More Answers... (9/21/25 Newsletter): Office Politics (swigs down medicine...)
Hi Everyone,
Here's the blog version of the Sunday Evening "More Answers..." to get a friendly boost to setup your work week!
Remember to sign up for the newsletter for bonus material!! (https://www.askchrista.com/newsletter/)
Michael Scott... Calling Michael Scott...
Office politics: you’ve felt it, maybe hoped to avoid it, sometimes resented it. For many of us, the instinct is to treat it as a necessary evil.
TRUTH: office politics are more nuanced than that, and in reality, not all office politics are the toxic ones we tend to think about when we think of politics.
I did not watch The Office (I'm not a big TV person), but I love the bloopers and short reels my friends send me. Nearly all of them LOVE/D that show.
My observation of its appeal? The office politics. They were out in the open, often low-level, and barely scraping past kindergarten-style politicking... with the Michael Scott character being the proxy player of the low-level politics. He ran the spectrum, and even played to the camera as if we were in on it with him and were watching a master at play.
Not All Office Politics are Toxic...
Like all politics, office politics is about using power and status to influence decisions and action. The politics is how you get there. The toxic ones are destructive, but let's remember there are "good politics," too.
Good politics in the workplace influence effective decisions and actions: promoting on merit to those who deserve it, elevating role models for living values and enabling the best possible working environment across various teams, collaborating and listening and doing well...
We will always have people on the team or in the department who don't want to play along, don't want to do what is right, prefer to march to the beat of their own drum. There's nothing wrong with any of that so long as resistance to working well with others is done in what we business geeks refer to as "prosocial" behavior: behavior that aims to make things better for the bigger picture and the team and organization (vs the self or just one person).
Some might say, "Yeah, but everyone should be able to pushback and determine what is best," or "not everyone wants to drink the juice and become one with the organization," and those are fair points to a certain extent. We definitely want fresh thinking, we want challenges to status quo, we want innovative ways of improving work or products or services (and...), but we have to balance that with getting good work done while managing the disruption(s) that changes and improvements bring... and no one who wants an organization's success will ever say that "destruction" is the best way.
Good politics still use power and status to influence decisions and actions, and it will be for the betterment of the bigger picture with some level of benevolence.
Toxic politics use power and status to further grow power and status, usually for one person or "the privileged few" (malevolence).
Backed by Evidence (and yet who has the time?)
Here are some evidence-based research, and while very few would ever CHOOSE to forgo watching their favorite TV show over reading some bedside research, I guarantee that looking at business research can and WILL provide insights that are actually helpful.
(a-hem... most formal business researchers are also business-people, too, so the research is written with practitioners in mind... why do you think Harvard Business Review is so readable???)
- Positive side / negative side: The 2022 paper, “An Assessment of Positive and Negative Aspects of Organisational Politics,” by Pandey et al., reported that some political behavior correlates with improved contextual performance. This means that politics often help employees understand the bigger picture, enable them to fill in gaps quicker, identify opportunities to collaborate, and support others. Of course, the same review also showed what we already know: more politics was linked to reduced psychological well-being (supported in 16 out of 20 reviewed papers)
- Toxic politics are hurtful (duh, but let's talk about it!): The way employees feel about work politics and behavior (also referred to as Perceived Organizational Politics, or POP) matters. A study by Landells & Albrecht (2019) showed that POP is directly associated with employee stress and reduced engagement, especially when meaningful work is missing (meaningful work is one of the ways to overcome how toxic politics might impact employees).
- Performance and context matter, too: For service industries, the impact of an organization's politics was aligned with the overall team climate ("climate" is like a mini-culture of a team). When team climates demonstrated savvy political skills among the team members, such as knowing how to read a room, influence, network, etc, the researchers saw less negative outcomes impact from politics. When team climates demonstrated poor political skills, such as an inability to read others, consider the timing of communication, determine who to talk to and when as a key aspet of influence, the office politics eroded trust and distracted from core goals (and performance of such goals).
When Politics Help and Why Leaders Need to Guide Them
There are ways to keep politics from being something employees endure and instead be something to shape. Thinking back to benevolence and how politics is about influence, good politics can:
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Help people build informal networks that speed alignment and collaborations that formal org charts don’t cover ("who do I talk to about this to make it happen?").
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Raise under-the-radar problems to the surface; people with influence hear things early and often know how to report early-- and to whom.
