Consulting staff on politics

Dear Bob …

I am an IT manager of 15 people across several offices. I keep running into to political issues that my senior management will not provide any direction on and it leaves me isolated.

I am usually good at solving these issues after a lot of stress, however I think I am spending too much time consulting my staff. My concern is, how far do I consult my staff? Will they gain too much confidence and lose respect for me because of it?

– Unpolitical

Dear Unpolitical …

Just my opinion, of course: Your staff are exactly the wrong people to consult about political issues.

I’m assuming that by “political” you mean decisions that affect you are being decided by who likes whom, whose pet program would be affected, who would have to give up budget … irrelevancies, rather than by businesslike discussions focused on relevant criteria.

If that’s the case, or even more so if it isn’t the case but your perception is that it is, you’re weakening your authority by consulting your staff. Even worse, you’re setting everyone up for the old game of “us against the rest of the company.” You can build team cohesion that way, but at the expense of demoralizing everyone, and at the expense of focusing their competitive instincts internally instead of against your company’s competitors.

If your senior management isn’t helping you, stop asking for help. The best cure for corporate politics is to build a network of strong relationships among the company’s managers and executives. Most of what’s called politics is the result of resentment on the part of those outside the network regarding the favorable treatment received by those inside it. It doesn’t matter whether the resentment is justified or not. What matters is your personal effectiveness, which will increase if you focus more on internal relationship management.

– Bob