What If Office Politics Are Secretly Telling You Something You Need to Hear?

Becoming You with Suzy Welch

Suzy Welch interviews Christina, a brand management veteran who is struggling with the pervasive nature of office politics in corporate environments. Through a

Key takeaways

• Christina's struggle with office politics is linked to her high values in achievement and family centrism.
• Suzy shares a personal anecdote about being set up by a mentor named Mary at Harvard Business Review.

Main topics

• Office Politics
• Enneagram Personality Types

Notable quotes

It's better to be the enough of the author of your life than the editor.

Conclusion

The episode provides a framework for understanding career dissatisfact

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) Well, well, well, Christina, our fabulous and very honest guest today on the pod has a very prickly little problem. And by little, I mean big, because this problem is so common. It's office politics, which she hates. Don't we all? Don't we all hate them? And she wants to know what if the problem is actually her? And guess what? It is. And surprise, that ends up being very good news as you... We'll soon see. Welcome everybody to Becoming You, the podcast that helps you try to figure out what to do with your one wild and precious life. I'm Susie Welch. I'm a professor at NYU Stern School of Business and the inventor of the only scientifically validated methodology that helps you discover your authentic purpose. Let's get going. Speaker 4 (0:49) In a minute, you're going to hear from Christina, who wrote to me on Instagram about her dilemma, which was that after 20-something years, she was just sick of playing the corporate politics game. And I wrote her back, which I want to do, because office politics are real. I've experienced them. But, you know, what else was real? Her sense of confusion and her sense of frustration. Because basically she was like, maybe I just can't work in business anymore. I can't take it. Maybe I just need to start over. And that line, it immediately got my attention because I am not a fan of people leaping into radical reinvention without knowing why. I mean, sometimes reinvention is fantastic. It's just what you need. But other times we leap. because we are pushed and we just end up living in another form of default. And that is not good. Now, the conversation ahead is very real. It takes a big left-hand turn right in the middle of it as we land upon what's really going on with Christina. So wait for that, because it might strike a chord with you, given that it's about something we all have, a personality, a certain personality. So listen up. Here's Christina. Speaker 2 (2:00) I've worked in all sorts of organizations, big, small, medium, you name it. And I think each one of them, the flavor of office politics has been unique. But my struggle with it has been pretty constant. Speaker 4 (2:13) The Speaker 2 (2:14) internal competition that's always going on, departments jockeying for positions and resources when I'm sitting there being like, the competition's external. Trying to befriend people, giving people's advice. befriend xyz person so that they put a good you know yeah review in t for you or or even watching you know my own team you know people get passed up for promotions because maybe somebody played the popularity contest a little better than they did um you know i think everyone kind of has their own experiences with this and probably the list goes on and on yeah but for me personally i'm a bit at a crossroads i'm i'm really trying to figure out like Where do I go next? Is it me or am I better off venturing out there on my own, starting my own business and not having this? be a part of Speaker 4 (3:07) day-to-day work life. I hear you. You're talking about office politics. All of us have encountered it. And I think what I want to do is I want to ask you a couple of questions because I want to figure out the answer to the question about whether or not it's you. And if it is, that's fine. And I think some of the greatest companies in the entire world have been launched by people who said, I can't take office politics. I'm going out on my own and I'm creating my own place where that doesn't exist. Or if you've just worked in environments where office politics were given a pass, let's just put it that way. Okay. I have to tell you about my, one of my encounters with the office politics, because it still, it gives me pause. It still makes me like my blood runs backwards when I think about it. Okay. So I was a young, ambitious editor just starting out at the Harvard Business Review. Why should I be shy and not name it? This is a great institution, the Harvard Business Review. No shade. I learned a ton there. Very proud of my time there until they fired my ass. But let's just put that aside. They later did that when I ran off with my husband, Jack. But this was in the early days that I was there. And there was an... older editor there. She was probably older than me by 20 years. And I really thought that she had my back because she had recruited me. She had asked me to come on board. She was the one who kind of lured me away from Bain to this place. Now, look, I wanted to go to the Harvard Business Review. I had four young children and I had been working at Bain and it looked like the holy land to me because I wasn't going to have to travel anymore. So I was excited. I got there and I was really eager to be successful. And I thought that this woman, let's call this woman God, I'm dying to use her real name, but I won't. Let's call her Mary. Mary looked