Welcome to Manager Tools.

Politics 101. Chapter 6, Politics are just relationships.

Part 4.

This cast answers these questions.

Should I play politics?

How can I get better at office politics?

Why does politics have a bad reputation?

Well, if you want answers to these questions and more,

keep listening.

Here we go.

I'm going to separate our guidance, sort of a bulletized list here, into two categories. Among our own team, if you're a a manager and external to that.

And here's something interesting. I was talking to somebody about this,

actually they didn't know that I was talking about this cast,

we were having a discussion about politics.

And I alluded to the fact that it's just relationship effects and they never, it was a 15 minute

conversation, they never got it. And that told me that I needed to work on how I was going to communicate this

concept. Among our own team doesn't seem to be a place for politics. But obviously it is a place

for relationship effects, right?

So the manager tools community puts relationships with directs first in terms of the leverage you need to achieve results and retention.

The better you know your directs, the greater will be there in your productivity.

Also, being more senior to our directs, we need to think about the effect of our decisions and the promulgation of other people's

decisions, because remember managers are communicated through, not to.

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