Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Fulfilled Leader Podcast, the podcast to strengthen your emotional resilience and find fulfillment at work. I'm your host, jean Balfour, master Certified Coach, with over 5,000 hours one-to-one and tens of thousands of hours in groups. I've coached incredible leaders like you to overcome their biggest work challenges and go on to lead resiliently, finding the type of fulfillment they never knew possible. They are leaders people want to work for and organizations want to hire. In this podcast, we have conversations about the psychological and emotional struggles of leadership. About the psychological and emotional struggles of leadership, you're going to hear neuroscience, psychology, leadership models and evidence-based approaches that all have an impact in helping you be a resilient and fulfilled leader. Every week, you learn ideas and tools that will shift the way you lead and live your life, making change possible. Let's start the show. Hi and welcome to this episode of the Fulfilled Leader. This is the second of my refreshed podcast episodes and in this one, I'm coming back to a topic that comes up time and again in coaching and that is organizational politics. It's a thing that can cause us a lot of emotional suffering. People find themselves worrying about how others are being with each other. They see influence happening in a way, maybe, that they would prefer it didn't happen and for many people I've coached they just wish it would go away and they didn't have to deal with it. Over the 25 years I've been coaching, I've had many clients who have even become a bit ambivalent about moving up to the next level in the organization for fear of having to be political. But I don't believe it has to be this way we can learn to be good, ethical players in our organisations and we can do that in a way that sits well with us. In fact, I actually believe that we have to do it in order to succeed, and I think we need it now more than ever because, with the increasing pressure in organisations, the uncertainty that we're seeing because of things like AI, we're seeing political behaviour increasing, and unless we can learn to do it well, unless we learn to navigate it well, I think we might lose out in our careers.

Speaker 1: 2:48

I wonder, if I ask you, when you think about organisational politics, what is it that comes to mind when I'm asking this question of my clients? I generally hear things like it's backstabbing or it's people building their own empire. There's a lot of language around game playing and people doing things behind my back to get things done. I do, of course, hear some of the positive messages things like influencing but mostly people see organisational politics as negative, and those negative sides of it outweigh the positives. The problem with this is that all organizations are political. We can't escape it, and in fact Winston Churchill said that if you put people and power together, you get politics politics. So all organisations involve people and power, and we add into that a hierarchy which on its own creates a power dynamic, and so in the presence of all of that, we see a lot of politics, and we often see it in a way that we dislike it. So in this episode I want to demystify what I see as political savvy and to help you to think about it in a fresh way and to give you some tools and techniques to help you engage with organisational politics, but in a way that sits comfortably with you.

Speaker 1: 4:20

The thing is that, unless we find a way to be politically savvy, things may not happen in the organisation that we need to happen, and it may cause us problems in our career or in even getting our job done. Many of the people I've coached who have struggled with it have seen that their career stalls because either they haven't worked out how decisions are made or how to navigate relationships in the organizations, and they've then struggled to get things done, and I've also seen this link to a struggle with influence. What happens is that people are put off by some of the behavior they see, behavior that we increasingly talk about as being toxic, and so we pull away. We think that, rather than learning to navigate it, it's better that I put my head in the sand and hope it all goes away. The problem is it doesn't so. What we need to do is to learn to understand the landscape, understand how relationships are built and where people are on how they're making decisions, and we can look for ways to get our ideas and suggestions implemented and taken through to action. And this is, I believe, what happens when we become politically savvy. I'm going to share some really practical ways to help you to do that, to help you to influence, to build relationships in a way that doesn't compromise your values and in a way that leaves you feeling that you can be politically astute and capable and that you have a skill set to help you with this.

Speaker 1: 6:01

The first place, I think, to start with this conversation is to actually change the word and to replace the word politics with relationships. From where I'm sitting, I think political savvy is actually about understanding where relationships are in the organisation and who has strong relationships with other people. It's about how we influence people who have power and it's about how we as individuals build relationships throughout the organization, how we create our network. So I wonder if we think about it as relational savvy rather than political savvy, and that that might help us to see it differently. It might help make it more palatable, and I do see this as key. I think relationship building within an organization is fundamental to our career success, but it also gives us a lot of fulfillment because when we have good connections and good relationships, we have people we can support who also support us. We have people we can support who also support us.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Before we go into that, I want to share a couple of personal examples to ground how this works and, in the examples I'm going to share, how it doesn't work. So these are two examples of how I don't believe was politically successful and I want to share them because I think we all stall on this at times and also because I think it's really good for us to own up to our own political behavior and you'll see through these examples that neither of them paint me in a very good light. I am actually pretty good at organizational politics. People saw me as a relational person and I was very intentional about building relationships with people, seeking to understand their perspective and thinking about how I can influence them. But in both of these cases I didn't do that well and in one case the first one I behaved actually really badly. In another case I was a bit naive and didn't really work out what was going on. As I share these, I encourage you to think about yourself and think about whether these resonate with you at all and resonate with your own behaviour. You don't have to share your behaviour, as I am doing here, but you can begin to think about. In all of the examples of political savvy we often say it's other people over there behaving in that way, and I think it's a good place for us to start by saying actually, I don't always do this as well as I could. So the first is really quite uncomfortable and I have shared this in a podcast previously, so this is the only the second time I'm sharing this in a very public forum.

