The Essentials: Playing Office Politics

Women at Work

Harvard Business Review

Entrepreneurship, Workplace, Business/management, Business/entrepreneurship, Progress, Resources, Gender, Equality, Business/careers, Women, Hbr, Careers, Management, Business, Harvard, Human

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Everyone at work has their own priorities, concerns, and agendas, and knowing what those are allows us to navigate meetings and projects more deliberately and successfully. Organizational psychologist Madeleine Wyatt explains the interrelated skills that enable us to influence others, in conversation with a transportation planner who’s trying to figure out how to maneuver her way up in an often-exclusionary, male-dominated industry.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I first became aware of office politics early in my career.
0:06.8	I noticed that the colleagues of mine who sucked up to the boss consistently received
0:11.9	better assignments from him.
0:14.2	At first I found their ingratiating behavior, bringing the boss coffee, for example, unprofessional
0:21.2	and kind of repulsive.
0:23.0	Shouldn't my work speak for itself?
0:26.2	And yet, while I kept my head down and churned out research report after research report,
0:32.1	hoping the boss would notice and offer me more promising opportunities, the suck ups just
0:37.9	kept coming out ahead.
0:40.6	So I realized something had to change.
0:43.7	I had to make real connections with the higher ups.
0:47.1	I had to understand them as people so that I could establish relationships that went
0:51.8	beyond the transactional.
0:54.5	And I had to learn to do that while being true to myself and without being totally
0:58.9	self-serving.
0:59.9	Though, if those relationships led to the green light or the fast track, great.
1:08.0	You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review.
1:10.7	I'm Amy Bernstein.
1:12.6	Everyone at work has their own priorities and concerns, and knowing what those are allows
1:17.7	you to move more deliberately and smoothly through whatever meetings you're in or project
1:22.5	you're on.
1:24.0	Even politically savvy isn't the same as being a political operator.
	...

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