Office Politics

Office politics can be the source of a lot of angst for new managers, especially those who think about the world in an objective and technical way. For better or worse, real people in leadership roles have biases and alliances, differing agendas and even more divergent opinions. The result can often be what appears as nonsensical behavior, where the same circumstances result in different reactions on different days. What’s worse, the actions observed can appear to contradict corporate policies and objectives, undermining the hard work and sacrifice that leaders must ask of their teams.

Of course, sometimes these negative appearances are just as they seem – people behaving badly with motivation that is not transparent. Those people are always going to be difficult to work with and they will eventually get what they deserve. But more often than not, no one intends to do wrong or even to behave erratically. In these cases, perspective and priorities can make all the difference.

Consider a department that is struggling to meet a deadline on a lucrative contract. Leaders in that group will be directed to spare little expense in the mission to achieve the deadline. Overtime, bonuses, recruiting incentives, new equipment and minor extravagances will be tolerated. At the same time, the company as a whole may be underperforming and a different group could be under pressure to fire low performers, offer low raises and get by with old equipment. In both cases, the objective of the company is to improve its financial performance but the circumstances in different departments create different priorities for the leaders on the ground.

Two new leaders in these departments would each perceive the other negatively even though both of them were operating rationally toward the same overall company goals. Instructed to meet a deadline, the first manager will focus on the fact that his team must work very hard while other teams are not as focused. Denied equipment upgrades, the second manager will wonder what relationships and special contacts are needed.

Imagine a company memo that would go to each employee from the chairman explaining who is on an important project and who is on a maintenance project, who is performing better and who is performing worse, which segments of the economy support growth and which segments are going to be laggards, etc. This memo would provide each person with objective information and in that light, most of the decisions made for most of the departments would all fall into line and make sense to everyone. But many people would be insulted by such a communication because they would take offense at their ranking, the relevance of their role and their outlook for growth. The memo would be destructive to the company and could never be sent.

The manager’s role is critical in bridging the gap between cold, hard facts about how a business is run and the emotional psyche of the people who make the business function each day. Many of the challenges offered to managers are ambiguous balancing exercises that must be carried out over time rather than solved once and for good. In doing so, occasional disagreements with other leaders will necessarily come about. In fact, the tension of discord is sometimes referred to as a healthy pressure which ensures that leaders are working to their fullest abilities.

This political jousting is uncomfortable for new managers minted from the technical ranks because they are used to arguing on facts and logic instead of emotion and bravado. Nonetheless, capable leaders will learn to sort through these situations and use them to establish stronger relationships of trust and respect with other departments. In the early days, remember not to take any situation personally and not to dwell on what’s already done. Write down the lessons learned and move on.

Thanks for reading this Management Use Case. I'm the co-author of a new book on software development leadership entitled You.next() that features dozzens of other use cases for leadership. Please see more at www.youdotnext.com.