Speaker 1: 8:45

But when I was in my early 30s, the organization I was in merged with a larger organization and my role was put at risk, as many of you will have had happened to you. At this point in my career I had really just clued in that I was really quite painfully ambitious and I didn't want to lose the seniority I had. I was part of the executive team. I was very young to be part of the executive team and I really wanted to be part of the executive team of the larger organization. In the merger there was a person who was in a very similar role in the other organization and we were asked to apply for the role the one role and we were competing directly with each other for that role. Now, as I've said, I really wanted it. It was such a moment for me of discovering ambition and I was just going after it and I knew that if I didn't get it it wouldn't actually be a disaster, that the organisation I wouldn't be made redundant.

Speaker 1: 9:46

There was another role that I could go into, but you can hear it, I was pretty hungry. I thought that role had my name on it and I already had good working relationships with a lot of the key stakeholders the CEO, the person who would be my boss. I understood the organization well and well you can hear it I really wanted that job. Now, in a similar case to this, what I would offer as a suggestion to people is that you do a bit of influencing and lobbying and help people understand what your strengths are, that you would bring to that role. And and I certainly did that I went to talk to people. I shared why I thought I was a good person for the role and that I thought I could bring some real value and experience, but unfortunately it didn't end there.

Speaker 1: 10:31

I also told people why I thought the other person wasn't a fit for the role and really this is not good behavior and I see this as kind of negative political behavior and I can't justify it. I was so worried about what would happen if I didn't get it, but still there was no justification for me to tell the other person's story in that way and if I could go back, I would really massively apologise because it didn't play well for me. I mean, actually it did in a way. I got the role, I enjoyed the role and it was a good one, but I always felt guilty about how I behaved in the process and for me, I think this is an example of politics at its absolute worst. This is the behaviour that we see, and when we see it, we often label it as politics, and I'm sorry to the person involved. The second story or example is less about poor behaviour and more about my own naivety.

Speaker 1: 11:32

So this was when I was in that senior leadership role. I'm sharing this example. Maybe I wasn't the right person for the job, but anyway, I was working on a big change that was happening in the organisation and there was a really key decision that I was responsible for taking to the executive team for approval, and that's what I was doing. So when I got to the decision making meeting, the decision did not go the way that I thought it should and, in fact, the final decision that was made was actually not good for most of the people in the organisation overall, and it was down to me. I had messed up the process of decision making. I'd not read the scene, I hadn't understood what was going on behind the scenes about the decision that was being made, about what people were thinking, and again, I do feel guilty about this, because it did affect some people in the organisation in a way. That really wasn't great.

Speaker 1: 12:30

But what happened in this case was that I didn't understand the political landscape. I didn't do the work of lobbying, of understanding where other people stood, of trying to either influence them to understand my perspective, or, in fact, what I think I would have done if I'd done that work was take the decision off the table until we came up with a third option that would work better for everyone. Once I'd heard the reasons why the decision didn't go my way, I realized I should have known that before I went into the meeting. The doors were open. I had good relationships with everybody. The finance director was a big key in that role, still connected to her today. I could have gone and spoken to her and she would have said we can't make the decision you want to make. But I didn't do it and, as I said, if I'd done that, we might have found a way to come up with a third option that would have been better for everyone. So this was another point in my career when I look back and think, wow, I really could have done that differently and I could have been more politically astute, more relationally dialed in and we would have got a different decision.

Speaker 1: 13:40

I share these because I think I'm pretty good at ethical organisational politics. But both of these examples are ones where I've failed, and I think we all do. Even those of us who see ourselves as politically astute don't always get it right. And so before we go in and look at the model that I want to share with you and look at ways that we can want to share with you, and look at ways that we can do it ethically, it's good for us to also say there's always room for improvement, even those of us who think we're doing this really well. Before I go into that, I want to just say a little bit more about why I think this matters so much.

