The HBR Work Smart Collection (4 Books)

11 You Can’t Sit Out Office Politics

by Niven Postma

For more than two decades, I worked as an executive across the corporate, nonprofit, and public sectors. Throughout these years, I wore my refusal to engage in office politics as a badge of honor. To anyone who would listen (and perhaps even a few who wouldn’t), I said, “I really don’t have the stomach for all of that stuff. Politics are dreadful, dangerous, and unnecessary, and I’m simply too straightforward for all of the subterfuge they require. I don’t come to work to play games—I come to work to get things done.”

Given my approach, it’s unsurprising that I was entirely unprepared and out of my depth when, several years into my career, I was laid off. It wasn’t because I was performing ...