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Amplify voices that formal channels might silence, especially if part of the good politics is setting up a culture of transparency and openness. (making that happen and sustaining it starts and ends with influence, typically from those with... power and status.)
But for these to work, LEADERS must own the shape and norms of political behavior. If leaders don’t define and then role-model what’s acceptable and what isn’t, the default becomes survival over collaboration, turf over trust, and endure vs sustain, quiet vs make noise.
The cost is subtle and what I often refer to as "death by a thousand papercuts" (a known phrase, and one I love). You see misaligned priorities, “safe” vs bold ideas, and stress and burnout in people who feel excluded or unfairly treated or who simply feel they need to keep their head down and get their work done.
What to Do, Oh What to Do???
Here are a few tips and tricks from research and what I’ve seen work:
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Make “political literacy” explicit: Teach (or model) what it looks like to build relationships, raise concerns, seek influence, negotiate vs. manipulate. When people know what “good politics” means, fewer guess it wrongly. You'll also find that the average good human has a natural tendency to do well with good politics.
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Strong norms & transparency: Similar to above, define acceptable behavior, clarify decision-making paths, share reasons behind big moves. Secrecy or opacity is what lets politics toxic-fy (Cross & Thomas, 2018).
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Hold political skill as a leadership competency: To further underscore making "politics" explicit, assure that those around you understand the SKILLS required to be really good at politics: influence, empathy, reading interpersonal dynamics... These aren’t “soft” skills; they're actually the really hard ones. In the service-industry study, those skills moderated whether politics were harmful or harnessed for good outcomes (Kuo, Chang, Quinton, Lu, & Lee, 2022).
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Ensure equal access to informal networks: Research shows minority or less-experienced employees often get excluded from the informal conversations that drive real influence, and others who may not be political savvy are also excluded. If you’re in leadership, look for ways to surface those networks, include people early, mentor or sponsor across identity & seniority lines (King’s College London, 2022).
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Measure not just tasks but relational / ethical outcomes: How safe do people feel? Included? Able to influence? Are people reluctant to speak up because they think they’ll be penalized politically? These are early warning signs. Research on POP makes clear that stress, disengagement, and turnover often rise before big performance drops (Khan, Kaewsaeng-on, Zia, Ahmed, & Khan, 2020).
BOOSTER FOR YOUR WEEK!!!
Navigating Office Politics -- the Great Ginny Clarke!!!
Last week's Thursday Episode "I hate politics - help!," episode 43 from Season 4's Doing the Work, I offered for additional resources two videos from Ginny Clarke: Office Politics: How to Rise Above While Getting Ahead, and Office Politics: The Game You Must Learn to Play.
If you aren't familiar with Ginny Clarke, she focuses on conscious leadership, which is a leadership practice that emphasizes accountability and self-awareness so you can be the best good human as a leader and also bring out the best in the good humans who work for and with you.
For today's booster, I'm offering a third video: Office Politics: Navigating Power with Integrity (also below).
Enjoy!
And remember, if you have a business challenge or workplace issue... Ask Christa!
REFERENCES
Cross, R., & Thomas, R. J. (2018, March 30). Dismantle office politics by being transparent. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/tip/2018/03/dismantle-office-politics-by-being- transparent
Khan, T. I., Kaewsaeng-on, R., Zia, M. H., Ahmed, S., & Khan, A. Z. (2020). Perceived organizational politics and age, interactive effects on job outcomes. SAGE Open, 10(3), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020936989
Kingʼs College London. (2022, May 30). Office politics can be a force for good, new research shows. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2022- 05-office-politics-good.html
Kuo, C. C., Chang, K., Quinton, S., Lu, C. Y., & Lee, I. (2022). Organizational politics and employee performance in the service industry: A multi-stakeholder, multi-level perspective. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 133, 103677. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2021.103677
Landells, E. M., & Albrecht, S. L. (2019). Perceived organizational politics, engagement, and stress: The mediating influence of meaningful work. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 1612. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01612 PMC
Pandey, D. K., Prasad, S., Krishna, K. V. S. M., Saxena, S., & Jain, V. (2022). An assessment of positive and negative aspects of organisational politics: A systematic literature review on psychological wellbeing of employees. Journal for ReAttach Therapy and Developmental Diversities, 5(2 S), 80-85. Retrieved from https://jrtdd.com/index.php/journal/article/view/117 ReAttach Therapy Journal
