Emotional Intelligence: Your Best Tool Against Office Politics

Politics within an organisation will draw on your energy and cause significant strain outside of work hours, and it appears that most people regard this as an unavoidable aspect of life at work, one that requires either manipulation or avoidance. Research indicates that developing your emotional intelligence will allow for a better way to handle workplace dynamics. The ability to understand your own emotions, as well as those of others, empowers you to better deal with toxic workplace dynamics and provides you with strong protection against them while allowing you to accelerate your career success.

When you develop your emotional intelligence, you will no longer respond to office political issues with emotional reactions and become a victim of the system; instead, you will be a strategic navigator who upholds your integrity while attaining your career objectives.

How To Understand Emotional Intelligence In A Workplace Context

Emotional intelligence is comprised of five areas of competency: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.

Self-awareness refers to your ability to recognise your emotional triggers and understand how they will impact others. In politically charged environments, the development of self-awareness will prevent you from falling victim to the manipulation of others through emotional responses.

Self-regulation refers to the ability to manage your emotional responses, rather than allow them to dictate your behaviour. When others try to provoke an initial emotional response from you, the skill of self-regulation will ensure that you will remain strategic and centred instead of reacting impulsively.

When you have empathy for others, you will be able to be attuned to people’s perceptions of things, their motivations for their actions, and their emotional state at any given moment. This allows you to see how the people at work interact with each other and to predict what those individuals will do and how best to react.

Social skills involve all the ways in which you can develop and build your own relationships with others, communicate effectively with them, and resolve conflict in a constructive manner. The way in which you handle social skills determines your success in dealing with the complexities of running an organisation.

Research has found that 90% of the most successful performers in the workplace possess very high levels of emotional intelligence; the combination of their intelligence level and overall job performance accounts for 58% of their success in all levels of employment within an organisation.

The True Nature of Office Politics

The fundamentals of office politics are essentially a manifestation of informal power dynamics, human relationships, and networks of influence operating beneath the official organisational structure. The politics of office politics is the organisation of people when competing for limited resources like promotions, recognition, and influence.

Common characteristics of the politics of office politics include:

Competing for influence and attention from those in leadership/management

Establishing informal associations among those who have a common interest

Withholding information or sharing selectively

Claiming credit for work or passing the blame on others

Attempting to undermine colleagues whom they perceive as a threat

With very few exceptions, the above characteristics exist in nearly every organisation, as they are rooted in human psychology that governs status and belonging. Failure to accept the existence of office politics or to engage in office politics will lead to stagnation and increased stress in your career.

The fundamental difference between the two types of office politics is that harmful behaviour, or politics, harms others for the person’s own benefit. Constructive engagement, on the other hand, is understanding the dynamics of office politics from a position of integrity.

Being Aware of Yourself Helps You Not To Be A Victim of Political Manipulation

If you have a strong sense of self-awareness, you are less likely to fall victim to political manipulation through your emotions. By identifying common inner-emotional triggers that cause these large emotional reactions, you have created a shield against political manipulation.

Creating Immunity

Developing self-awareness allows you to identify the things that trigger strong emotional reactions for you, and ensures that these emotional triggers will not dictate how you react to outside influences (i.e. people who use political manipulation as a way of controlling other people). The more you know about your triggers and develop permanent immunity to them, the more effective you will be in controlling your emotional responses.

Some Common Triggers at Work

People may have an emotional trigger for feeling undervalued or unrecognised, being interrupted while speaking in a meeting, finding out that decisions have been made without their input, being publicly criticised, and/or watching someone else receive credit for their work.

Think About Your Emotional Activators

Consider a situation where you experienced an emotional reaction. What was the emotional trigger? What need or fear was being activated? When you can logically identify your triggers, you have created space between the emotional trigger and your response to it. This space allows you the opportunity to consciously make a decision about how you will respond when you encounter an emotional trigger.

The way people deal with Workplace Politics differs greatly depending on who they are as individuals, as well as what they value. Some people create large networks naturally, while others are more focused on the technical aspects of a job and its technical excellence.

Understanding your political style can allow you to take advantage of your strengths and compensate for any blind spots. For instance, if you are an introvert, you may find it difficult to be highly visible but are very good at strategic thinking. With this understanding, you can use presentation and written materials to establish your visibility, rather than relying on extensive socialising.

Self-aware professionals also understand their values and what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Understanding these boundaries helps them to avoid being pulled into any behaviour that might compromise their integrity.

Strategies for Self-Regulating Response to Workplace Politics

Self-regulation ultimately determines how a person responds strategically versus emotionally in a manner that might damage their credibility.

The Pause Practice: This is the best tool for self-regulating because it creates a gap between the triggering event and response. When your co-worker takes credit for your work or undermines you during a meeting or spreads lies about you, your immediate response may be to retaliate, defend yourself, or withdraw into your shell to avoid conflict.

By consciously using the pause practice, tell yourself: “I will respond in 24 hours.” Creating the delay allows your brain’s prefrontal cortex to regain control over your response, rather than allowing your emotional amygdala to drive you into an emotional reaction.

