Leadership and Organizational Politics: How to Win Office Politics and Gain Advantage in a Competitive Environment
Leadership and Organizational Politics: How to Win Office Politics and Gain Advantage in a Competitive Environment
Emmanuel O. Sobande | 2022
Abstract
Politics plays out in every area of human endeavor. Wherever there are two or more people, politics—and as a direct result, conflict—is inevitable. There are differences in personality, leadership style, culture, and value system that make this so. Accordingly, personalities will often clash in organizations where this diversity is inevitable. However, individuals, I mean leaders, can manage clashes effectively.
Like it or not, no office or organization is free from politics. Man is, by nature, a political being. Thus, he is innately wired to compete, so, naturally, there will be politics, competition, and conflict between two or more people. Politics is about who gets what, when, and how. It is about how scarce resources are allocated. Experience tells us that ‘political skills’ are essential for survival in any organization. Some people do not survive in certain situations because they are unable to navigate office politics despite being talented, hard-working, and having the best intentions.
This book fills an important gap in the literature on leadership development programs in organizations. Most of the existing literature omits lessons on leadership conceptions of followership; the focus is on educating, training, and developing the leader, not the follower, the superior, not the subordinate. Also, most leadership development programs fail to reckon that leadership is a process of influence that involves an ongoing transaction between a leader and followers. Each of whom was likely to shift from being in the role of a leader to being a follower. The key to effective leadership is building a harmonious relationship between leaders and followers. Though most attention is given to the leader, leadership depends on more than one person to achieve group goals. Therefore, the followers and the leader are vital to understanding leadership development as a process. Thus, the book considers leadership development from a follower’s perspective and attempts to provide answers to relatable questions
It is targeted at people across all spectrums of life: positional leaders in corporate and non-corporate spaces, employees, managers, and even entrepreneurs who want to take the lead in their field, and as many people who want to understand how to manage organizational politics without getting sucked into its murky unpleasantness.