Mastering Office Politics: 5 Simple Strategies for Success
If you don’t know how to play office politics, it’s going to cost you promotions. Top pay increases your reputation and any influence you have. And don’t think that you can escape company politics by not playing, not playing means you lose by default. The good news is that winning at corporate politics isn’t complicated.
In fact, everything that you need to know about how to win office politics really comes down to just living by these five rules. If you’re ready to hear what they are, tap the like button. And let’s jump into it. The first rule is a golden rule. And this is one that is universally true.
- The first rule of politics is you will not be your boss, if it’s you versus them, they’re going to win 99.9% of the time, because they have more power and authority, your boss is the one doing your performance review, deciding what pay increase you got an even has say in whether or not you get a promotion.
So even if you create a situation in which you win and they lose, you’re still going to end up losing when you make your boss feel inferior or unimportant, or trigger their insecurity that is going to trigger their fear.
And what happens when people get scared, they become irrational. And what happens when your boss is irrational and channeling it towards you not gonna work out for you, when you make your boss, your adversary, there is no path to you winning in the long run, you might win the battle, you will not win the war. This is why we need to
shift to create Win Win situations, find ways to make your boss look good. It’ll make them like you, it’s going to give you favor with them. And maybe they’ll even get promoted out of your way or you’ll get promoted away from them. Because they start bragging about you know, I already can feel the comment being typed that my boss is horrible, I don’t want them to look good.
Make them look bad, and then they’re gonna hate you, and then you’re gonna lose. Look, I see this in the comments way too often. And we need to change our mindset around here. The only way to sustainably win is to help other people win along the same way doesn’t matter if you like the person that you are helping win. No, because it’s benefiting you.
And when it helps other people along the way, you are creating a lot of positive career karma, and improving relationships. Even if you don’t like the person, even if they’re a bad boss, this is going to pay off for you in the long run.
And ultimately, if you have to choose between losing and winning, while someone else also wins, I would choose winning every single time because when you’re winning, you’re building a better professional reputation, getting more opportunities, and you’re going to get paid more. Mastering Office Politics: 5 Simple Strategies for Success
2. your reputation matters way more than anything else:
second rule in office politics. And that is your reputation matters way more than anything else. The drama, The Bs, and even the coworker trying to sabotage and undermine you doesn’t matter when your reputation precedes you. Now this is somewhere that we can actually look to Chad to learn a lesson.
And if you don’t know who Chad is, you need to watch my five villains that work after this because the thing is Chad follows this fundamental role as though his life depended on it, what people think about you and your work is significantly more important than the actual work that you do. Building a professional brand is an absolute non negotiable for anyone who wants to avoid the BS at work, maximize our opportunities and income and be successful at work.
3. Third rule of office politics:
But carrying off of that, that brings us to the third rule of office politics, which is really going to amplify your opportunity and cut a lot of the competitive coworker drama. And that really is you need to make an effortless impact or at least it needs to look effortless.
We’ve already talked about the fact that working hard does not get you ahead. And in fact when you have to work harder, and by harder I mean more than anyone else in order to achieve the same or even slightly better results. What that’s really demonstrating is that you’re not very productive or effective at your job. This is why lazy people get ahead.
Now, the way that you do this is by making an on ignorable impact and you align it with your unique awesomeness quotient, your UAQ so that it’s something that no one else can do. It’ll have your name written all over it.
You’re on ignorable impact should do one of two things but ideally both it either needs to increase revenue or decrease costs If you find a way to make an impact on both of those things to maximize productivity, you are golden, my friend.
Now the best part about honorable impact is because it is something that is so unique to you. And especially when you couple it with the last two rules is that no one’s going to be able to come along and take credit for your work or undermine your impact. Because the receipts are going to speak for themselves. The first step in identifying what unendurable impact you can make is by knowing your UI cue.
4. Fourth rule of office politics.
Success is not solitary. If you’ve been hanging around here for a while, you know, that’s a term that I coined that I use all the time.
Now, if you’ve been someone or you’ve watched someone who’s really been on your own, just like you against the world, trying to make it, you know how much struggle is involved, it’s so difficult, it’s this really steep upward climb, and chances are, you’re not going to get to the peak alone, it’s possible, but you are going to significantly increase your chances and the ease of getting there.
When you have powerful alliances, if you are not prioritizing building strategic relationships at work. This needs to be at the top of your list of career strategy, because it is so crucial in navigating office politics. Now, we’ve talked about this a few times on my channel, decision makers need to not only know you, they need to like you.
And even more importantly, they need to know how associating with you benefits them. Now, really, this extends to your entire network of advocates, including the people that influence your decision makers, and anyone who can really support you along the way.
5. Fifth rule of office politics, which is really going to make the last role so much easier.
But also this is the role that has the ability to completely change your energy at work and make a lot of the office drama, just not matter. The fifth rule of office politics is to remember, it’s not about you now when it comes to working with other people approaching situations, and especially when it comes to developing relationships with people that you would love to have advocate for you, I need you to be able to answer the question, what is in it for them.
Now you don’t need to broadcast this. This is a internal monologue that you can run through. Here’s the thing we need to remember about humans, when we’re working with other humans, they’re really self motivated. Now, especially when we think about situations where the office politics are showing up pretty maliciously and viciously.
The thing is, is that that person isn’t really saying anything about you. They’re projecting it towards you. But it’s not about you.
It’s actually about them. Now, no matter what office politics or dealing with the crazy high end, like I just mentioned, or maybe you’re just trying to get things done or build better relationships, the most important thing you need to put the other individual at the center and you need to understand them no matter the situation,
whether it’s complex and negative office politics, like just mentioned, or general run of the mill office politics where people are positioning to get more power and get ahead, you need to know the players and especially your adversaries, you need to know who they are, what motivates them and what they’re trying to do.
And that’s exactly why I created this blog so that you can identify your villains at work so you know exactly how to approach them.
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