Women at Work - The Essentials: Playing Office Politics

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Everyone at work has their own priorities, concerns, and agendas, and knowing what those are allows us to navigate meetings and projects more deliberately and successfully. Organizational psychologist Madeleine Wyatt explains the interrelated skills that enable us to influence others, in conversation with a transportation planner who’s trying to figure out how to maneuver her way up in an often-exclusionary, male-dominated industry.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. I first became aware of office politics early in my career. I noticed that the colleagues of mine who sucked up to the boss consistently received better assignments from him. At first, I found their ingratiating behavior, bringing the boss coffee, for example, unprofessional and kind of repulsive. Shouldn't my work speak for itself? And yet, while I kept my head down and churned out research report after research report, hoping the boss would notice and offer me more promising opportunities, the suck-ups just kept

coming out ahead. So I realized something had to change. I had to make real connections with the higher-ups. I had to understand them as people so that I could establish relationships that went beyond the transactional. And I had to learn to do that while being true to myself and without being totally self-serving. Though, if those relationships led to the green light or the fast track, great. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Bernstein. Everyone at work has their own priorities and concerns,

and knowing what those are allows you to move more deliberately and smoothly through whatever meetings you're in or project you're on. Being politically savvy isn't the same as being a political operator. And to be clear, I'm not encouraging bad behavior. Do not go out there and take undue credit or act like you're in charge when you're not or hoard information to appear powerful. And actually, if you work with someone who's doing those things, Amy G's book, Getting Along,

has advice for coping. But I am encouraging you to consider adopting a principled approach to pulling strings. You can push your own agenda in the interest of your team and company goals instead of at their expense. Winning over higher-ups who can help your career doesn't require sucking up to them. And if you're looking to move up,

becoming interested and involved in your company's politics is just part of the process. I do speak to a lot of people who've got plateaued in their careers and they just didn't understand until kind of 25 years in that there was politics going on. They thought that the formal systems were enough to get them through and into leadership positions. Maddy Wyatt is an organizational psychologist and professor at King's Business School. One of her research areas is the informal side of our work days.

Impromptu in-person chats, non-work-related IMing, after-hours outings. She's found that a lot of ambitious professionals skip this sort of socializing, either because they fail to see the value in it, had too many negative experiences, or haven't been invited in. That's why Maddie's campaigning for a healthier,

more inclusive form of office politics, which is what a woman who we're calling Jess wants to be playing in her job as a transportation planner. They're both here with me to help us learn about how to build relationships, access opportunities, and influence others without compromising your integrity or wearing yourself out. Thank you so much for being with us, Maddie and Jess. Just let me start with you. Tell us about the politics that you deal with every day in your work. Where to begin? The politics are kind of two-sided. I work in consulting and have to deal with the politics of being in sort of the management consulting transportation side, and then also have to work with the politics of dealing with clients and

trying to win contracts, trying to build relationships. And I'm still relatively, at what point do you stop calling yourself junior in your career? I'm not sure. But I think that may still qualify. So I still am newer in my career, been in the industry about five years. So I found that trying to build external relationships with our clients was really challenging. And what I had to do was rely on internal politicking to get access to the external politicking. So I had to make sure that I was building the right relationships with my manager, with other people in the office who had access to those avenues to our clients. So that would mean getting invited to happy hours, getting invited to golf outings, things like that. Then internally, I kind of made a conscious decision, I think, when I started the job that I was going to adopt a certain persona within the industry.

So transportation, as I think many probably know, is very male-dominated, trends older. I'm Latinx. I'm sort of an outlier within the industry. I chose to adopt a certain persona of someone that was going to be a yes woman that was not going to adopt a certain persona of someone that was going to be a yes woman that was not going to say no to any opportunity. I was going to be really bubbly. I was going to be very peppy. I was going to be the person that all of the engineers would want to hang around. And then I would get invited to things. But sometimes I worry that that action has sort of, I think it's helped me advance my career, but sometimes I wonder if it's plateaued me where people only are able to see me as the kind of young, peppy, you know,

she's a lot of fun. She has a really loud laugh and we like working with her, but, you know, we could never see her being the office leader or vice president. We wouldn't see that for her, you know, but she's really great with the clients because they like spending time with her. So it sounds to me, Jess, as if you were really grappling with the parts of the politics that made you feel inauthentic. Yeah. And I think that sometimes I position myself as someone that I wish I was, But it's very taxing. And I find myself more often than not in situations where it's kind of like the, you know, somebody makes a joke and you're like, that is the best joke I've ever heard. Because you're trying to, you know, stroke somebody's ego or you're trying to make a connection. And that it feels really crummy.

