 Office politics are two words that invoke unease and thoughts of a necessary evil in most of us. Early in my career I thought of workplace politics as power games, manipulation, trying to serve your own interests etc and I tried my best to avoid office politics. In middle management I realized that ignoring office politics was pretty costly personally and professionally. I realized that learning how to play office politics to your advantage is a crucial part of any management job and doing so doesn't make you a bad person. I'm sharing six crucial ways to successfully navigate workplace politics which are firstly be interested in office politics, secondly influence is power use it for the right reasons, third work in service of others, fourth map out who you need, fifth build bridges and allies and then sixth practically work in your reputation. Every business and organization will have politics. Office politics happen because of conflicts, differences and scarcity that are built into every group of people and every business. Politics is the skills and activities used to build influence within an organization. Influence can be used constructively for the good of the group through to the more negative activities such as supporting your own personal interests. Influence is needed to be effective in any management job. My name is Jess Coles and if you're new here Enhance.training shares people management expertise, resources and courses teaching you how to build higher performing teams. I've included links to additional videos and resources in the description below as well as a video timestamps so do take a look at these. And if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. The first crucial step in how to manage office politics is to be interested in office politics. If you ignore workplace politics and just try to do your job as I did for many years or you feel that office politics is a waste of time or pointless you won't be effective in management roles. You simply won't build the influence you need to do a good job. Managers are dependent on a wide range of people to do a good job. These interdependencies dictate the need to learn how to handle office politics while remaining true to yourself and being authentic. Your colleagues play a big part in your effectiveness and success at work. So be interested in office politics. Understand who is seeking what, what projects are happening and why certain strategies and tactics have been chosen by the company and what each department needs to achieve to enable these strategies and tactics to be implemented. Understanding the goals at the various different levels in an organisation gives you an important window into what functions, departments and teams are likely to need from each other and more importantly what they need from you and your team. Understand these needs and you'll be much better equipped in navigating office politics. Ask questions to get the people in your internal networks talking about their projects, resource challenges and frustrations. Ask about who is pushing what, initiative and why. Ask how this aligns with the company goals and strategies. When you know what is happening around the business you can anticipate problems coming away. You can take better advantage of development opportunities and you can pass on this knowledge to those that you rely on to support you and your team's work, i.e. helping those that help you and build appreciation and influence in the process. Working hard is not enough. Doing a great job is much easier when you understand the company politics and use them to your advantage. The second way to manage office politics is to realise influence is power and you must use it for the right reasons. The more influence you build the more power you have to get your job done as effectively as possible which in turn builds more influence. Yeah for example when you are influential you are much more likely to get your request done first which means that you can get more done in the same time frame compared to someone with less influence. Influence is what other people give you. When you consistently act for the good of the group or the company in this case people will support you, appreciate you and you will be more influential as a result. If you are a jerk, a pain to deal with or too often act in your own self-interest people will avoid dealing with you. You will be shut out of important meetings, your opinion dismiss more quickly, your help rarely asked for. In short you will lose influence and the power to do your job effectively. Use your influence and power to do the best for the group and you will earn more influence. The third way to handle office politics is to work in service of others and you might be thinking how does working in service of others help with the workplace politics. This approach is all about building relationships and building influence. You have influence over others when you have a relationship with them, when they trust you and like you and when you can help them do their job better. Firstly it being a nice person to deal with. Be friendly, be positive, be helpful. When people are happy spending some time with you and asking for your help you can build relationships. All the small things matter. Help others enthusiastically when they interrupt you. Listen when they complain about the office politics and what they have been asked to do. Compliment them on what they do well and what you are impressed by. Be proactively helpful as much as you can. To step up your relationship building spend time working out how you can help your colleagues, your boss and your stakeholders. Think about their goals and how you might help them achieve those goals, even if it's just helping them with a small step. Helping others gives you a great excuse to approach people that you don't know to start to build a relationship with them. The more you do favours for others the more they will feel compelled to do favours for you in return. Focus on others more than you focus on yourself. Be authentic, be yourself and work in service of others to build relationships and trust which in turn builds influence and helps you deal with the politics at work. The fourth crucial way to improve how you handle office politics is to map out who you need. Mapping out who you need is essentially larger organisations and those with offices in multiple locations and countries. The bigger, more complex an organisation the harder it is to get to know those people who impact your work, your team and your career prospects. Work out who is influential, who has the power to get things done and who will be useful to get to know. There are three key reasons to build your network and these are firstly so your team can work effectively day in day out because you have good relationships with those that support your team. Secondly so you know what is happening or within the organisation so that you can anticipate problems and take advantage of opportunities. And third so you can continue developing yourself and move your career forward. Draw an org chart map of those people that you need to get to know, work out how you might help them and then create an excuse to meet, get a current contact to introduce you or get on a project or initiative that they are working on or running and start building relationship. Make the effort to map out who you need to know and start building those relationships. The fifth key activity managing workplace politics is to build bridges and allies. To build influence and to navigate office politics you need to get on with and be able to work with all types of people. You know those that you have lots in common with and those you have very little in common with. There are lots of ways to build a productive working relationship with any colleague. Tips we've already mentioned are firstly be nice, pleasant and helpful. Secondly proactively look to help your colleagues solve their problems. Third get on projects, work streams and initiatives to build relationships with specific people. Fourth work in alignment with the goals of the company, department and team wherever possible. Other suggestions to build relationships include firstly and research those that you want to build relationships with or ask colleagues for information about them. You find out what their interests or hobbies are and then get them talking about what they love. Two always practice diplomacy. You know why annoy or upset colleagues when you don't have to. Not annoying people is as important as the positive actions you take. Third work hard to do favors for others, help out where you can and build appreciation and support. The more others owe you the more influence you'll have. Fourth build a reputation for being easy to deal with, positive, helpful and competent. You'll get more opportunities to expand your network with a positive reputation. Build bridges and find common ground wherever you can. You gain allies when you build good relationships and you work in alignment with the needs of the company and function. The more relationships and allies you have the more influence you have within an organization. The sixth key activity in managing workplace politics is proactively work on your reputation. When you have a good reputation within a business people pay more attention to you, are predisposed to being positive towards you and are more likely to want to build a relationship with you. A good reputation does some of the trust building before you've even met the other person. When you have a good reputation and are visible within an organization you are more likely to be perceived as influential. The more influence you hold the more other people will try to build relationships with you. All of this makes building relationships and navigating the politics within a company a lot easier and quicker and you put less effort in doing so. If you have a bad reputation you know say if you're self-serving, difficult, unhelpful then the opposite happens and building relationships and gaining influence is very much an uphill battle. Work to proactively build a great positive reputation by implementing the many office politics tips that I've shared today. So in summary how to manage office politics is a skill that needs practice and good judgment. What I've covered today will help you continue to develop your political skills so that you can increase your influence and impact within the business. The six crucial ways to successfully navigate workplace politics that I've covered today are firstly be interested in office politics secondly influence is power use it for the right reasons third work in service of others fourth map out who you need fifth build bridges and allies and then sixth proactively work on your reputation. If you have any questions on office politics six crucial ways to successfully navigate workplace politics please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.