Speaker 1: 14:15

The people who write research about organisational politics often describe it as being the art of understanding the informal and formal networks through which decisions are made and also being canny about working with those networks through those decision-making networks. And because all organisations are political, as I've said, we can't actually avoid this. All organizations are political, as I've said, we can't actually avoid this. So if we want to be successful in our roles, in our careers, we need to get good at understanding those informal networks, understanding how decisions are made, what are the behind the scenes decision making processes and because if we do that we can actually be more influential and that can support both our team and our wider organization. But it also is good for our careers and if we don't do it, it might be a struggle for us, for the people we lead, and it can negatively impact us as we go along. We might find it harder to get those decisions through, as I did.

Speaker 1: 15:15

The other reason it really matters is that as you get more senior, it matters more and more. If you look now at some of the senior leaders in your organisation, you probably see that what they're doing is spending most of their time a lot of their time influencing and negotiating across parts of the organisation, and I think that's what organizational politics is, and actually it's their job. Their job is to help things happen in the organization, to help people in less senior roles to be freed up, to do their jobs well, and for those things to happen smoothly we need good relationships. So a very senior leader is often acting very politically and the best ones do it really really well, and if you're thinking that you want to move into senior leadership at some point, then you have to learn to do it. Otherwise it will both be harder to get those roles and then when you get them, there'll be a struggle and you'll need to learn to do it quickly. And if we do learn to do it well, then we get really good at reading what's happening so that when things are changing, when decisions are coming up, we can work out who are the people we need to speak to. Where are the different agendas on those decisions, who's strongly for it, against it? How does this stuff work? And if you go back to my second example, does this stuff work? And if you go back to my second example, we can learn how to get a decision and outcome that is good for the organization and also good for us. Okay, so how can we learn to do this?

Speaker 1: 16:50

As a starting point about the how, there's a wonderful model which helps describe this and bring it to life, and it looks at types of political behavior and where we are in relation to them. It was developed by Simon Baddeley and Kim James and what they did was they created a two by two framework. Of course, they did the organization consultants, and then they gave each of the quadrants an animal's name to help us understand it a bit more, and what they've done with the axes on this is asking two key questions. The first question is am I acting on behalf of myself, am I selfish in this decision, or am I acting on behalf of the organization and my team, and their gain also has interest for myself. So one is am I out for myself or am I out for the organization and others as well as myself? The other access is how skilled am I at using political or relationship building behaviours? And if I've got low skill, I'm at one end and high skill at the other end.

Speaker 1: 17:58

And, as I've said, each of these has an animal name, and I'm just going to focus on three of these today. The first is the fox, and I'm starting here because I think this is the behaviour that we most often think about. We most often kind of label political behavior here. This is somebody who has very good political behavior, so they know where decisions are made, they know where the power sits. They are also, though, really out for themselves, so it's about them and their career, and this is a good example of the behavior in my first example. So it's a bit self often, I think, associate politics with that, and then we pull back, we stop thinking, okay, I need to learn how to navigate decision making in this organisation, because we see it as being a bit self-serving, and we don't want to be like that. We want to be working for the common good, we want to be working for the organisation. So for me, I think the fox-like behaviour is the one that I think puts us off engaging in organisational politics Just before I move on from this. So I do want to do a sort of gentle reminder that I think that we all engage in this behaviour and that's the reason I'm sharing my example.

Speaker 1: 19:29

Every time we gossip about somebody in the office, we're actually acting a bit fox-like because we're talking about them. It's not good for them, but it's not good for us either, but it's a bit kind of sitting from a personal self and what we want to do is create positive organizational climates. So, as you're thinking about your own behavior, I kind of encourage you to think about those moments where you may be not acting in the best interests of the team, of the wider organisation. The second quadrant is called the sheep, and the sheep is there because it's about being a bit naive. So this is a person, an individual or behaviours that we have when we're not taking part in political activity, but we are looking out for other people. So, people when any of us are behaving a bit sheep-like, we do have the organisation's interests at heart. We want to do a good job and yet we might use language that describes us as being a bit naive or a bit innocent. So we're doing everything for others and when we're in this, we're often keeping our head down, we're hoping that all will be well.

Speaker 1: 20:41

We don't promote ourselves, and if you think back to my second example, this is quite a good example of being a sheep. I was too naive. I didn't understand the politics of the situation. There are two challenges with sheep-like behavior. The first is that if we do this, actually we don't end up promoting ourselves enough. We lose out on our own brand and profile and therefore we can struggle to influence others. People may not know us. The second is that if you're in a leadership position, then if you're not navigating the politics, this can really affect your team, because you may not be understanding the relational landscape when there are projects and programs you're working on. You do need to understand that in order to get things unlocked and when challenges happen, and so we do need to be part of that to get decisions made.