So Maddie, help Jess out here. What are you hearing? Well, I think that authenticity piece is quite interesting because we find this all the way across organizations is that people want an authenticity and it also is one of the most important political skills that you can develop. So the political skills literature talks about four aspects of political skills and one of them is called apparent sincerity. People believe you are sincere and

genuine. So when you want to try and influence them, for example, when you're laughing at a client's joke, they want to believe that you're being true to yourself. Whereas if you're very politically skilled, then maybe you can make them think that when you're not really but as you say it comes at an emotional cost in terms of the emotional labor involved with that so if you're always having to be acting and being someone you're not it is quite challenging and we see this all the time in my own research do research on social class which is probably less of an issue within the states but in the uk UK, people change their accents, their mannerisms all the time

to try and make sure they're fitting in with people at work. But actually that means it's quite stressful for them. So when they go home at the end of the day, they spent all day kind of acting, changing who they are. And that's quite draining process. As you go through your career,

I think you can become more at home with who you are. But I think it depends on the people around you that help facilitate that for you. Maddy, you said that there are four components to office politics, to workplace politics, one of which is apparent sincerity. What are the others? Yeah, so there's networking ability, which is not just networking, but it's doing it well. So I always talk about this in terms of, you know, people who have 3000 LinkedIn contacts aren't

necessarily networking well, they're just networking. So networking well is about understanding who the right people are to be in your network. And also knowing how to deal with those people and how to maintain those relationships. Networking is a long-term strategy. It's not just going to a conference and meeting three people and using those relationships within the next six months. It's cultivating the relationships and making sure that they work for you over time. And you work for them as well. It's a reciprocal relationship.

And networks just don't work if you don't put the effort in. So that's one aspect. The second aspect is interpersonal influence which is again not just influencing people but knowing when to influence them and how to influence them so some people might use self-promotion as an influence tactic and talk all about themselves and other people might use flattery and ingratiation but it's people who are skilled in this aspect of political skill know when to use which strategy, who it's going to work on, which situation to use it in. So I always say, you know, my daughter,

when she wants to have some chocolate or something, she might come up to me and say, oh, you know, I love your hair, mummy. It's amazing. And I'm like, it's the wrong strategy, darling. You should have gone with some self-promotion. You should have said, you know, I got a really good grade on my assignment or something like that instead and that would have convinced me a lot better so politically skilled people use the right influence tactics then the third one is social astuteness which is really understanding social situations knowing who's in power what's going on in the room what are the hidden agendas around the table and those kind of things

and then finally, the apparent sincerity, which is ensuring that other people believe you're genuine and sincere in your interactions. And importantly, all those four aspects work together. So if you want to be able to network well, you also need to influence people and people need to think you're genuine and sincere. So it all combines together to become effective. And people who can do this really well tend to get really good career outcomes in terms of leadership, team working ability, job performance, salary, job satisfaction. And they're also less stressed because they feel like they can cope very well in political environments. What does it mean not to do it well? When do those skills turn dangerous, harmful, toxic?

I think it depends on how you define well. So if you think about it, the people who are the most politically skilled are doing it very well, but they might be doing it for different reasons. And I think that comes down to the political motivation or the political will, we call it in the literature. I think if you're doing it to help other people, so there's a lot of research coming out to suggest that politics can actually be quite a good thing and you can help your team members gain resources, you can as a leader, you can support the people that you're leading by developing their careers and introducing them to important networks. But also you can do it for the wrong reasons. So you can be very Machiavellian about

your political strategy. And obviously for those people, they might be doing politics very well, but be doing it for the wrong reasons. So it depends on how you define well and how do you define good in terms of political behaviour at work. But you can also be very bad at politics. And I think we've all come across people who do it in a kind of jarring way. I've just done some interviews with people who talked about politics in hybrid work and how they had colleagues who would put comments in their chat function