like she was going to be my mentor. And so I listened to everything that she said. And there was a big debate about whether or not we should go in a certain strategic direction. And everybody was debating it. They were debating it before the meeting. And it was kind of a contentious strategic decision. And so she pulled me aside and she said, You know what you should do to really look good to the bosses, to look really, really smart, to look like you really, you know, like you are promotable material. Go into the meeting and ask this very specific question about the strategy. It will show that you've been thinking about it in all the right ways. And I have to admit. The question seemed off to me. I thought, well, that's kind of an obnoxious question to ask. But I didn't push back because I thought she had my back. And I thought, oh, she's my mentor. So the day arrives. And we all go into the meeting. And the moment of truth comes. We're debating it. And I said, well, I have a question. And so Mary said, let's hear what Susie's question is. And then I asked the question. Right after I asked the question, Mary looked around the room. And she said to everybody, That has got to be one of the most destructive questions I've ever heard asked in a meeting. I mean, I think that that is really undermining of our culture and undermining of what we are trying to do here. And this is probably not the place to take it up, but I'd like to talk to you offline about why you would ask that kind of question. Speaker 3 (5:55) Wow. Yeah. I mean, Speaker 4 (5:57) she set me up to kick me in the teeth. Absolute Machiavellian office politics like you would not believe. And actually, you know, I was not the woman I am today. I was a young working mom with four kids who was just trying to hold her stuff together. And so in the moment, what I, of course, had I been a girl boss, like we're told to be girl bosses, I should have said, you set me up to ask that question. What are you talking about? Let's just call it real here. You told me to come in and ask that question. She counted on me not having the self-confidence to do it. And then as we walked out of the meeting, she just gave me the smuggest smile. And I never went and followed up with her. But of course, I never trusted her again. To tell you the truth, I never trusted anyone again in that building. And this was somebody who was trying to bring me down a rung and she set me up to fail. So it happens and it's real and I'm not going to be Pollyanna-ish about it. And so I want to ask you, like, it feels like... that you're not just an observer of office politics, Christina, that there were times where office politics kind of, did they hurt you ever? Or did they just, were you just an observer and said, this feels so wrong to me? They Speaker 2 (6:58) kind of eat away at you on a day-to-day basis, for sure. You know, I think so many times when you leave work for the day and you're like, What did I actually accomplish today? You know, I feel like I had to go smooth this over with this person or, you know, convince this person over here on something when they aren't really even necessary to be part of the conversation or, you know, and also too, I mean, in terms of career advancement, I think, you know, especially in business today, you have to figure out how to play the game and play it well. Or you start to hit a ceiling. And my number one core value is achievement. I'm so glad you mentioned your values. And it's interesting. Your number one value is achievement. This is the Speaker 4 (7:44) desire to succeed and win. I've got it as a very high value myself. I have to do some diagnostics here. But I'm just going to tell you that there's three possibilities. All right. Number one. Number one possibility. You've been in organizations with unhealthy cultures. That's number one. That gives rise to office politics. Okay. That's it. Number one option. Number two, the second option is that you've been in organizations that are highly bureaucratic or not winning. And companies that are bureaucratic or not winning have time for office politics. Okay, companies that are not bureaucratic and are winning usually are just going so fast that people are, okay, so that's the second possibility. And the third possibility. is that you have a set of values and personality traits that make you an anathema to organizational structures and the way companies work. I want to hear a little bit more about you so I can figure out which one of it is or if it's a mixture of all of the above. I will have to say this, though. I bristle lovingly when I hear you say to get ahead in companies, you have to play the game. Because in general in life, playing... a game is never good. I think it's not good. Like think about it in relationships. Any relationship that's based on game playing eventually implodes like between a couple, all right, between two people who are in a romantic relationship. If there's game playing, it might be fun and sexy at first, but eventually it destroys. I mean, one of the... I mean, this is a complete aside and probably irrelevant, but I think that like Jack was the first person who I'd never played games with, the first person I was ever with in my life where literally I said exactly what I was always feeling and he did with me. And we had just absolute candor at all times. And it built a very healthy marriage and a very healthy family. And I run a company now, Becoming You Labs, okay, which where we have all the Becoming You products that help you figure out what to do with your one wild and precious life. And I don't know, we'd