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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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.
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