Research into politics in the workplace has shown time and again that women are far more interested in politics than their male counterparts. Not only is the academic literature clearly demonstrating this, seminars and conferences that I have presented to over the years have had a significantly higher number of female attendees. Indeed, many have been women's networking groups, all keen to hear about politics in the workplace. However, it is wrong to conclude that this is a gender bias. In fact, my research has revealed that this extra interest is stimulated by membership of a minority group. Those in the minority have to focus much more on their Read More

We define power as an asset which could get someone to do something they would not otherwise have done (or thought/felt). Decades ago the most powerful asset many powerful people had was their position or status. Education gave Read More

We have learned a great deal about the criticality of political skill during our groundbreaking survey with practising managers. These lessons are now being factored into our work with clients as they develop their capability to influence with integrity and gain the results they need for their organisations and themselves. The purpose of this article is to summarise the key findings and discuss their implications and is based on a full academic article. Read More

Overall, the results have corroborated the integrity of this construct for political skill and demonstrated that all of the sub skills are critical to succeeding in a wide variety of roles. The survey asked participants to rate each item on a scale of 1 to 6, based on their view of how critical each item was to success in their role. The overall mean of all 55 items was 4.64 and the lowest item had a mean of 3.84. This was not a surprise to us, since many other researchers have established that political skill is important. For instance, a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that 61% of HR managers believed influencing and political skill to be one of the most important Read More

It came as a surprise to discover in this research that those skills which relate to developing greater understanding were deemed to be less critical than the actual act of influencing. Our construct of political skill defined seven dimensions, three of which related to developing understanding. These three were ranked lowest. The reason for our surprise was that, based on our experience and the literature review, much emphasis is placed on developing a keen insight into what is going on, understanding what makes people do the things they do, being able to understand how others interact, etc. This surprise was shared by all of our interviewees, with one quipping, "how can you influence with any degree of confidence if you don't first understand?" Read More

A strong divergence of view was identified between men and women in our survey. Overall, women scored a mean of 4.90 compared to 4.50 for men (max. 5.0). This was not entirely unexpected, given the common notion that women tend to be more socially aware and concerned with relationships. However, the surprise came when probing more deeply into this factor, which forms a lesson for us all. It appears from the literature that there has been no successful attempt to find differences between the genders when it comes to Read More

Generally it was found that more senior individuals place far more emphasis on political skill. This is perhaps no surprise, but does provide focus for developing more junior staff, particularly those with talent and potential. In addition to these differences being noticed at a dimension level, several individual items showed significant differences. For instance, directors and above considered that developing clear objectives, sensing the feelings of others and being aware of their own emotions are far more critical than their junior colleagues. Some of the qualitative interviews allow us to elaborate on some of the potential reasons behind this evidence. Read More

It was established in the literature review that researchers consider that political skill needs to be exercised in a social environment. This is consistent with experience in that in most cases, there is a strong need to influence individuals which, aside from logical reasoning, is as social interaction. From our research, it appears that the social aspects of political skill are not being recognised by practising managers. This was demonstrated by the fact that of the bottom 10 ranked items (of the total 55), 5 included the word "social". Read More

To bring this article to a conclusion, we decided to comment on the implications of this work for those responsible for senior management development. These remarks may also be useful to individuals who are interested in developing their political skill.

1. 1. The first point to draw to the attention of development professionals is that this study produced an overwhelming view that these skills are of critical importance to success. It could be argued that many of the skills delineated are already well known; however, it should be noted that all of the respondents were cognisant of the nature of this survey, i.e. that it was to better understand the nature and criticality of political skill. Hence by participating they were also indicating their interest in this area. The literature review identified that there is in appropriate situations, merit in adopting a political theory of leadership. This being the case, serious consideration should be given to reviewing existing development programmes to increase the prominence of influencing and political skills, particularly bearing in mind that we have identified a lack in this area. This lack may be more about perception than reality and that what is missing is the adoption of the political perspective within organisations' training programmes. Read More