in every meeting, regardless of what they were talking about. And it was just to promote themselves. And they said this kind of behaviour is really jarring. It's really obvious. So those are people are doing political behaviors,

but they're not doing it in a skilled way because it's obvious what they're doing and it's not very good. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle,

the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor, Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from

setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. So we have networking ability, we have interpersonal influence, we have social astuteness and we have apparent sincerity. Jess, of the four political skills that Maddie described, which one are you most interested in working on? Okay, it's definitely between the last two because while Maddie was talking, I was thinking about social astuteness. So let's say I'm politicking, how do I know if the other person is politicking me? I'm really curious about that. But then I am.

So I'll leave this open for Maddie, because I am also very interested in the authentic appearance too, because I work a lot with communities. And so being authentic, especially in my heritage, in the languages that I speak, the person that I am, I want to bring my full self to work. But the avenues that you were kind of describing that exist for white men, like going out to the bars or going to the golf course, just simply don't exist for women. And so then I find myself in odd situations where I'm one on one with somebody, or I'm at an event, and I'm the only woman or I'm one of three women. And I don't know if it's better in those situations to kind of be one of the guys and try to, you know, go drink for drink with the guys at the bar, or if it's better to sort of stay true to myself and say, you know, I'm here as me and trying to get to know you or if it's better to blend in. Okay, so I think in terms of identifying when other people are politicking,

it all comes from understanding who you're dealing with. And that boils down to intel. I think men call it intel. i think women often call this gossip right so who is this person you're about to meet what this what is their agenda why are you meeting them so i think developing your internal networks will probably help with your client networks because those people internally will be able to say yes i know this person we've dealt with them before this is how you should approach them this is the kind of thing they might do. You can't just magically know this stuff. People will tell you it, they will guide and advise you on how to do this. But what if they're wrong? So my mentor was introducing me to somebody. And it turns out

that that person that they were introducing me to actually really didn't like my mentor or my mentor's company. And so I was like, oh, this is really bad. I have politicked incorrectly. So what would you, is that normal? Does that happen? Well, obviously it happens, as you just said. But yeah, I think this is a classic example of the fact that you definitely need not just one mentor but you need a whole committee of mentors but actually to get you above not just getting advice

to actually help you you need someone to sponsor for you so that could be strategizing about your career giving you insider information which is potentially about clients about what people's agendas are within the organization someone who's willing to connect for you and make introductions for you and provide you with lots of opportunities and also advocate for you when you're not in the room. So in your example, if you'd had maybe two or three people to go and speak to about this person, then you might have got the inkling that maybe the relationship between the mentor and the client wasn't so great. Well, let's say you haven't had the time or the exposure to develop this panel of mentors and sponsors. How would you recommend Jess walk into a situation like the one she described? Is there planning that she can do?

What kind of prep? I think for me personally, there's a certain amount of prep you can do. I think you have to think about the wider agendas that people might have, but you don't necessarily need that all up front. And I think that would be quite tiresome to have to spend every time you want to meet someone to have to go and speak to four or five different people. A lot of this can be quite organic. You can just think, you know, I need to be aware that this person might have a different perspective on this or might have different needs and wants out of

this meeting. A lot of it is just coming down to asking people questions, questioning some of the things they might be saying, and thinking about the different angles that might be possible, I think. But I think it all does come with time and experience as well, which I'm sure you're accumulating as you work. Yeah, and I feel like my politics, like I've been honing it over the past couple years. And obviously, I have a lot more work to do. But I keep coming back to being authentic and how I can be less exhausted. So you mentioned like that you don't need to kind of plan interactions, which I do think a lot about interactions and you know, who's going to be in the room and who I want to

talk to. And I guess that sometimes I just wish that it came more organically to me. And I think a lot of the times it ends up going really well, but it's just at what cost, probably more than the job itself is thinking about the politics of the job. And I don't want other women to have to live in that discomfort and that fear that they have to blur lines or that they have to, you know, participate in this. I know that you have to participate to some degree, but I guess I'm rambling. So how do you, what recommendations do you have for me now that I am kind of moving into a more leadership role where I can advise kind of more junior colleagues? I think there's a lot of emphasis on women to be professional.

