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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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.
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