You Can't Opt Out of Workplace Politics: Why Good Leaders Need Political Savvy

October is Workplace Politics Awareness Month, which seems like a good time to talk about something many leaders would prefer not to talk about at all and something I love teaching.

Politics.

I can almost hear the response.

“I don't do politics.”

I've heard some version of that sentence countless times from leaders I coach and work with. Often, it is said with pride. And I understand why.

For many people, workplace politics conjures up images of backroom deals, manipulation, hidden agendas, favouritism, self-promotion and people advancing their own interests at the expense of others.

And unfortunately, those behaviours exist. They are not the whole story.

In fact, one of the most important shifts I see leaders make in my Getting Good Things Done work is recognizing that politics itself isn't necessarily the problem.

The question is how we choose to engage with it.

Whether we like it or not, politics exists anywhere people are making decisions, allocating resources, setting priorities, competing for attention, building alliances and trying to influence what happens next.

Which means you don't really get to opt out.

You only get to decide how consciously, and how ethically, you participate.

Political acumen is the ability to understand how power, influence, relationships, competing priorities and informal networks shape decisions, and to navigate that reality with intention and integrity.

And that starts with seeing workplace politics for what it actually is.

What Workplace Politics Actually Means

Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman, authors of Survival of the Savvy, define organizational politics as:

Informal, unofficial, and sometimes behind-the-scenes efforts to sell ideas, influence an organization, increase power, or achieve other targeted objectives.

What I appreciate about their definition is that it removes some of the moral baggage from the word politics.

Politics is not automatically good or bad.

Brandon and Seldman argue that what matters is what we are trying to accomplish and whether the methods we use to accomplish it have integrity.

That's an important distinction.

• Building support for an initiative before bringing it to the executive table is political.
• Understanding who has influence over a decision is political.
• Knowing when to raise an issue, and when the timing isn't right, is political.
• Building relationships across organizational boundaries is political.
• Making sure the voices of your team are represented in a decision is political.

None of those things are inherently manipulative.

They are part of leadership.

And in complex organizations, they are often how good things actually get done.

Being Right Isn't Enough

This can be an uncomfortable realization, particularly for highly competent, values-driven leaders.

Some of us have been taught to believe that if we work hard, produce excellent results, make a strong evidence-based argument and do the right thing, our ideas should naturally move forward.

Sometimes they do.

Sometimes they don't.

Because organizations aren't spreadsheets.

They are human systems. Let me say that again. They are human systems.

History matters. Relationships matter. Trust matters. Reputation matters. Timing matters. Competing priorities matter. Power matters.

You can have the best proposal in the room and still fail to move it forward if you haven't considered the people, interests and system surrounding the decision.

And, that's not necessarily unfair. It's complexity.

The leadership challenge is learning how to navigate that complexity without becoming someone you don't want to be.

That is where political savvy comes in.

What Political Acumen Looks Like in Practice

Political savvy is the capacity to understand the environment you're operating within and make thoughtful choices about how you engage with it.

It means being able to look beyond the organizational chart and ask:

• Who actually influences this decision?
• Whose support matters?
• What competing interests are in play?
• What isn't being said?
• Where might resistance come from?
• What relationships need attention?
• What conversation needs to happen before the meeting?
• What does success look like for the other people involved and not just for me?

And perhaps most importantly:

How do I move this forward in a way that I can still feel good about it when I look back at how I did it?

That final question matters.

Because political skill without integrity can become manipulation.

But integrity without political awareness can become naïveté.

Leadership requires both. There is one of those paradoxes I love to talk about.

Power Is Already in the Room

We also can't have an honest conversation about organizational politics without talking about power.

Many leaders are surprisingly uncomfortable with that word too.

Julie Diamond, whose work on power is foundational to how I think about leadership, offers a wonderfully straightforward definition:

Power is our capacity to impact and influence our environment.

That framing changes the conversation.

Power is not simply hierarchy, title or authority.

We hold many sources of power.

There is positional power, certainly. But there is also expertise, credibility, relationships, information, reputation, access, networks, communication ability and personal power.

One of the most important things leaders can learn is to recognize the power they already have and become more intentional about how they use it.

Sometimes the issue isn't that leaders are abusing power.

Sometimes leaders are underusing their power because they have not recognized the sources of influence already available to them. They stay silent in a meeting.

