
The first thing is to define, or put some parameters around, what politics is. The first thing is that it’s someone focusing on their own self-interest. In other words, they’re thinking about how this might make them look, how it might impact their career, or how it might impact their relationship with somebody else. A certain amount of that is normal, but to be focused on it almost exclusively is where politics begins to raise its ugly head and to affect performance.
A second point about politics is that it is an unhealthy focus on your own personal goals versus the goals of your teammates and your company. I’ve discovered that when people are so focused on what’s important to them personally, that politics is allowed to enter the workplace and it beings to affect people in a negative manner. We’ll talk about some of those consequences in just a moment.
There’s a third aspect about politics that I want to make sure you understand, because I think this is the core reason why politics exists in such an inordinate manner in businesses all over the world. It occurs when there is an excessive focus, and that focus is all about ‘me’.
There are some individuals—and I’ll bet you can put a face and a name to one that you’re thinking about right now—that all they do is think about themself. Everything they do is about them. Maybe it comes out when you’re going to have coffee with a teammate and all they talk about is how I feel about this and how I feel about that. This is what it makes me do and this is what makes me feel. And the next thing you know, all they’re doing is talking negatively about the team and about management. They don’t realize that they’ve allowed politics to enter their head. They’re looking for other people’s approval rather than understanding what they should be focusing on.
This lack of understanding of what to focus on has actually caused many problems in businesses all over the world. It has caused so many problems that I believe it’s a key contributor to why The Gallup Organization reports that 87% of employees worldwide are disengaged in the workplace, meaning they go to work but they don’t enjoy the work. All they’re doing trying to figure out how they can keep their job and make a buck.
That’s not fun. We spend way too many hours at work for that paycheck to be our sole focus. We have to create jobs and environments where people are energized and enjoying what they’re doing. Otherwise the company results are going to suffer.
This focus of “all about me” and this focus on politics, I believe is allowed to exist because of a couple of major reasons. The first reason is that there is a faulty value system employed by the company. Leadership is not demonstrating to the teammates what the proper values are in the company. They haven’t aligned the corporate mission with the values of the customers and their employees. Consequently, people begin to look out for themselves instead of understanding what they should be looking out for. In my view, that would be focusing on the customer first.
Unfortunately, this occurrence is quite common. After all, businesses are run by people and people are not perfect. People are going to make mistakes. But it’s not that people make mistakes, it’s that they’re focused on the approval more than they are the performance. When that approval of our performance is so hard to come by, people become demotivated and they don’t feel valued. Leadership has created the wrong culture in the business. And that culture of “who likes you is more important than your performance” begins to take root. Once it does, I promise you it will spread throughout the organization.
Employees know how to identify politics and they know how to do it quickly. It doesn’t take a very savvy person to understand and see that, “Hey that’s just pure politics raising its ugly head here in the company.” And they rightly get offended by it. They become afraid that if people don’t like them they may not be able to survive and prosper in that organization.
That is when employees become really cautious. They measure all of their comments because they’re trying to determine who is going to be offended by what they say, who’s going to take it personally, and who’s going to look at what they do as possibly not being a team player? Who’s going to be looking at the relationship rather than the overall goal and the overall performance? And so they become very cautious, and cautious people don’t make decisions quickly. Cautious people don’t put in extra effort. They put in the minimal amount of effort because what so many of them feel is that they can’t compete with that type of culture and environment.
So their goal then becomes focusing on being invisible so they don’t get noticed and don’t have to worry about causing conflict. We’ve all seen these people. They simply come to work and you rarely hear them say anything negative, you rarely hear them say anything positive, you rarely hear them do anything at all. They simply stay out of the way and they don’t want to participate in group discussions. What that breeds is not even getting their ideas. That lays the foundation for disengagement and that disengagement grows over a period of time.
Because managers being who they are, with the objectives of growing the organization, are going to push the individuals at some point to stand up and be counted. And the very first time that manager, that leader, shows they care less about their performance and more about whether they are liked or not, disengagement goes into a different level. We call it ‘active disengagement’ because they have decided at that point, “I’m quitting the company. I’m quitting this manager. I’m going to go find some place that’s different and that I like more.” Unfortunately many times they don’t even understand that politics is what started to lay the foundation for them being unhappy where they are.
It’s a devious and malicious form of disengagement in the workplace. We all want approval, and what really bothers me is when people are put in positions where they have to compete with one another for the boss’ or management’s attention. It creates the wrong environment. Do we really and truly want our employees competing with one another?
I’ve seen this over and over with my career in sales. I’ve seen sales goals that are so focused on competition amongst team members that they lose sight of the fact that it is not about competing with one another it is about competing in the marketplace to gain the customer’s attention. This competitive nature can easily get out of control.
We want to encourage competition, but we don’t want to encourage competition by pitting people against one another and making them feel like they need to be more competitive than someone else.
To give you an example, I’ve seen people who have achieved and exceeded their goals. In fact, they were at 105% – 110% of the goal and the boss was unhappy. They wanted to make sure that person knew how unhappy they were, that they should have been at 125% because a person on the other team got to be at 125%.
That is political in nature. It’s not worrying about the individual. That’s letting it be known that someone else’s team member outperformed one of their team members and that made them look bad. That top performer is actually helping their career, but they are focused on the wrong thing.
I know that sounds impossible, but it goes on every day and is something that’s easily avoided. As leaders we need to be aware of how we communicate with our team. We can’t afford to openly criticize people and we should be prepared to offer a solution for whatever the problem is. That criticism and type of communication is telling your team member that you just don’t like what they’ve accomplished and you don’t like them. That type of communication creates the wrong atmosphere and it begins to spread as politics begins to spread in the organization.
What the great leader does is begin to focus on helping people. It’s never as important to criticize someone as it is to help them. People that are not performing usually know they’re not performing, and what they’re looking for is for you to step up and help them learn. The great leader wants to give them a hand, not kick them down. When we understand that, we are focused in the right direction. We no longer care about what’s going on with other teams. It’s about helping our own people. Ultimately this attitude begins to turn the company focus back to the customer, where it belongs.
So many companies today are losing market share, and it is not because they’re not organized well, or because they don’t have great talent in the organization. They’re losing customers because the customer does not feel that they care about them and their interests. They think that all the business is focused on is what’s going on with their employees and the company. This does not move people forward in their careers, nor is it helpful to the customer.
I want to encourage you, if you begin to see that politics is stepping up and getting out of control to start a dialogue with your boss and teammates. Be the one to let them know the business needs to get focused where it needs to be, which is helping people and the customer. Remind them that is what you stand for.
I do business with one company that has the best customer service in the world. I have never seen anything like it. When I send an email that asks for their help there is always a responsive attitude. They are immediately on top of it and saying, “Let me help you.” They turn around the result so quickly that it staggers me. I just love it. Do you believe that I will promote them every chance I get? Absolutely I will, because that’s the kind of company that has shown its employees that it’s all about the customer. I love doing business with those types of people and I know that’s true leadership. That’s when real leadership is actually being shown — when people really and truly care what happens to the customer.
I wish you the very best and hope that this has helped you today. And, you will become leaders that will eliminate office politics in your company!