And I think that is something that can make it quite stressful to engage in politics for women, because talking about blurring lines when you network there's this underlying pressure of sexuality and heteronormativity going on so you've got this pressure I think for women in particular and as you go up up the ranks to maintain professionalism and role model professionalism for other people. So I think as you go into a kind of position of leadership, my first piece of advice would be to push for culture change within the organisation. I know that's a huge ask. But I think identifying allies, because I don't think you can do this on your own, who are willing to push for change in the way that your organisation

does business, might be key for the long term change. You know, I found when I work with male-dominated fields that they can be surprisingly blinkered in the way that they network and they don't really have much knowledge about how their interactions are exclusionary. And sometimes you do just need to point those out. But in the short term, I realised that you have to cope with the situation, right? So you're having to be in this organization in this industry and I think that might come down to identifying your own code of practice so you know the types of interactions you're willing to have the times you're willing to have them one good way to make interactions a little bit more work related and professional is to always bring along a colleague for example

and if you're looking to make this a better place for women, then you can bring along mentees. So you can start to mentor people and advocate for them and show them that this is how you network. This is how you engage in politics. And it might not be the white male norm. It might not be the same as everyone else in your organisation, but you do it in an authentic way. What we see in research with women and ethnic minorities around politics is that it's when people completely opt out and say, I don't want to get involved. It's just a toxic environment and I don't want to get involved. It really plateaus their career. But I think when they say, actually, I know that politics goes on, but I need to do it in the way that I'm

comfortable with, I'm authentic, then it means that you've got a bridge into that world, but you're still maintaining that authenticity. But yeah, as you kind of develop and grow as a leader, you can start to role model these activities. And these small little changes start to create culture change. If you look at competencies of organisations in terms of roles, as you go up to more senior positions, you start to become more political formally. You'll see that those senior roles actually start to be described in political terms. So people want things like negotiation, they want you to influence, they want you to connect with people at the senior level. So if you've tried to opt out of politics at the lower levels of organisations, you haven't developed the

skill sets that you actually require to be a senior leader. So you definitely do need to develop those skills, but it's just how you go about doing it. And like I said, you don't have to do politics in a self-serving, Machiavellian way. You can do politics in a very benevolent way that helps other people, helps the communities that you work with, and you do it on your own terms. And you build political capital. And I'm wondering if you can help us understand what political capital really is and then how you

build it. I think really political capital comes down to reputation and getting other people to think about who you are and what you do. So classically, we see people who perform really well in organizations organizations but no one really knows that they've done that so you might be working really really hard beavering away every day trying to make the best you can do but if no one's noticed that then it's never going to work out i've just done some research on hybrid work that's showing that women have buckled down a lot in hybrid work so they've working really long hours, trying to make sure they're ticking everything off the to-do lists, but actually, they're not getting noticed for doing that. So I think this political capital all comes down

to relationships, reputation. You need people to know you, you need people to know how good you are. You need to develop that. So those relationships need work. You can't expect to get a payout without putting the work in so political capital is spending time developing these relationships over time maintaining them so that when the time comes you've got someone in your corner to advocate for you to showcase your work to put in a good word and all those things so I think political capital isn't necessarily something that is internal or individually focused it's developing that sponsorship and it can be challenging if you're a male-dominated industry to find people to help you and you might have to look externally for

people to become your kind of committee of mentors and sponsors to do that. Jess what kinds of questions does this raise for you? corporate. It's very traditional. I've talked about the male dominated workplace. That's all true. The kind of avenues for which people network are all kind of the same. Mental health is not really a thing in the industry. And I hear from other friends and colleagues at other places that don't work in transportation and logistics, that it's totally different that when I share some stories about politicking, they're like, that's crazy that you have to like go out on a limb like that. No, you don't have to have that type of tolerance for odd behavior. Or why do you have to spend all these hours outside of work trying to build relationships? You know, it should be more of a meritocracy.

And I'm like, well, it's not a meritocracy. And I heard what you were saying about sort of pushing for structural change. But then I feel like you become the like rebel rouser that's pushing for structural change. Then they're like, OK, yeah, never mind. Too radical. Let's go with somebody else for the project or to talk to the client because that person, you know, they're unhappy. And now we've pegged them as unhappy as the disgruntled employee.