Use the 24 hours to consider multiple responses and likely outcomes rather than quickly reacting emotionally and exacerbating the issue. Taking a strategic approach will produce significantly better results than reacting emotionally.

When confronted with powerful feelings, take the time to identify each one more accurately. Instead of just saying “I am angry,” break it down like this: I feel angry about being excluded, anxious about my project, and hurt that my co-worker did not stand up for me in front of the boss.

Studies show that using emotion labelling reduces the intensity of negative emotions and increases an individual’s ability to think through a problem. Labelling an emotion engages the prefrontal cortex, which decreases the activation level of the amygdala, thereby calming down an individual’s nervous system. After identifying and labelling the feelings associated with an event, the next step is to deal with each feeling in a way that will resolve the issue or problem. Each feeling gives a person information about what they value and need to perform.

Empathising With Your Workplace

One of the biggest advantages of empathy is that it gives you insights into the ways people think and act. It allows you to see how individuals’ values influence their actions. Every individual makes decisions based on a set of values and why they make such choices; therefore, understanding individuals’ motivations helps people learn to respond more effectively to each other.

When a colleague takes credit for a joint effort they have worked on, you may make the surface judgment that they are selfish. However, after taking time to empathise with them, you may discover that they were working out of fear (of losing their job) rather than out of malice. This knowledge does not justify their actions; however, understanding their motivation will help you respond more appropriately.

Considerations for Empathic Understanding:

What are the sources of stress for this individual?

What might they lose that would cause them anxiety?

What do they want to preserve?

How will prior experiences affect the present behaviour of that individual?

Recognising Organisational Stress

During times of stress, such as layoffs, restructuring, leadership changes, and financial difficulties, the political behaviour of those within an organisation will increase. Understanding this context allows you to better understand some of the behaviours and not take them personally.

As organisations experience increased levels of anxiety, even colleagues who have previously worked collaboratively will begin displaying more territorial and competitive behaviours. Understanding this allows you to maintain relationships while protecting yourself from unwanted behaviours.

During periods of uncertainty, it is imperative that you increase the amount of transparency regarding the work you do for the organisation, document everything that you contribute to the organisation, and continue to build strong relationships with your key stakeholders.

Social Skills: Conducting Business in a Politically Sensitive Manner
Advanced social skills give leaders the opportunity to advance their interests while maintaining their integrity..

Authentic Relationship Building

The best defence against office politics is to create authentic relationships throughout the organisation. When people know, like, and trust you, it is far less likely that anyone will engage in political behaviour against you.

True relationship building is very different from transactional networking. Invest time in learning about your colleagues as whole persons with dreams and aspirations outside of work.

Authentic relationship-building practices consist of the following:

Ask questions about individual lives and remember “life story” details for future conversations

Offer support without seeking any immediate return

Celebrate another’s achievements with sincerity

Be there on a consistent basis and not just when you are in need of something

Share personal information that is appropriate for the working relationship

These investments begin to pay dividends once colleagues turn into advocates and eventually collaborate.

Strategic Communication

Your method of communicating will affect how effective you will be politically. Emotionally intelligent individuals will alter their method of communicating based on the individual audience they are working with and will always remain true to themselves while doing so.

Analytical leaders focus on data and logic, while relationship-oriented decision-makers focus on the people’s impact on the decision/policy. Big picture thinkers look for connections between proposals and larger strategic objectives.

Follow up on key discussions via email to document the details: “Thank you for our discussion. Regarding our agreement, I confirm we have an end date of X and deliverables of Y”.

Good Documentation Practices

You should also keep track of your contributions, agreements and all correspondence you have with others. Documentation serves as a record of your participation in projects, meetings and conversations of importance.

By documenting your participation, you protect yourself from opportunistic political players who might attempt to take credit or assign blame to you and provide future reviews with evidence, while at the same time holding people accountable to act in a manner that is in accordance with your documented agreement.

Relationships Upward

Building a relationship with your manager is your best source of protection. When managers know your contributions and view you as trustworthy, you are less vulnerable to peer attacks. By developing a relationship with your manager, you will also learn about their priorities and communicate effectively with them, which helps you help your manager.

You should make your manager’s job easier by anticipating their needs, providing solutions to their problems and delivering results consistently.

When regular check-ins take place, there are opportunities to discuss progress as well as the dynamics that exist in the team relationship.

Your Manager will support you through political situations due to the trust you have established.

Conclusion

Emotional Intelligence can convert office politics from an area in which we typically feel overwhelmed and frustrated, to an area that allows us to grow professionally and maintain integrity. Developing Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Empathy, and Social Skills gives you the ability to grow professionally, create a positive work environment and increase opportunities for advancement.

With continued commitment, the efforts you make to build your emotional intelligence will yield significant dividends. The benefits that come from emotional intelligence are reduced stress, stronger personal and professional relationships, accelerated career progression, and preserving your values in a complex workplace.

Begin today by identifying one area in which you want to develop emotional intelligence – i.e. monitoring your emotional triggers, responding to emotionally charged situations with a pause, or developing a sincere relationship each month.