I am Autistic and a paper that I am working on involves a “political mindset” to solve a problem. I am seeing ways to survive office politics but I am not sure ultimately what it is. Please help.
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To help you with the specific term you’re asking, someone who approaches something with a “political mindset” (sometimes called “playing politics”) is when someone relies primarily on their interpersonal skills rather than technical skills to advance their own position.
This benefits the individual because it can lead to rapid career advancement as they leverage their connections for promotions and salary increases. But too much of this is usually bad for the organization because it tends to lead to people in leadership positions without a strong foundational knowledge of the skills needed by the people they’re leading.
Often you’ll hear people complain about under-qualified management. This is usually the avenue that gets under-qualified managers into those positions.
It’s about protecting ‘turf’. Example: I offer to help with some web site changes – just writing copy, making suggestions about what needs to be added and deleted. Then someone comes along all pissed off becuase that’s not my job and who gave me the right to get into their business. Crikey! I was just trying to help. So you have to be very careful and understand roles and responsibilities clearly.
As someone who struggles with this concept, thanks for the question OP. I learned that it meant not being overly straight forward with people and acting happy about stuff and doing things you don’t need to do for people you don’t need to do it for. Oh, and that I’m bad at it even though functionally I’m a top performer.
If the Employee Handbook says how decisions are “supposed to” be made,
office politics determines how they are actually made, often involving social manipulation and strategy. In other words, office politics refers to the power structure at a workplace, and the systems used to manipulate them. This includes both on-paper structures (management, HR) as well as human relationships (friendships, significant others, family, workplace enemies).
So, a project manager might be ordered to assign bonuses based on how much everyone contributed to the project. But, if the higher-ups didn’t say exactly how the project manager is supposed to measure contribution, and the project manager is at least somewhat careful about who they pick, it’s pretty hard to prove whether the project manager distributed the bonuses properly or not.
For another example, a project manager might be assigned to promote an employee to another department based on who is “best suited to the new job”. If they have to choose between two employees to promote, they’ll often choose someone whoever makes their live the easiest.
This might mean promoting a trusted friend to gain influence in the other department, or promoting someone they dislike in order to stop dealing with them. This kind of trickery is office politics.
Office politics isn’t reserved for management, however. Employees can participate as well – for instance, by waiting until pay raise season before “finishing” a long-running job that was actually done weeks or months ago, or going out of the way to be nice to people who might become their managers in the future. Heck, office politics can be as simple as “looking busy” when your work is done, in order to avoid more work. Or it might mean choosing work that is easy to show off, rather than work that is important. Or annoying a coworker so they help you first. Or picking assignments based on who is around at the time.
Of course, this doesn’t affect everyone at every company. Some people do their jobs honestly, and some companies make it genuinely impractical to try to game the system. But people who understand the power structures at their office, and know how to manipulate them, have an advantage.
Sometimes you have to do the work that keeps the boss out of potential trouble rather than doing the best work or right work. Not in a sneaky way, just kind of to establish boundaries and hold power. For example if someone in another department needed your help for something simple, then you shouldn’t help without getting it formally written and get your boss’s permission so boss can blame the other department if there is a problem or take credit of it goes well. Or boss might say quietly try to fix a small before it becomes a bigger problem and gets scrutiny from above. Or sometimes you have to work on something dumb even though you have better things to do because it has scrutiny from above.
So the politics is just going along with what your manager says even if you think there are better options. It’s really difficult to accept this if you are a curious, honest or results focused person. I personally have gone through periods of time where I didn’t speak at all and would ask my manager what I can say even for the simplest questions. Also I used to be afraid of blame when things go wrong but I’ve figured out in certain situations it’s good to take blame or figure out if my manager can take blame. It’s really about who can tolerate a hit at the moment and if we have leverage for offering a consolation.
Since you describe yourself as Autistic, lets approach the question systematically.
First: what is the definition of politics. The Mirriam-Webster dictionary has a number of definitions of politics but the one that I would say fits best to our topic is
>*relations or conduct in a particular area of experience especially as seen or dealt with from a political point of view*
*^(office politics)*
*^(ethnic politics)*
Basically, it tells us that it covers everything from your professional relationships with your colleagues to how you conduct yourself at the office.
So to approach your question of how to have a “political mindset” and ways to survive office politics my definition would be
1. Be aware of your behaviour when you are at the office or speaking with someone from the office.
2. Be aware of how others might percieve your intentions when you are at the office or speaking with someone from the office.
3. How to act to get what you want at your place of work or from a professional relationship.
I understand how these are points are hard to follow for someone with autism so lets break them up further.
First of all, behaving professionally means not creating a situation where someone you are interacting with at work will feel uncomfortable or unsafe. This is extra important if it is a colleague as they will most likely have to put up with you for 8 hours a day every day (depending on your job).
Here are some good rules:
1. Wear clean clothes
2. Do NOT talk about politics or intimate topics.
3. Do not say anything that can be considered offensive (even if you don’t agree).
4. Remember to smile back and return eye-contact when someone is talking to you.
5. Do not arrive late to meetings or waste someones time.
6. Don’t expect an apology to be enough. It is good to apologize but its even better to be prepared so you don’t make the mistake in the first place.