And like, we're just not going to deal with that. Let them kind of stay behind the computer. And so I guess the question is, is what I'm dealing with normal, which I think you already touched on a little bit. And then the other question just about how much hell can you raise before people start to look at you and say yeah we agree but structural change doesn't happen overnight and now you're kind of just making a scene and it's not a good look for us yeah i think it's a lot to take on as an individual to try and create structural change but i think as you go up in the leadership positions then there's no harm in trying to role model a little bit more inclusivity. And when you see someone who might be a good ally, saying to them, you know, hang on a

minute, this isn't quite right. In terms of your other point about, you know, how much should I tolerate? I think when I think about politics, I always think of it as a spectrum, essentially. So, you know, up on the nice happy side you've got you know leaders who really help their subordinates and you've got people who are doing it for a good reason you know it could be for diversity for example and then you've got kind of neutral politics which can be good or bad depending on your motives and they might be self-serving but it doesn't necessarily need to be but But I think if you're coming across interactions where you feel like it's more harassment than just plain politics, and you're

feeling these environments making you uncomfortable, then I think you have to report them. I think you have to talk to someone you trust at work, whether you report anonymously or not. But I think you have to put a clear line and say, no, I'm not happy with that. That's not something I'm going to put up with. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work.

I want to go back to Jess's question about how you effect structural change if you don't have a whole lot of political capital. And I just want to run this by you. To affect any kind of structural change, you have to recognize that one person isn't going to do it on her own. And that is actually opening up an opportunity to build political capital, to start connecting and finding the allies who will help you build the influence that you've been talking about. What's your read on that, Natty? I completely agree. So building up those relationships, those allies, those sponsors within the organization that are on your side in terms of making the politics more inclusive is really important. I think in terms of the biggest changes that you can create, the organisations that kind of really spur change in organisations that I've experienced or talked

to people about are organisations that use those networks externally. So for example, you could develop a network of female clients. That is something that will help you as an individual but also builds the kind of groundswell of support for you both externally and internally and if you start to introduce other women into that as well you become a role model and you start to be seen as a leader and not just a yes woman and you're demonstrating those leadership behaviors as well so I think that's something that you can do to to kind of sidestep and then step back in again. And you've got this kind of huge support base is maybe one strategy. But it also sounds as if you're suggesting that Jess reframe her view of politics, that it doesn't take place only in big moments, big pushes, that it takes place in every relationship

you have in the workplace, right? Oh, yes, definitely. And when I talk to people about networking, for example, they first think about going to conferences, going to an event where you're holding a wine glass and a plate. And I'm like, no, that's not networking in my head my head it's in the toilets at work or maybe you know for a long time I worked at a university and my son was at the nursery and a lot of my colleagues had children at the nursery so a lot of my politics was actually done on the nursery pickup and just having a chat with people and just having a kind of share you'd hear a tip bit of information you think oh yeah you don't really think anything of it. And then two months down the line, you might think, oh, actually, that person was quite relevant to this thing I'm doing now. And that's how I think

politics is really played. And I think you're right. The politics is the everyday interactions. I don't think it necessarily is these big pushes to be the networker or anything. I think it is just the day-to-day work. I mean, one of the things that happened early on for me when the penny really dropped, and I don't think I even thought about this as politics, but I realized that with every interaction, I had the choice to be aloof, which might be a natural tendency for me, or to reach out, to make small talk, to create a connection. And the first way, the aloofness really wasn't going to help me or anyone else. But if I could start the spark of a relationship, even the thinnest thread of connection,

that that would make work so much pleasanter and easier. And I think that's where I realized that office politics, again, I don't think I thought about it in those terms, was maybe it's a game you have to play, but it's also a way of making life easier for yourself and a lot more fun. I think it does make life fun and it feels really exciting to build connections and to get to know people. And that's why I like working in this industry

