Office Politics: Good Or Bad For Productivity?

APS Editor's Note:
Common wisdom is that office politics can lead to low productivity. Perhaps that is not always the case ...

Via
NY Times

Career Couch

The Win-Win Way to Play Office Politics

By PHYLLIS KORKKI

Q. You’ve been told that to succeed at work, you have to play office politics. You don’t care to play games; you just want to get your work done. What should you do?

A. As hard as it may be to accept, “any workplace that has more than two people has office politics,” said Peggy Klaus, an executive coach in Berkeley, Calif.

Whenever Ms. Klaus gives speeches on this topic, people groan and contort their faces, she said. “They think they’re above the fray, or they deny that politics in their office exists, or they say it’s not important to them,” she said. This is a big mistake that could stall or even derail a career, she said.

Office politics is simply “being smart about how you manage the relationships at work,” said Marie G. McIntyre, a career coach and organizational psychologist in Atlanta and the author of “Secrets to Winning at Office Politics.”

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