I’ve written a lot about values in the workplace — the values I’ve tried to adopt in my teams and how you need to renew these, how you can ensure policies you develop reflect different values so people can relate to them, how different values translate into types of a change maker.
Research by Birmingham University shows there are different types of “political animals” in the workplace based on how much people can get under the skin of office politics and how much they want to play politics themselves.
There’s a distinction between wanting to better understand how change works in an organisation to improve the chances of your project being able to stick and trying to get one over someone.
- Understand who are the movers & shakers in the organisation and the borough and work out what their needs, influence & appetite for change is
- Recognise that there are different types of influencers — for example, not just people with hierarchical seniority, but also people with trusted networks internally or externally, people who are great storytellers, people have a strong specialist skill or people who can leverage resources
- Share what your needs, influence & appetite for change is, so you develop a strong relationship with a community of people wanting to drive change
- Use those relationships to spot those issues which are proving the biggest barrier to success in the organisation and those opportunities within that community of influencers to unblock them
- Use that understanding to better be able to negotiate and bargain with people. The positions that people take on any given issue are less important than the needs they have. You can get people to shift position while still meeting their needs
- Set the agenda in a way that shows recognition of other people’s concerns and in a way that creates space for their leadership in the project
