In the workplace, politics in is both a useful skill and a nasty set of behaviors. Practice the good one, but beware the other Dear Bob …In this week’s Keep the Joint Running (“Leading without authority“), you equated “leading from the side” and politics.[ Also on InfoWorld, Bob has tips on working with employees who don’t always agree with you in “Are those who resist change “workplace terrorists”? No” | Get sage advice on IT careers and management from Bob Lewis in InfoWorld’s Advice Line newsletter. ] I’ve always done what you described regarding leading from the side, but I had never considered this politics, just the normal way to get someone to do something they might not have thought of or want to do.I usually equate politics with sycophants and backstabbing, not the everyday give and take of getting things done.– Middle Manager Dear Middle Manager … You and most of the rest of the population. As someone once explained, “politics” is derived from two Greek words: “poly,” meaning “many,” and “tics,” meaning bloodsucking arachnids.That’s an unfortunate perception. The word refers to both a positive concept and some negative tactics. The positive concept is the importance of finding a path forward when a variety of competing stakeholders and stakeholder groups disagree as to what should get done. The negative tactics are the nastier ways of accomplishing this: arm-twisting, backstabbing opponents, propaganda, and so on. It’s regrettable how negatively so many Americans view even the finding-a-path-forward part. These misguided souls use terms like “compromise” in derogatory ways that make it clear their view of the world is that the only way they can be right is for everyone else to be wrong.Or else we have way too many people whose view of the world is shaped by their allegiance to a team, an attitude that their team has to win, and the false inference that this means every other team has to lose.It’s too bad. The world can be much more interesting than that, but only if people like this redefine their use of “team.” I figure that when I agree with 90 percent of what someone else wants to happen, the two of us should be figure out the remaining 10 percent in a way we can both live with. When a compromise is viewed as a negative, give and take on that 10 percent is considered immoral selling out.OK, I’ll stop now. I know you already understand the point.– Bob This story, “The two sides of office politics: Know the difference,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Technology Industry