How to Engage & Influence Stakeholders through Ethical Office Politics

Many people fool themselves that hard work and hitting targets will lead to career progression. This module shows you why you must promote yourself and engage stakeholders if you want career progression – especially as you progress through the managerial stages.

This online class looks at the various limiting beliefs people have about office politics that they use an excuse to avoid engaging with stakeholders. Using a belief change exercise, you’ll reframe any limiting beliefs you have, to switch from the notion of surviving politics to seeing office politics as a necessary and important part of any management job.

At work we have two goals: our organisation’s goals; and our own personal goals. The way in which our behaviour affects these two goals will determine if your behaviour is going to help your career or hold it back, which of the four political animals you’re being at any given time – and whether you survive or thrive in workplace politics.

In this online video, we look at the case study of an employee who proactively engaged and influenced a key stakeholder to ensure his Machiavellian manager didn’t sideline his career. It shows you the tactics and mindset he used to deal with workplace politics. 

Without having career goals and knowing what you want when you engage in office politics, you can end up wasting a huge amount of time and energy building, for instance, a random network and relationships. Instead you need to have a clear focus on which people you need to get on board, and then start building quality relationships with these people. What’s more, understanding what you want from office politics is important — otherwise you won’t know if you’re succeeding at it. 

Understanding your organisation or your department’s culture is crucial. The size of your organisation or department, its structure, and how effective any employee evaluation processes are, will all have some influence on the culture. And culture determines how much office politics is played, whether darker politics are tolerated, and which kind of people are attracted to and thrive in an organisation. 

To plan your career path long-term you need to think about building a network of people who have influence. And in this online video, you’ll learn the process for doing this: first, you need to identify all your stakeholders;  second, you need to assess how much power each stakeholder has. Psychologists John French and Bertram Raven identified several factors that contribute to someone’s level of power, and in this online video you’ll see what these factors are and how they affect workplace politics.

For any given scenario you need to work out how interested a stakeholder is in the decision being made. What will the decision mean for that individual, and for his / her goals?   When you know what their level of interest is going to be in a certain scenario, and their level of power and influence, you can plot people on to a stakeholder map to see who are the pawns, who are the Knights, the Castle and the Queen players. This is a key part of how to deal with workplace office politic.

The best way to get people on board is to get into a sales mindset. And the best sales people are problem solvers. In this online video, you’ll see how to influence people by solving their problems for them. This is a key to dealing with work politics. 

In this case study you’ll see how not to play office politics. How failing to be proactive and to allow others to govern your career can lead to disaster.

If your stakeholders own the fuel that you put into your car, and which you need to drive your career, they’re not going to want to waste fuel in a car that’s untrustworthy. If there’s a choice, stakeholders will want to be seen to be refuelling a brand and car they trust, like a BMW. But trust takes time, and in this online video, we investigate the six elements that build trust in a relationship. All this is key to how to handle office politics.

To get noticed and up your reputation, you need to think how your job role can affect your business in the most profitable, productive or perhaps innovative way. Then you need to deliver a success story and get people to hear about the story — so key stakeholders sit up, take note, and pin your photo up on their star players’ board. In this online video, you’ll see how it’s done.

Perhaps most obvious of all when thinking about leverage is build solid relationships with decision makers and influencers. This online workshop gives you tips and techniques for networking, critical in office politics.

There are going to be times when you stand in the direct path of a colleague who will play dirty moves or sneaky games. So, to save you from being trampled on, you need to be awake to these games – you need to manage them effectively, which at times, will require countermoves. This online video identifies the most common underhand tactics people might use when playing office politics, and how to deal with each on turn.

In this online training class, we look into how to deal with bullies. We also show you how to spot those of the Dark Triad – those individuals who stand outside of the normal bell curve of normal behaviour, and make your standard insecure, cowardly bully look kind: psychopaths, narcissists and Machiavels. We’ll show you how to deal with each of these three characters in turn, and do it without turning office politics into some stressful, unpleasant Game of Thrones!

When dealing with others there will be times when you get angry. And there will be times when you feel the urge to give that person a piece of your mind — to teach them a lesson. But when you get caught up emotionally, then you’re not thinking clearly, and that’s when we end up doing things we regret, and making enemies is never a wise move. This online video shows you how to keep a cool head, and how you can create win wins – how not to let office politics become a game of one-upmanship.

This final online class provides a summary of the key learnings, and provides you with a list of useful further reading on the subject of engaging and influencing stakeholders, and office politics.