You Can’t Sit Out Office Politics

Office politics aren’t something you can sit out. Most people look down upon them, but the truth is, they are a part of every organization.

• Office politics are about relationship currency and influence capital — and the power these two things give you or don’t give you. The myth that “office politics” are always unethical or evil need to be debunked.
• Start by reframing what office politics mean. Do you see informal conversations as “lobbying” (with all the negative connotations this generally carries) or do you see them as “doing important homework”?
• Focus your time and energy on understanding what kind of political environment your organization has, the degree to which it suits your personal political style, and how you are going to be most effective in it.
• Realize that focusing only on your performance is very unlikely to get you the success you’re aiming for — be it a bonus, promotion, or recognition from senior executives. However, investing time in your networks and building the connections that can speak for you and your work will.

For more than two decades, I worked as an executive across the corporate, nonprofit, and public sectors. Throughout these years, I wore my refusal to engage in office politics as a badge of honor. To anyone who would listen (and perhaps even a few who wouldn’t), I said: “I really don’t have the stomach for all of that stuff. Politics are dreadful, dangerous, and unnecessary, and I’m simply too straightforward for all of the subterfuge they require. I don’t come to work to play games — I come to work to get things done.”

Niven Postma is the Managing Director of Niven Postma Inc and works as a leadership, culture and strategy facilitator. She’s had a wide and varied career across multiple organisations and sectors, in South Africa and internationally, including CEO of the Businesswomen’s Association, CEO of NOAH (Nurturing Orphans of AIDS for Humanity), Head of External Strategy and then Head of the SARB Academy at the South African Reserve Bank and Head of Leadership and Culture for the Standard Bank Group. She also lectures at Henley Business School and on various global leadership development programmes and is the author of the book “If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Do You.”