7. Don’t expect an apology to be enough. It is good to apologize but it’s even better to be prepared so you don’t make the mistake in the first place.
8. Don’t be lazy. It’s better to take a few seconds to do things right than to try to haste something and risk having to recall your work to fix the problem.
9. Think before you speak. What you say as a professional carries a lot of weight. It is better that you speak slowly and comprehensively than that you say something that is incorrect or too ambiguous. Your words represent your expertise and you don’t want to risk ruining your reputation or worse, the reputation of your employer.
10. Remember to smile back and return eye contact when someone is talking to you.
11. (This one might be controversial but is very important to me) speak up for yourself. There is always a risk that you might be hired under someone less professional. It is then important that you communicate any problems with this person in a way that is to the point without hurting that person’s ego. If you let your boss or a client/customer take advantage of you, it will only get worse. That is not professionalism, it is masochism. You can not be expected to do a good job under duress and it is your responsibility to express when you or your body is in such a state that you can not do your work properly.
12. Communicate in advance if you need to cancel any appointments or if you are going to be late for work. If you wake up and feel too sick. Make sure you have enough time to let your boss find someone else to cover your shift.
13. Recognize your responsibilities. If you don’t know what they are, ask your boss. Make sure that you are told why that is your responsibility if it is unclear or sounds suspicious., Some bosses might try to shift their own responsibilities onto their underlings. This is not professional of them and if you suspect such might be the case, make sure that you get credit for that work. For example, if your boss asks you to find someone to cover for you. Make sure that his/her boss knows that you are handling your own time management.
14. Learn the culture of the region you work in as well as the office culture. There might be certain “traditions” in the office like a collective coffe break at 3pm every day etc. Make sure to attend these and talk with your colleagues. If your office is trying to create a friendly environment, then make sure that you are helping to contribute to that friendliness.
There is of course more to office politics but most of those topics aren’t relevant until you start getting responsibility over other employees. So nothing for anyone at entry-level.
Office politics is an extension of a societal norm where being likeable, doing favors, and appealing to other people’s pride can result in more favorable conditions for yourself (promotion, better pay, leadership opportunities). Think of “politics” in the office as people adapting their personalities for what best fits their own interests instead of that of the team. Office politics usually involve a person, or group of close people that work to benefit themselves by developing strong relationships and working knowledge with the office culture/company business. It has a negative connotation because a lot of times relationships in the office can come across as ungenuine because people are only being nice and offering to help to benefit themselves. Sometimes the office politics can go as far deliberate sabotage of other teams in order to make your own team look better or more favorable to upper management.
The biggest suggestion I have is the following in mind when dealing with a work situation:
* Never blame anyone specific. “We have an issue” is better than “you screwed up”
* Remember the goal is the please the customer, so frame everything in that manner. *This can be a big one, as it often means breaking normal procedures, but get permission.
* Don’t assume people know the tradeoffs of a situation. Provide the details
* Get it in writing. After a verbal conversation with an agreement, send an e-mail re-stating what was discussed (This is also called “cover your ass”)
* If someone outside your department asks for something, make sure your boss knows about it.
* If you are going to push back against something, have evidence to support you, make your argument in writing, and cc in bosses.
* Don’t argue with your boss. If they tell you to do it, do it. You can inform them of trade-offs though. eg: “Sure boss, I can create that report, however I have these other 3 reports in front of it, how do you want me to prioritize them”. You are saying yes, and allowing your boss to set the priority (This prevents certain people from overriding your schedule, and also the boss should know the important people in the office better)
* In the following order, these people should be taken care of first (unless expressly told otherwise)
1. Executives (VP/C-suite) directly
2. Your manager’s manager
3. Executive assistants
4. Your boss
5. Other management
6. Other people
Office politics is an umbrella term for all of the different ways people’s power and influence in their workplace affects how people interact with each other and how the work gets done.
A few simple examples of office politics:
The boss hires her boyfriend into a position he’s not qualified for. Everyone keeps their opinions to themselves except for maybe grumbling to each other when they have to do extra work to make up for him, because they know the boss will protect him.
Someone who is really senior in the company and has a really important role in developing the products has a bad idea about one particular thing. People are afraid to criticize it because this person is so important to the company.
John is gay and has a picture of his husband and kids on his desk. Joe is a fervent fundamentalist Christian who people know doesn’t like gay people. Their boss makes sure never to assign them to work on a project together, even if their skills are a perfect fit, because they would not work well together.
Mary likes Jenny, they have been friends for a long time, so she gives Jenny more interesting and important work to do; other people don’t get the same opportunities.
There is a new project, the best people for it work for Mary, but Bill assigns it to people who work for himself so his own department gets the budget and he gets the status of managing this project.
Now, in the real world things are usually not this clear, but companies usually have big and small ways that the work is done less effectively because of personal factors between people.
Office politics comes in many forms and are based on many quite rational motivations — most commonly regarding who should be blamed when things don’t go perfectly. There is value in not taking all the blame that is not toxic.
Supervisors who are competent at office politics are very good at ensuring others take MORE blame or an equal amount and frame a failing so that the group with the most power takes the blame first.
This ultimately allows multiple groups to share blame and for all the groups to move forward in fixing the problem — rather than handing the task to a single organization.
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