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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It’s mostly just a catch all term that describes to what degree personal drama and power grabs affect the work place.
The first thing you have to understand is that people who work together are being forced into very close contact with people they may not get along with or have anything in common with. Other than where they work. Okay, so, you don’t like these people but if you just keep your head down and focus on your job you should be fine. Except, no, you have to rely on these people as well.
Some people are just power hungry. If they get the least bit of authority over anything, even if it’s being in charge of being the community coffee pot, they are completely incapable of not a using that power. Some people are lazy and will do anything to avoid doing their job and will try to dump their work off on other people. Some people are egomaniacs who will never believe they can be wrong about anything. Some people are just cruel and like to watch other people struggle because it makes them feel better about themselves. There are also people who are just, well, crazy. People who have something wrong with them and the mental health system either failed them or they found enough ways to compensate that they are semi functional.
All these people and other extreme personality types will be in an office and you cannot just avoid them as you are all interdependent upon each other. So, when we talk about office politics we are usually talking about how these interactions are playing out and the dangers of picking a side over another.
Unfortunately, there can be very little way of knowing how this will shake out. I have worked in places where cubicle assignments had to take into consideration restraining orders. Or where spouses and the people who they had affairs with all worked in the same area. Sometimes you think the correct move is to just do what the boss says even though you don’t know the boss is on the way out and your loyalty can now be viewed as a problem.
The only real trick to surviving office politics is to be good at your job, don’t be particularly vocal about anything going on in the office that could be interpreted as picking sides, and be careful about thinking of people at work as your friends. Most of them are not. They may be social with you. They may even like you. But they are not your friend and thinking of them as such can be a big problem because your “friend” may suddenly decide to do something really dumb and is counting out your support. Whether or not they get it may not matter if you are a known friend and viewed as potentially supportive. If you are good enough at your job and you are easy to tie to any particular faction you are generally allowed to continue relatively unhindered.
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