• They don't advocate for their team's work.
• They avoid a difficult conversation.
• They fail to build relationships with key stakeholders because networking feels transactional.
• They wait for their good work to speak for itself.
• They don't challenge an assumption because they don't want to appear political.

And gradually, they give away influence they could have used in service of something important.

Ethical leadership doesn't require us to reject power.

It requires us to become better stewards of it.

Know Yourself. Know the System. Act With Integrity.

In Getting Good Things Done, I often bring political savvy back to three simple ideas:

Know Yourself

Before you can navigate organizational politics well, you need to understand how YOU show up within them.

• What happens when you feel threatened or overlooked?
• Where do you avoid conflict?
• How comfortable are you with your sources of power?
• Do you overplay or underplay your influence?
• What are you known for?
• What reputation precedes you into a room?
• What values are non-negotiable?

Self-awareness matters because politics has a way of activating us. When stakes rise, our usual patterns tend to get louder.

Knowing yourself gives you more choice.

Know the System

Next, look outward.

Every organization has a formal system and an informal one.

The formal system appears on the organizational chart.

The informal system tells you how things really move.

• Who has credibility?
• Who gets consulted before major decisions?
• Where are the alliances?
• Where is trust strong or fractured?
• What history is shaping today's conversation?
• Where does information travel?
• Where does it stop?
• Which competing priorities are influencing behaviour?
• Who needs to be involved—and who has been overlooked?

This is where the ability to zoom out becomes so important.

When we step back from the immediate issue, we can begin to see the patterns, relationships, pressures and dynamics surrounding it. That broader perspective can change the quality of the decision, the conversation and the next move.

I explore this systems leadership skill more deeply in my Insight, Zoom Out: A Systems Leadership Skill for Better Decisions.

Political savvy requires us to become curious about the system rather than frustrated that the system exists.

Act With Integrity

Finally, choose how you will engage.

This is where political awareness becomes ethical influence.

Learning to influence does not require becoming someone you are not. In fact, the challenge is often learning how to work within organizational reality while staying grounded in the values that brought you to leadership in the first place. I explore that tension more deeply in Leading Without Losing Yourself.

• Build relationships before you need them.
• Understand perspectives different from your own.
• Socialize ideas rather than surprising people.
• Give credit generously.
• Have the difficult conversation.
• Use your power thoughtfully.
• Speak honestly without unnecessarily burning bridges.
• Know when to push, when to pause and when to let something go.

And be clear about the line you won't cross simply to get an outcome.

This isn't about becoming better at playing the game.

It is about becoming more intentional about how you lead within the reality of organizational life.

Before Your Next Important Conversation

Political acumen becomes useful when we apply it to the real work.

Before your next important conversation, decision, or meeting, pause and ask:

• What matters to me here?
• What might matter to the other people involved?
• Who has influence over what happens next?
• What am I not seeing yet?
• What outcome am I trying to move forward?
• What am I unwilling to compromise in order to get there?

You do not need to predict every response or control the outcome.

The goal is to enter the conversation with more awareness, more intention, and a clearer sense of how you want to lead.

The Cost of Staying “Above the Politics”

There is one more uncomfortable truth worth considering.

Sometimes saying “I don't do politics” sounds principled, but it can also become a way of avoiding responsibility for influence.

If you hold a leadership role, people depend on you to advocate, negotiate, build relationships, secure resources, create alignment and move important work forward.

• Your team may need you in rooms they cannot access.
• Your ideas may need sponsorship.
• Your organization may need you to bridge competing perspectives.
• A difficult issue may need someone willing to challenge the prevailing narrative.

Staying completely outside the political system doesn't necessarily protect your integrity.

Sometimes it simply leaves the field open to others.

Brandon and Seldman's work describes organizational savvy as a critical leadership capability precisely because good ideas do not implement themselves. Influence, networks and political awareness determine whether many of those ideas ever see daylight.

That's why I believe good leaders need to understand politics.

Not so they can become more political.

So, they can become more politically aware.

There is a difference.

• Political awareness helps us see the system more clearly.
• Power literacy helps us understand the resources available to us.
• Self-awareness helps us recognize our own patterns.
• Integrity helps us decide what we will, and most importantly what we won't, do with all of that information.

Political savvy helps us put those pieces together so we can move meaningful work forward.

Ultimately, leadership isn't just about having good intentions. It's about creating impact.

Getting good things done requires us to understand how things actually get done with the system we work.

Know yourself. Know the system. Act with integrity.

That's not playing politics. That's leading.