Rethinking Office Politics Part 1: Tools for Transformation

Pivot International  |   October 11, 2018

The negotiation of power-related conflicts within an organizational culture (also known as “office politics”) gets a bad rap. Much has been written about how to eliminate or manage it. But what if office politics actually reveal a valuable truth we can’t see thanks to our personal and organizational blind spots? Something we need to see in order to turn cultural conflict into a learning experience that grows us as individuals and as a business?  What if “managing” office politics is just a symptom of the problem it’s meant to solve?

Harvard professor, Robert Kegan believes the deeper function of office politics is to transform us and our organizations. Kegan is the Chair of Adult Learning and Professional Development, Chair of the Institute for Management and Leadership and Co-director for the Change Leadership Group. He’s spent his career teaching companies how to engage cultural conflict in the service of personal and organizational transformation.

The right tools make all the difference.

The very idea of “managing” conflict in our organizational culture is telling, as we generally don’t talk about “managing” things we consider pleasant or positive. It’s understandable that we tend to have a negative or even adversarial relationship with office politics since few of us know how to reap its benefits. But with the right tools, we can use the challenges of office politics to empower and unite our organization rather than to demoralize and divide it.

In his bestselling book, Seven Languages for Transformation: How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, Kegan outlines seven “action tools” for going beyond conflict management and affecting transformational development in leaders and employees alike.

Though the Seven Languages as a whole are beyond the scope of this treatment, in each installment of this three-part series, we’ll briefly explore 1 of Kegan’s 7 action tools (“languages”). Each language brings with it a new way of thinking and communicating.

The 1st Action Tool for transformation: From the language of complaint to the language of commitment.

“I’m sick of her micromanagement.”

“Your numbers aren’t what they were last quarter.”

“Management is making too many unilateral decisions.”

Any of this sound familiar? Complaints — along with the misguided attempts to address them — are the stuff conflict is made of. But what are complaints made of? If complaints are fueling the conflict, what’s fueling the complaint? According to Kegan, what’s fueling the complaint is a hidden commitment.

Complaints are the indirect expression of what we care about and are committed to.

Inside every complaint, explains Kegan, is a hidden commitment to something we care about. If we didn’t care about something and weren’t committed to it, we wouldn’t bother complaining. Instead of trying to get rid of our own or another person’s complaint, we learn to identify the hidden commitment and then actively address and advocate for it.

Making the transformational shift from complaint to commitment.

From: “I’m sick of her micromanagement.”

To: “I’m committed to feeling a greater sense of autonomy over my work and I’d like us to design some experiments together that would demonstrate to you that I’m trustable in this way.”

From: “Your numbers aren’t what they were last quarter.”

To: “I’m committed to our team’s success and I wonder what I can do differently to support you in delivering the performance that you wowed me with last quarter?”

From: “Management is making too many unilateral decisions.”

To: “We as a team are committed to having a say in shaping the policies that affect us and insist we be included in decision-making processes.”

Conclusion: From fighting against to transformatively working with.

There are fundamental differences in the technologies of transformation we’ll be exploring in this series, and conventional approaches to negotiating office politics. The difference is that rather than trying to eliminate or even manage a power-related problem or interpersonal challenge, technologies of transformation “unlock” the problem to allow us to benefit from its hidden wisdom. In this sense, rather than fighting against a problem, we work with it in order to make it work for us.

Just as we can learn to unlock the hidden wisdom in our complaints to transform ourselves and our organizations, we can we learn to unlock the hidden wisdom of our tendency to blame. In Part 2 of this series, we’ll be exploring the hidden wisdom of blame and its potential for leveling the playing field of power imbalances, enhancing trust and increasing collaboration. Stay tuned for more!