Politics, Politics, Politics: Is being politically savvy REALLY that important?
Semadar, A., Robins, G. & Ferris, G. R. (2006). Comparing the validity of multiple social effectiveness constructs in the prediction of managerial job performance. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 27, 443–461.
These researchers looked at leadership and organizational savvy in 136 out of 300 managers working in an Australian manufacturing company. They were interested in social effectiveness constructs, which they viewed as stable characteristics that influence emotional and behavioural reactions of people in the workplace. They wanted to understand:
1) The relationship between job performance and leadership self-efficacy, self-monitoring, emotional intelligence and political skill, AND
2) Does political skill add even more to our understanding of managerial job performance?
Their definitions:
Self-monitoring: How much leaders track, observe changes and control his or her self-presentation.
Emotional intelligence (EI): How well leaders deal with emotions and the emotions of other people.
Leadership self-efficacy: How leaders rate his or her ability to successfully lead others. Those with high leadership self-efficacy, see themselves as effective leaders.
Political Skill: How well leaders understand others at work, and to use that understanding to get people to help meet personal and/or organizational goals.
In this summary I want to focus primarily on the way these researchers defined political skill and the results of their research.
What is Political Skill?
Politically skilled people combine social shrewdness with the ability to change their behaviour in different and changing situations. They appear sincere, inspire support and trust, and effectively influence and control others’ responses. This moves away from concepts that focus on the negative elements of “office politics” which tend to focus on backstabbing, manipulation and betrayal. In a sense, political skill relates to how the leader is able to read and influence other people.
These researchers broke down Political Skill into 4 sub parts:
1. Network Building: Building relationships and linking with others.
2. Interpersonal Influence: Being able to influence people.
3. Social Astuteness: Being able to “read” others.
4. Apparent Sincerity: Being seen as genuine.
Their Research Results
Not predictive of Job Performance:
Self-monitoring did not predict job performance in this study. However, the researchers point out that there is much research showing that self-monitoring IS a good predictor of job performance. They noted several differences such as their specific definition, the sample they used and noted other research that shows high self-monitors tend to move up faster through the organization. Thus, readers may want to be cautious of reading too much into this result.
Good predictors of Job Performance:
Emotional intelligence was a good predictor when looked at on its own. However, when you looked at EI with the other variables, it did not seem to be as good of a predictor as some of the others.
Leadership self-efficacy was also a good predictor when looked at on its own, but that effect faded when looked at with other measures.
Political skill was a significant predictor of performance both when looked at alone and it continued to be strong when combined with the other measures.
What does this mean? As the researchers conclude: political skill seems to be best predictor of job performance of all the social effectiveness concepts---in fact, they note that it was as good as using all four concepts together to predict job performance.
Practical Application: Reframing how you view Office Politics
In my opinion, the value of this article is in understanding that workplaces are social organizations and that social relations are important. From a positive leadership perspective, there is nothing wrong with understanding other people’s point of view, emotions and so forth, and then working with people to meet goals. However, this really emphasizes that leaders need a clear, positive values system and positive mission. Political skills become negative when used to manipulate people without their knowing or to hurt others. If you use your political skills to “smooth the way” and help your team or organization meets positive goals, then they can be a positive force.
Observe yourself and others in your workplace when working with others---are political skills being used to meet positive ends? Are people being hurt?
Rate yourself on how good you are at network building, interpersonal influence, social astuteness, and apparent sincerity (set the scale from 1 to 10). Use your ratings to identify those areas you want to develop---get trusted supervisors, peers or your leadership coach to give you feedback.
Political Skill and Office Politics can help in building thriving workplaces!
Copyright 2008 Positive Leadership Solutions-James Hill
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