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Office Politics - Candidate or Constituent?


You've heard of it, dealt with it, fought against it, or you might be an office politician yourself. In many conversations, the phrase "office politics" is thrown around. This got me to thinking about the issue and how it can contribute to negativity in the workplace.

I've always thought of Office Politics as difficult to define but I always know it when I see it. You know when you get a new job and everyone (usually) is really nice and amenable, then after a few weeks, someone comes from out of nowhere saying, "make sure you're nice to the office manager, you know she's gotten people fired before." Or maybe you've declined one too many lunch invites from a group of coworkers and now you seem to be left "out of the loop" of important information. For some of you, this may be on the low end of the spectrum, but you get the gist.

Before I embarked on this issue, I wanted a concrete definition of what exactly the term "Office Politics" meant. According to BNET.com - the business definition of office politics is defined as "interpersonal dynamics within a workplace. It involves a complex network of power and status that exists within any group of people." Wikipedia defined it as "the use of one's individual or assigned power within an organization for the purpose of obtaining advantages beyond one's legitimate authority. Those advantages may include access to tangible assets, or intangible benefits such as status or pseudo-authority that influences the behavior of others. "

Whoa...sounds pretty complicated now that we've defined it. If I had to boil it down to one sentence I would say that Office Politics is using real OR perceived power and control to get what you want - be it tangible(a raise, corner office, etc.) or intangible (a promotion, visibility, influence over others)sometimes at the expense of others.

For small number of you, you may not be aware of the politics in your workplace. For others, you may know about it but don't want to deal with it...more like a constituent, so to speak. There are many who do engage in office politics and there are also those get the ball rolling, I like to think of them as the candidates. Which one are you?

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