Help your team get to grips with organisational politics
Posted by
Few people say they enjoy organisational politics, yet this is a key feature of working life and something we have to get comfortable with especially if we want to help our team members progress. So how can you help your talented people get to grips with this thorny issue? Here are some ideas:
- First, reframe politics as stakeholder management – organisational politics is about understanding what other people’s perspectives and agendas are on any given issue, which is exactly what stakeholder management is. Just changing the language can help people see the issue more clearly and with less dread. Ask your team to scope out who their key stakeholders are and then ask them to summarise what they know about those people; their views, objectives, and drivers. This way they’ll be able to see whether they need to do more to understand their stakeholders and why it will be time well spent. If stakeholder management doesn’t resonate with your team or business, try customer awareness instead.
- People who dislike politics often believe that enthusiasm and a good plan will ‘win the day’ so they don’t have to engage in politics. However, as the saying goes ‘the best-laid plans…’ so help your team to understand that politics is partly about knowing where resistance might come from and why and that we are far more likely to get agreement to our proposals if we have this knowledge in advance.
- Recap with your team the key elements of stakeholder management (and see our earlier blog on this);
- Build relationships by working on mutual projects or continuous improvement processes asking for feedback from those you work alongside
- Ask open questions to explore others’ views
- Listen carefully to understand rather than just to decide what you might say next
- Check you know what their priorities and objectives are and what’s driving their agenda especially where it might affect your own work
- Be observant – watch what people do as well as say and if these seem not to match ask why
- Build relationships by working on mutual projects or continuous improvement processes asking for feedback from those you work alongside
- Developing a habit of building relationships across an organisation will also help your team to understand the bigger picture, what is really driving the business and how all the different areas of the business knit together to support the achievement of organisational goals and objectives. This is particularly important for those wanting to reach senior management roles. Interest in the organisation and how it works will help your team build value-driven networks which can support them to achieve their current and future objectives and deliver successful projects and initiatives.
- Your team can then use these networks to scope out support and resistance to plans and proposals. Questions like:
- How might this proposal affect you? What are the positives and negatives?
- What would make you support my proposal?
will be really useful. They can then use this understanding to refine or develop their plans further, adding points they would not have previously, restructuring elements that unwittingly would have caused problems for others and then seek feedback and input again from their stakeholders to gauge if they are now more supportive of the proposal to be made.
- How might this proposal affect you? What are the positives and negatives?
Most people dislike organisational politics but really, it’s just about understanding other peoples’ points of view. Reframing politics in this way can really unblock team members potential to develop greater organisational awareness and understanding, ability to build value-driven networks and success in gaining support for their projects or initiatives.