Office Politics: Survival of the Savvy (Part II)

(Today’s post is part two of a two part series on Office Politics)

Three Phases of Political Competence

Political competence is a three-phase process. To bring people to your side, you must follow a systematic sequence. Otherwise, you may spend too much time talking with people who don’t need to be convinced of your idea’s merits. You may also fail to identify your chief opponents before they seize the opportunity to derail your efforts.

1. Map Your Political Terrain

First, identify all stakeholders—anyone who has an interest in, or who would be affected by, your idea—and how they will react. Some resistance is inevitable. You must anticipate others’ reactions, identify allies and resisters, analyze their goals and understand their agendas.

When you face objections, don’t go to individuals’ bosses or peers to undercut their arguments. Instead, ask them questions to determine their goals. A stakeholder may share your goal, but not your implementation approach; disagree with your goal, but share your approach to change; share neither; or share both. You can identify potential allies and resisters with direct questioning.

2. Get Others on Your Side

Build your coalition—a politically mobilized group committed to implementing your idea because doing so will generate valued benefits.

Creating coalitions is the most critical step in exercising your political competence. How do you win support? You need to be credible. You communicate credibility by letting potential allies and resisters know about your expertise, demonstrating personal integrity, and showing you have access to important people and information.

Through informal conversations, meetings and office drop-ins, you need to explain your position, keeping in mind four different motivational styles:

Rational: Use statistics and numbers to convince data-driven people how your proposal will save money, time or resources.

Mimicking: Cite successful companies that have benefited from similar ideas when dealing with people who are interested in best practices.

Regulation: For those concerned about rules and compliance, show how your idea will help in these areas.

Expectations: For those driven by a need to meet or exceed expectations, explain how your proposal will please customers, shareholders and the community.

3. Make Things Happen

You must win others’ buy-in by making it clear there’s a payoff for supporting your effort and drawbacks for not joining your coalition. Show how implementing your idea will ease their workload, increase their visibility within the organization or help them cut costs in their unit.

Once you’ve persuaded people to join your coalition, you’ve established a base that will legitimize your idea. Coalition members will then use their networks to evangelize for you.

As the coalition grows, don’t lose sight of the need for active leadership to keep members focused and sustain momentum. Watch for complacency and manage conflicts and disagreements over goals or processes. These are inevitable and must be resolved.

Mastering only certain parts of the three identified phases will not yield success. The following leadership archetypes sabotage themselves by failing to complete all three phases when attempting to generate and implement change.

The Political Analyst

Don’t be fooled into thinking that astute political analysts have high political competency. Analysts are skilled at anticipating others’ reactions and understanding their agendas, but they can’t get people to join their side. They’re incapable of sustaining the dialogue and interactions necessary to build coalitions. They may try to make things happen, but mapping the terrain is only the first step—and it’s never enough.

The Consensus Builder

Consensus builders do their political mapping, understand the terrain of allies and resisters, and spend time building coalitions—but they never seem to move beyond this point. They’re unable to mobilize supporters in a way that makes things happen.

Consensus builders have very strong process capabilities. The scale often tips in their favor because they can get people on board and they generally have a favorable reputation, which attracts resources and people.

They also have the ability to prolong meetings, insisting that conferences are the solution to every problem. An organization with too many consensus builders will spend an inordinate amount of time meeting, discussing, evaluating and never really accomplishing much.

Politically competent leaders map the terrain, get people on their side by building a coalition and lead the coalition to achieve results.

Reducing Risk through Politics

There are risks with any course of action you take. You sometimes have incomplete or inadequate information when making a decision. Building a coalition through dialogue with its members pushes valuable information to the surface.

You are open to criticism and politically vulnerable whenever you make a decision. Politically competent leaders reduce risk by getting as many people as possible on their side. Building a coalition is a search process for the best solution.

Building a coalition, bringing people together and solidifying/expanding your base will leave you less vulnerable to criticism. It’s more difficult to attack a leader who has built a large base of support throughout the organization.

Competent leaders accumulate political currency, making it easier for them to take on future projects. They capitalize on their successes to expand their coalition and prepare for further actions.