High-Water Skills: Navigating Your Office Politics

Contributed by Rob Siders

As if it wasn’t enough to try and meet the demands of your job, especially as companies now must do more with less, navigating the murky waters of office politics can get you in over your head.

It’s true that there are times when it’s best to stay away from the wrangling that can divide companies into warring factions. It’s practically inevitable—when ambitious, smart execs get together— that monumental disagreements occur.

These battles, especially if drawn out over time, can be exhausting. But one thing remains clear: failing to learn how to swim with the sharks could be the best way to ensure you get eaten alive.

Here are five ways you can jump into these hostile waters and not get swept away by the undertow:

1. Keep Your Eyes Open and Look for the Biggest Fish
This could be your boss or perhaps even a division vice president. It doesn’t matter, really, who it is. What does matter is that you understand this person’s power.

It will be key for you to pay close attention to how this person has influence and with whom. Is this person a bully? Is she the smartest in the room? Does she have a strong set of professional ethics? Is she frequently meeting with the CEO or other more senior executives?

Once you find the right person, develop relationships with the people that work for her. You can often bet that her department was hired in her own image and they usually have access to a smidgen of her power.

This access can help you keep abreast of important goings-on that could dramatically affect you. Yes, this is gossip, but it’s good gossip and it’s best you use it judiciously.

2. Don’t Talk Out of School
This is important. As mentioned above, not all gossip is bad. In fact, reliable gossip about, say, impending layoffs could help you abandon this ship before things get really rough in favor of another that sails smoother seas.

Also mentioned above, be sure and keep what you hear to yourself, no matter how tempting it is to spread it around. Things can, and usually do, come back to you and undermine your trustworthiness. It’s best you not be guilty of this.

Avoid sending e-mail with the news, even from your home computer and especially not from your work computer. It leaves a paper trail that leads back to you.

If you feel you must tell someone what you know, tell a friend or relative, one who has no ties to your company. It will satisfy your gossip-jones and keep you in with your peers.

3. Know When to Swim Upstream — And Its Consequences
Swimming against the current usually results in the death of your career at your company—sometimes in your entire industry. Knowing when to give it a try will be essential to your survival.

Time and again, people have chosen the wrong issue at the wrong time only to flop. Don’t make the same mistake.

Instead, hone your sales skills and begin influencing others in your company network, including your boss and your boss’s boss. Get them on board and encourage them to influence others.

It may take time, but good ideas that run against the current are difficult to ignore if many people also believe in it.

4. Don’t Be a Sucker Fish
While swimming with the sharks, you may be tempted to become a remora—a little fish that latches on, gobbling up carrion and contributing little to the shark’s well-being.

It’s important that you be a valuable member of the team, too. Just being around for the ride won’t get you far in the long run.

Sure, you want to learn the power structure, but being an energy drain in the meantime is shortsighted. Besides, no one really likes a suck-up, including the sharks.

Use your access wisely by learning how to become a shark yourself.

5. Chart Your Course
This one can often be overlooked. Take the time to make a plan before you begin your voyage. Without it, you’ll easily get blown off course.

While the notion of making a career plan is cliché, it simply is one of the best things you can do to ensure your success. By setting ambitious goals and communicating them to the appropriate people, you control a great deal of your career path.

About the Author:
Rob Siders is a freelance writer living in Denver, Colorado.

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