Harvey Golub, former CEO of American Express, used to smoke in his office. Golub was a great CEO, a powerful personality, a very effective leader, highly appreciated by his employees, shareholders and competitors. So what made Golub’s smoking habits problematic? Well, American Express is a smoke-free building. Was Golub aware of how negatively this abuse of privilege could have been perceived by others? In fact, he couldn’t have cared less. He was a disproportionately important figure in the organization who happened to have a nicotine addiction. If feeding that addiction meant keeping his organization running well at the expense of some politically correct notion about double standards, then Golub was okay with that. In contrast, I recently heard a story about the executives of Wal-Mart. The company itself is notoriously frugal and concerned about the impact of costs on the bottom line. Despite their busy travel schedules, the executives that lead the largest corporation in the world, stay at cheap hotels when traveling. To do otherwise would be to risk violating a value and creating the impression of a double standard.
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Other people become political by experience. They learn the art of politics because they realize that being political is essential for achieving their objectives.
Leadership, in my definition, is an episodic process whereby an individual pursues his or her goals and vision by intentionally influencing others to perform various tasks to their full potential. Politics is not “war by other means” but “power by other means.” It is an influence tactic that skillful leaders use to achieve their goals by getting others ¾ regardless of rank, position, division or formal affiliation ¾ to perform on their behalf. Those others can include the CEO’s executive assistant or the CEO himself, a direct report, a fellow vice president, or a team of consultants who are designing a new change agenda for the organization. The political leader knows how to stack the deck, play the right cards, build solid alliances, triangulate issues and isolate those with conflicting points of view. The political leader does this in order to get what he wants, i.e., to achieve his objectives and further his vision.
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Some people are ultra political by nature. They walk into a room at a crowded party and immediately get a feel for who is powerful and who is not. Worse, they brush by those who aren’t important to get at those who are. Eventually, the behavior gets noticed and discussed, and a reputation develops. A consensus forms that such a person is not to be trusted, and must be dealt with carefully.
If power and influence are leadership commodities, then politics is the marketplace inside the organization through which many deals and bargains are made. Everyone knows that leaders compete for resources; grappling over slices of the budget pie, CEO face-time, manpower, etc. To a degree, such resources are a way of quantifying power and influence. Leaders also compete for followers ¾ with each other, with outside distractions, and with conflicting organizational priorities.
I disagree sharply with the view that politics is bad and should be eradicated from organizations to whatever degree possible. Instead, I believe that politics is a tool that leaders must use to achieve their goals. In so doing, I think that leaders help further the goals of their organization.
Politics in the workplace differs from the politics we know from elections, but there are some similarities, too. Politicians who are competing in elections “campaign” for support for their issues and their own candidacy. They focus particularly on opinion-leaders, those with sway over others, and try to garner as many votes as they can. They try to be well-liked by everyone, kissing babies, and shaking hands because that sense of likeability can turn into passionate support. (FDR once said that every handshake is worth three hundred votes.) Workplace politicians do many of the same things, metaphorically. While we see electoral politics as full of staged rituals that are acceptable because they are traditional, we view any perceived lack of sincerity or any overt efforts to garner support in organizations as distasteful. Going after what you want by playing the game is considered somehow wrong.
