The Empowered Manager, 2nd Edition

Part TwoPositive Political Skills at Work

The key to positive politics is to look at each encounter as an opportunity to create the culture we want to inhabit. It requires viewing ourselves and our unit as the primary instrument for changing the culture. Cultures get changed in a thousand small ways, not by dramatic announcements or change management programs coming from the top. If we wait until top management gives leadership to the change we want to see, we miss the point. For us to have any hope that our own preferred future will come to pass, we provide the leadership. We hope that the world around us supports our vision, but even if it doesn't, we will still act on that vision.

Leadership is the process of translating intentions into reality. If our intention is to work in an organization in which authority resides close to the bottom, within each person, and authenticity is the norm, then all we have to do is make sure our own actions are aligned with our own intentions. Who knows––maybe a couple of others will be doing the same, and before long the Queen Mary will have changed direction. This is politics at its best, where our actions, not our speeches, become our political statement. Politics as oratory, bargaining, and “what's in it for me” is a game that works but is not worth playing. Learning how to play the game in a way that gives us hope and pride is the point. ...