Office Politics

Office Politics Don’t Have to Be Toxic

by Madeleine Wyatt and Elena Doldor
Harvard Business Review | Originally published May 30, 2022
Updated: Aug. 5, 2022

There’s no escaping office politics. It might get a bad rap, but the ability to network, build relationships, and influence others is critical in any workplace. Unfortunately, research has shown that all too often, office politics is a white man’s game, as women and ethnic minorities often have less powerful networks and benefit less from engaging in politics than their white, male counterparts do.

To make matters worse, attempts to address this inequity often focus on “fixing” the people who are excluded, encouraging them to develop their political skills, get more comfortable with politics, or temper their reactions, rather than acknowledging organizations’ roles in creating cultures of toxic, non-inclusive office politics. Of course, there’s certainly a place for this well-intentioned advice for individuals — but to make meaningful change, leaders must take action to foster more-inclusive cultures on an organizational level.

To explore what organizations can do to promote healthy office politics, we conducted in-depth interviews with 40 mid-career ethnic minority employees working in a wide range of industries across the UK. We asked them to describe their experiences of politics at work, and how their workplace environments influenced their own willingness to engage in politics. We then used a statistical model to analyze their responses and identify common profiles of more- and less-inclusive cultures.

Toxic cultures lead to disengagement from office politics

Unsurprisingly, many of the people we talked to shared extremely negative experiences with office politics. They told us stories of feeling excluded from informal relationships, being overlooked or pushed aside by managers, and witnessing underhanded behavior from their peers. One participant explained how it was “an impossible task to break into those cliques and establish yourself.” Another vividly described the brutality of their workplace, saying, “They’ll slit your throat in front of you over there. They’ve got no issues about that.” Others recounted times when they were scapegoated or stepped over: “I’d been sidelined because [the managers] took the credit,” one participant recalled.

Our analysis also demonstrated that toxic office politics cultures can be created and perpetuated at any level of the organization. One participant described how their manager “started bringing his friends in, so I got moved to a lower position,” while others described how their peers “played the game” that was “all about trying to get the other person down…”[MORE]

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To read the entire article by Madeleine Wyatt and Elena Doldor at the Harvard Business Review website, visit: Office Politics Don’t Have to Be Toxic