Campaign strategy: Forget about the election—real political drama is dominating the workplace
Tired of the political posturing?
The inflammatory accusations? The anonymous tips? Unqualified ‘experts?’ Gossip hounds? Fake sincerity?
Wait, you thought we were talking about the election? We’re talking about your co-workers.
Engaging in workplace politics is as old as work itself. For centuries, people have jockeyed for position, trying to get ahead while making others fall behind. It’s as American as a presidential election.
For many, though, the very idea of office politics is offensive, even if they often engage in it without realizing it, according to Daniel Farrington, a corporate coach in Los Angeles. “Every bit of small talk at the watercooler or before your Zoom meeting is office politics,” says Farrington. “Every email cc’d to your boss to show you’re not at fault when a project goes bust is office politics.”
Farrington says political maneuvering in the workplace can help things get done. “People, by nature, compete with each other,” he says. “The strong separate themselves from the weak and you get classism right there at work. Office politics is about surrounding yourself with the strong and leaving the weak to fight for themselves.”
The problem, according to Farrington, is when unqualified people try to thrust themselves into positions and situations that are far above their capabilities. “We’ve all worked with those people
– the guy who throws his co-workers under the boss even when it’s his fault; the guy who thinks he deserves the job because he’s been there the longest, even though he’s incompetent,” Farrington says. “You have to watch out for those people. They’ll mislead their managers to get what they want, and once they get it, they manage their projects and people like they’re drowning since they have no real idea how to do their jobs.”
Whatever it takes
Carol, a former State Farm employee who doesn’t want her last name used, says she has worked with a few of “those people,” including one in particular who hastened her exit from the Bloomington, Illinois, company. “I felt bad for the people he duped, actually, because they all have to clean up the mess he made,” she says. “The guy had no morals. He’d step over your body to get to the corner office.”
According to Carol, the employee in question – let’s just call him Employee X – was an office politics pro. “He knew the names of your kids, where you liked to eat for lunch, which all sound good on the surface, but he also knew everything about your job, like what you were supposed to do and whether or not you were doing it,” she says.
And with that info, Employee X would make “passive-aggressive statements in meetings all the time, completely unsolicited, like ‘Hey Carol, I haven’t seen the California update yet but I’m sure it’s because you’re pretty swamped right now, so let me know if I can do anything to help,’” she says. “It was pretty brilliant. He’d call you out and then offer to help. He’d pull a complete jerk move to a co-worker and then look like a team player in front of the boss.”
Farrington says office political pros like Employee X eventually get sifted out, but not always. “I’m sure there are numerous executives around the world who have politicized their way to the top,” he says.