9 July 2007
Management Training Tip #1, Office Politics
Learn to Love Office Politics.
The first prerequisite in management training is learning the ability to persuade. To be a salesman.
Sales is sometimes seen as backslapping and glad handing and greeting the world with a “shoe shine and a smile.”
And perhaps this style fits some managers. Though not Your Business Blogger.
But what ever the external characteristics, the manager must get the active support of his organization to get his job done.
Bill Gentry at the Center for Creative Leadership says,
Politics is a normal part of leadership and organizational life, and political skill is one of the many factors that contribute to effective leadership, according to Gentry. The term “political skill” can be defined as the ability to effectively understand and influence others for personal and/or organizational benefit. Leaders need to know the relationships and cultural dynamics of the organization and understand how to respond to and affect their environment.
Yes, it may be true that each supporting silo is required by the org chart to provide the resources that our manager requires.
Instead, we know that support staff have limited resources to fulfill the seemingly unlimited demand for support services. Or there are hidden agendas.
The manager cannot simply demand or bark out an order for the support.
The manager must sell.
And the manager has the most challenging of sales jobs:
To sell an intangible.
What one insurance salesman called, “Selling air.”
This manager-sales-persuasion talent is necessary to enlist the active support of the manager’s boss, internal peers (HR, Administration), external peers (customers, vendors) and the manager’s staff — his direct reports.
The manager must, well, think like a politician.
The manager should sell the request, sell the requirement, sell the proposal, close the sale and get a deal.
To be a good manager, one must always be thinking like a sales guy.
And this is hard work. It can be learned. Management is, as Peter Drucker says, a practice.
A practice that can be mastered with Office Politics.
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