{"id":16,"date":"2004-04-02T07:45:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-02T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/?p=16"},"modified":"2004-04-02T07:45:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-02T12:45:00","slug":"politics-are-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/2004\/04\/politics-are-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics are Good?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;This place is so political!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>How often do you hear that said about a workplace?  Do you feel it&#8217;s true about your organization?<\/p>\n<p>As discussed in this CIO Magazine article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cio.com\/archive\/040104\/hs_politics.html\">&#8220;It&#8217;s Politics, As Usual&#8221;<\/a>, &#8220;Any time you get three people together, you&#8217;ve got politics. It&#8217;s a reality of human relations.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" align=\"right\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" width=\"120\" height=\"240\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?o=1&#038;l=as1&#038;f=ifr&#038;t=instituteforl-20&#038;dev-t=D68HUNXKLHS4J&#038;p=8&#038;asins=0471548944&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank\"><\/p>\n<map NAME=\"boxmap-p8\">\n<area SHAPE=\"RECT\" COORDS=\"14, 200, 103, 207\" HREF=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm\/privacy-policy.html?o=1\" >\n<area COORDS=\"0,0,10000,10000\" HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/redirect-home\/instituteforl-20\" ><\/map>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/rcm-images.amazon.com\/images\/G\/01\/rcm\/120x240.gif\" width=\"120\" height=\"240\" border=\"0\" usemap=\"#boxmap-p8\" alt=\"Shop at Amazon.com\"><\/iframe>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/online\/14\/politics.html\">this FastCompany article<\/a> from exactly 6 years ago this month, Allan Cohen, dean of faculty at Babson College and coauthor of <b>Influence Without Authority<\/b> (John Wiley &#038; Sons, 1991) says, &#8220;When people talk about office politics, they usually mean something dirty or underhanded. But nobody exists in an atmosphere where everybody agrees. <i>Politics is the art of trying to accomplish things within organizations.<\/i>&#8221; (italics added for emphasis)<\/p>\n<p>So, are politics in the workplace a given\u2026 something to be accepted instead of complained about?<\/p>\n<p>I agree with the premise of both articles.  I recommend you take the short time necessary to read them.  <\/p>\n<p>Why?  Increasingly I see the most successful coaching clients are those who are extraordinary at building and maintaining relationships.  They have a Jedi-like ability to sense when they need to reach out or give way, die on a hill or lose a battle to win the war.  They are able to see the people side of issues, not just the business side&#8211;fully realizing business issues typically end up to be people issues.<\/p>\n<p>Is this a call to be more political?  Not in the sense we typically associate with the term: leading by opinion poll, only looking out for oneself, back-stabbing, deception, etc.  Part of our job as a leader is to eliminate (not the least of which is to never model) such behavior in your organization.<\/p>\n<p>However, a major focus of the Institute&#8217;s practice is helping people get things done, and agreeing with Cohen&#8217;s definition that politics is the art of trying to accomplish things within organizations, we indeed coach our clients to learn to be more effective at the art of influence.  <\/p>\n<p>Politics aren&#8217;t just for an election year.  They are a day-to-day part of your job as a leader.  Learn to thrive by learning the skills of influence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;This place is so political!&#8221; How often do you hear that said about a workplace? Do you feel it&#8217;s true about your organization? As discussed in this CIO Magazine article &#8220;It&#8217;s Politics, As Usual&#8221;, &#8220;Any time you get three people together, you&#8217;ve got politics. It&#8217;s a reality of human relations.&#8221; In this FastCompany article from&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/2004\/04\/politics-are-good\/#more-16\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p488Wj-g","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leadershipintherealworldblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}