Speaker 1: 21:38

It can feel very comfortable to sit in the sheep place just eating our grass, because we're just being quiet, we're getting on with our job, we're doing what needs to be done, but actually, unless we step out of that a bit, we're not what needs to be done. But actually, unless we step out of that a bit, we're not engaging in good political behaviour. The third, then, that I'm going to talk about today is the quadrant that's called the wise old owl, and this is because we in this quadrant we're behaving in a way where we're looking out for the organisation and that is still good for us but we're also behaving relationally and we're using kind of political behaviours. We still, of course, have our own interests or our team's interests at heart, but we also hold everybody else's interests at heart. So we're looking at the whole and we work within that political landscape to get decisions through, to influence, and some of the behaviours we might see here are about being really open and transparent, sharing information.

Speaker 1: 22:43

When we're functioning from owl-like behaviour. We're looking for win-win, we want to take account of people's perspectives and we're looking for solutions that can help everybody wherever possible. And if that's not possible which often it isn't possible we know that at least we spoke to people, we got their perspectives and at least they know that we listened to this. When we're in the OWL political framework, we're curious about what's happening, why people are being in a certain way. We might be questioning assumptions. We're curious about what's happening, why people are being in a certain way. We might be questioning assumptions that we're making, and when we are trying to solve problems, we look for ways to do it in a way that has the best sort of collegiate, the best collaborative outcome for people. So those are the three that I'm going to describe today.

Speaker 1: 23:32

The fourth one, if you're curious, is the donkey, and this is where we're not engaging in politics and we're still a bit self-interested. But the one I really want us to encourage to think about today is this our like behavior. How can we engage in politics in a way that's ethical, that really supports both ourselves and the organization and the people we're leading? And to help you to think about how to do that, I've got nine different behaviors that I think can help us make it seem a bit more concrete so we can understand. What is it that we need to do?

Speaker 1: 24:07

The first of this is to study the experts, so that's to become really curious and look at those people in your organization who are doing ethical political behavior. They're really good at building relationships and leading and navigating relationships in the organization. Perhaps look to some mid-career people or some senior people who are good at it. These people are often respected because they look for win-win, they embody listening and curiosity. They are sensitive to the political landscape, they know how it works, they know where decisions are made and they use that for the organization's gain. But it also shines well on them because people often see them behaving in a way that, with a lot of respect, they have a lot of respect for this behavior. So the starting point is to think about one or two people in your organization who you think are really good at this. They will be there. They might not be immediately obvious and if you're feeling bold, invite them for coffee virtual or real and ask them how have they developed their political astuteness? Where do they see the politics and power in the organisation? How could you learn to navigate that well?

Speaker 1: 25:22

The second strategy is to become a kind of investigator about where power sits in the organisation. So, as Winston Churchill said, politics is often connected to power, and the thing about power and organisations is it doesn't always sit in the places we think it should, because we often think about power coming through the hierarchy, that it often sits outside the hierarchy. It might be that a particular person holds a very important client account, or they bring a lot of money in for the organization, or they have a skill or competence that the organization really badly needs, or they're just best friends with the CEO. Whatever it is, it's something that gives them power and then, because they have that power, they often have a disproportionate amount of influence in the organization to how we would see, as if we just looked at the hierarchy. So have a look at where you think power sits and again, you can ask people and just be really curious about it so that you can understand how decision making is made.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Number three is about having a really robust internal network. We are often very focused on developing external networks, but actually, unless you're in a sales or a client facing client relationship role, your primary network could and perhaps should be your internal one, so that you have go-to people within the organization who you can talk to, understand situations, bounce ideas off, talk to to unblock things. It's in these informal networks that you have that you will be able to help become more politically savvy, more relationally savvy. What I've seen is that when people have these really solid internal networks they do get problems solved more quickly, they get things done and it's a really kind of key part of their success, their career success. And so I know many people say I haven't got time, I've got too much to do, and it feels like an upfront investment when we're doing it that I think it has a long helpful tale of time-saving things that can happen when we've got these high quality relationships with people.

