Office politics

"Politics" in the general sense is about governance of society; our politicians are our leaders. Office politics is about how things are done in the office. It is about leadership in the workplace. "Politics" by itself should be a neutral term (just like "diet" and "budget") but it has often taken on a negative meaning unjustly. Every situation in office politics has a solution in better leadership. While many of us may never have formal leadership positions, we will all have to deal with office politics. Every time we want something from someone, that is a leadership situation. At work, interactions are all about wanting something from the other party, if only in a trivial sense. Thus we all need to be leaders all the time.

Many Christian office politics discussions will give a series of practical principles: honesty, integrity, openness, sincere praise, networking, communicate well, keep your word, be fair, stewardship, etc. Given our course curriculum coverage on leadership already, there is nothing further to add: the Christian response to office politics is simply good Christian leadership.

To provoke thought, we looked at the "The 48 Laws of Power", a series of "laws" for office politics. Compared to Machievelli these laws are clearly un-Christian and immoral. The purpose of looking at these laws is to promote critical Christian thinking in our response to these possible workplace situations. We used these situations to solicit real life examples from class members.

Someone shared in how switching jobs she had to earn the trust of the "in group". The advice was to use her understanding of how her work maps to God's creation: excluding staff limits available talent and potentially weakens the project. If she can share this vision, the project strengthens, and her leadership demonstrated.

Disagreements with the boss is common. When corporate culture allows it, direct and open objections are expected. Alliances with peers against the manager for objective reasons can win the respect management.

Matthew 10:16 exhorts us to be both "clever" and "innocent": we can't naively avoid politics but we need to be true to our Christian values.