This article is part of a series explaining the psychology behind office politics. If you haven’t yet, it’s best to start from the beginning and read the full series.
In the previous article in this series, I taught you that human beings make decisions emotionally and justify them rationally. That’s one of the things that makes office politics so tricky to understand because it’s deeply rooted in the fundamentally irrational span of human emotion. So, approaching it from a place of logic, reason, process, and data just won’t work because those elements don’t appeal to our emotional needs. That leads us to our next core concept:
Office Politics Principle Two: Relationships are your goal
I’ll say this another way: You have to get people to like you.
I once got into a debate with a CEO about an employee engagement survey we were running with their team. I wanted to use the question “I like my manager,” and have people respond on an agree/disagree scale. The CEO asserted that they didn’t really care if they liked their manager or not, as long as they respected them. After a bit of back and forth, I eventually won the debate for one simple reason: Respect is not an emotion. In fact, many times when we use the word respect at work, we’re not doing it positively at all. Think about these sentences:
- “I respect you, but…”
- “With all due respect…”
Nothing good is going to come after the word respect in those two instances! But like is something we can work with. When we like someone, we want good things for them. We want to see them be successful and are happy to have a hand in supporting that success.
Think about it for a moment: Have you ever truly followed a leader at work that you didn’t like, even if it was just a little bit? If you’re honest, the answer is probably no. If you don’t like someone in a leadership position, they could come up with the best, most thought-through plan in the history of plans, and you’re probably still going to approach it with skepticism. You might roll your eyes when they’re talking, tune out and check your email in meetings with them, or gossip with your co-workers about how their plan will never work. You’re certainly not going to give it your best, most enthusiastic effort because you are not bought into that person as a leader on an emotional level. And that means their power to influence you is weak.
The same is true when you are the one are the one try to influence. Your climb up the mountain will be much harder if you’re working with people who don’t feel a positive emotional connection to you.
The best way to gain influence is by building relationships.
When it comes to influencing at work, most people default to the organizational chart: What is my title, who do I report to, who reports to me, and how much officially sanctioned authority do I have? The MBA textbooks even call this legitimate power, inferring that every type of influence that is not derived from the organizational chart is somehow illegitimate. And that’s ironic because this type of influence is actually the weakest type that exists for a few reasons. First, let’s just be honest: Title does not mean that people are going to listen to you and do what you say without question. The professional world simply doesn’t work that way! But beyond that, influence from the org chart is weak because it limits you to people who are in your direct reporting line, and there are very few working professionals out there who only interact with people in their unit. It’s also tough to change because promotions only come around every once in a while.
The next best way to influence is by being perceived as an expert in something that is valuable to the team. That means that people will look to you to be the authority in that area, and your words will have more weight than those who are not perceived to be experts. However, perceived is our keyword. You can be an expert at something, but if your co-workers don’t perceive you to be an expert, your influence in that area will be limited.
On the flip side, it’s very possible to be perceived as an expert at something that you have limited expertise in. For example, think about a time that you’ve reported to a boss who had absolutely no business holding that leadership role. So, how did they end up as your boss then? Well, someone perceived them to be the best person to put in that role. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been hired in the first place! And most often, that perception was influenced because that person had a positive relationship with the person making the hiring decision.
That’s why relationships are your secret weapon – it taps into that emotional part of the brain and allows you to influence without requiring the formal structure of an organizational chart. That means you can not only influence up and down your reporting line, but you can also go into different units and collaborate proactively, taking advantage of the knowledge and resources these teams have to offer so that you can all meet higher level goals.
Don’t wait to build relationships until you need them.
There’s a great scene in the movie The Imitation Game in which our protagonist – Alan Turing – is trying to build a machine to break an unbreakable Nazi code during World War II. He’s working with a team of people all working on breaking the same code, but Alan is a lone wolf. He doesn’t understand the benefit of working with others and having those relationships. Thus, he managed to alienate everyone on his team. But one day his only friend Joan takes him out for a drink and explains to him that he needs to get his team members to like him (there’s that word again!) to achieve his goals. So the next day, Alan brings everyone an apple and makes a horrible attempt at telling a joke to gain the group’s admiration. His team members can see that he’s trying, and they begin to open up to him.
A little while later in the movie, Alan still can’t get his machine to work and his boss shows up with the intention of firing him. When that happens, his team members stand up for him and assert that if Alan is fired, they are leaving too. That wouldn’t have happened if Alan hadn’t brought them around earlier on and he would have been out on his ear, unable to achieve his ultimate objective.
Which leads me to my last point: Do not wait until you need something to start building a relationship with the people you work with. Start today, the minute you finish reading this article. If you wait, don’t be surprised when they’re not there to support you and back you up when you really need it.
So, what’s the best way to start building those relationships? Let’s move on to principle number three and explain why adaptation is your key to the kingdom at work.
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