Speaker 1: 27:46

Number four is about learning to lobby. Now I'm guessing that maybe when you hear the term lobbying it takes you into kind of big P politics, country politics and we've all watched political shows, or you I certainly have. I'm a massive West Wing fan. But mostly I think when we see that kind of lobbying we assume it's a bit negative, it's about trying to manipulate things. But for me lobbying is about understanding where people stand on decisions, because most decisions happen through a series of conversations behind the scenes and it's more usual that decisions come to meetings for rubber stamping. It's a kind of seldom that those decisions are made in the actual meeting, and so lobbying is the art of understanding that, about carrying out conversations, talking to people in your informal network that you've developed well, so that you can understand where people stand on a decision or on a project, and taking that time to understand perspectives and influence them. Maybe, maybe you can help them come to see that your view is the right one or if, like my case, you would see actually that your decision wasn't a good one and that it needed to be changed. So we want to really understand where people stand on things and we can influence them if possible. And if we can't influence them, then we can go away and see if we can come up with a different way.

Speaker 1: 29:18

Number five is about learning to influence. A really key part of being politically savvy is our ability to help people maybe come to a different perspective, to see that there's another way of viewing something, and even if they disagree with your perspectives, it gives you insight in your view, and I strongly believe that the first place to start with influencing is to stand in the other person's shoes. It's a listening and empathy exercise, because I can't influence you if I don't understand how you're influenced, the type of information you need, where you are on a particular decision, maybe even sometimes your worldview or your organizational view. So influencing starts with this. It starts with listening, empathizing, trying to understand the perspective that people are coming from. There is, of course, masses of other skill to influencing and you can study this and learn it, and I think it's a key political behavior.

Speaker 1: 30:21

Number six is learning about how decisions are made. This is sometimes described as mapping the political terrain in organizations. In many organizations, there can be a bit of mystery about how decisions are made, and so what you can do is maybe see a particular decision was made maybe it was a decision to go ahead with something and then see if you can track back who were the people involved in influencing that decision. Maybe go and talk to some people who were involved in the project bringing something up for approval and say you know, how did you make that happen? What were the processes, the formal processes, the informal processes, who were the people who helped you? You can really go on a bit of a mission to try and understand and map out how these things happen, and remember it's the informal networks as well as the formal networks that will be bringing the decision about. And all of this, I think, links to being transparent.

Speaker 1: 31:18

So number seven is about transparency working with openness and transparency about what it is that we're trying to achieve. So if we think about my example where I was a bit naive, or even the example of where I wanted the job, I really could have just said look, I really want this job. That's the transparency. Then we're not creeping around behind the scenes. I could have been really open with the other person and said you know, I really want this job, but I could have done that without all the other negative behavior. So I think we can share information, share things that we're wanting to have happen, and to do it in a way that is open and transparent, because then people are not worried about backstabbing and not worried about things happening in the quiet or decisions being made without people being informed or having the opportunity to influence.

Speaker 1: 32:12

Number eight can be a bit uncomfortable for people, but we do need to make sure that we're promoting ourselves. It's about making sure that people know who we are, trust us and respect us, so that they will also come to us when they need decisions made. We need to put our heads above the parapet and be seen, and if we're not doing that, then often we can be a bit sheep-like, we can stay in the quiet and then people don't know who we are, they don't know the successes we've had, what we've got to offer, and it's hard for them to trust us when we get to a point where we might want to work with them around a decision. So a little bit of self-promotion is a key ethical practice for political savvy. And then number nine is one that I've already mentioned a bit, and this is about win-win wherever possible.

Speaker 1: 33:07

Of course it's not always possible, but really we want to seek solutions to decisions that are going to benefit the organization hopefully me as well and the people we're influencing. It's much easier to get things done in organizations if people know that their perspective was listened to. And in fact, if we do that well, if we can't achieve win-win, then if we've done a good job of being curious about people's perspectives and letting them know that we've heard them, then they will accept a decision differently if we can do that. So starting any process with how can I make this work for people, how can I make this as much win-win as possible is really key, and holding the view that if I can't, I'm going to be really open, back to transparency, to talk with those people who might not be happy about the decision and see if I can help them to understand how it was made. So those are the nine different strategies that I think that we can use to be more relationally savvy, to be more politically astute.

Speaker 1: 34:14

It does take time, it's an investment, it is a skill. We need to learn it and I believe it's a skill that all leaders need to have. Being politically naive never serves us well in our career and we can do it in a way that sits well with us, that feels ethically okay, that is aligned with our behaviour. But it will take time to learn to do it and I really encourage you to do that. So I wish you well as you build your own political savvy and become really relationally astute within your organisation. Thanks for listening to the Fulfilled Leader. If this episode resonated, share it with another leader or friend and don't forget to follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. You can even rate and review. You can find more support and resources at jeanbelfordcom or come and say hello on linkedin. Take care and keep leading with heart.