is because I get to meet so many different types of people from different walks of life. You know, everybody from bus operators to people that are, you know, managing the whole transportation department. So I think if I could change my perspective on seeing it as this, maybe dirty is too strong of a word, but just, you know, the madman style, like, swishing glass, kind of like politicking to sort of more what you and Maddie are talking about as just making connections. And I love that. I really think something that's doable for me is connecting more with female identifying clients because they do exist. And it's just that they might not be in my direct line of work. They might not be the natural person that I would run to for something,

but that doesn't mean that they can't help me then connect with another client. I think it would make me feel a lot more comfortable and it would make me feel more comfortable bringing along some more like mentees and junior colleagues along for the ride. But I did have a question about Intel or gossip, whatever we're calling it now, because this is a problem i run into a lot at work too which is that okay so like i've done successful politicking like i did it and then i got some really great information but the person that i was politicking with was like i shouldn't really say this but and then gave me some really juicy gossip really really juicy intel. And then my company is like, hey, I saw you with

that person. What'd they say? And then I'm like, I'm not sure what they did. Did they say anything? What do you what do you do? Like, this feels like an ethical question, but I guess like, how do you know when to hold something in confidence versus like, this is a piece of intel that was like political intel that probably 12 other people at my firm know, and I'm just kind of corroborating the evidence. Yeah, it's an ethical dilemma, right? I think the political side of me would say that that information is power. So if you give it up too easily, then you lose your power immediately. So although someone might see you as a useful contact, maybe you've suddenly lost all the luster if you give up that information straight away. So

almost being kind of a little bit secretive about it and say, well, yeah, I've got some good information, but I can't say unfortunately what that is, means that you are suddenly seen as someone who's quite valuable. So I think there's a political element with how you decide to give up information or not. So after all of this back and forth among the three of us, Jess, what are you going to take away from the conversation? I'm taking away that it's not okay to have any obvious toxicity in terms of politicking, but that politicking in the traditional way that I've thought about it is not what it is. And that it seems like the real politicking happens in those kind of micro moments of connecting with somebody in passing, like Maddie joked, like in the bathroom or when we're in the elevator together. And that I think

I'm also thinking that like, there's a lot of opportunities to just connect with people that are more lateral to me and that are also junior to me too, that politicking doesn't just have to happen upwards, but that it can happen with anyone around me, because ultimately, the people that I'm working with now are going to be senior people at some point. And so that's an important part of politicking too. So I think those are my main takeaways. But I think if I had to say one thing, I'm leaving feeling a lot more optimistic than I was when I walked into this conversation because I felt pretty helpless in this regard. And I'm excited to listen to this back when I'm feeling like I'm losing

sight of my politicking. And Maddie, what do you hope listeners will think about after listening to this? My big hope is that if you're a leader in an organization that you think about how inclusive your politics are in the organisation and how you can set a good example of where politics takes place, how it takes place and who it takes place with. And I think making sure that, for example, when you're networking and who you choose to sponsor, if you're thinking about demographic diversity within that, thinking about gender and ethnicity and socioeconomic status and who you choose to spend your time with in organisations. I think that's my big mission would be to change cultures along those lines. But I also hope that people who are looking to

develop their own political savvy or political skills within organisations, also realise that it is really important and you can't just ignore politics and try and opt out because that strategy tends to be a very hard one. It means that you might spend a long time in your career trying to go upwards when it could be a lot simpler just by using some relationships and not necessarily in a negative way. You can do politics in a very positive and inclusive way. And I think that's my main message. So Jess, Maddie, thank you so much for this conversation. It's been terrific.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Women at Work's editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Tina Tobey-Mack, Rob Eckhart, Erica Truxler, Ian Fox, and Hannah Bates. Robin Moore composed the theme music. This episode is part of our series, The Essentials. In it, we bring together management experts and women working in essential industries in order to cover the fundamentals and nuances of key career skills.

Scroll through the show's feed to find other Essentials episodes. You'll see ones on delegating effectively, negotiating strategically, managing up, and giving feedback. Plus, more on the way. And if you want to go deeper on the many aspects of being politically savvy and create a plan to practice what you've learned, check out Harvard Manage Mentor. It's an online self-directed learning and skill building resource. Visit hbr.org slash Harvard Manage Mentor to see all the different skills the program can help you build, broaden, and refresh. I'm Amy Bernstein. Thanks for listening, and email us anytime at womenatworkathbr.org.