In every office, some employees carry a little more sway than others. Perhaps they’ve amassed enough political capital in the workplace to trade favors with colleagues and persuade supervisors to see things from their point of view. Maybe they can schmooze their way through a sales negotiation or exploit relationships with support staff to smooth the progress of a budget meeting.
Recently, some research has suggested that employees who exhibit this type of political proficiency in the workplace also perform better on the job. After all, if politically savvy employees can network more effectively and rally support across different factions of their department or company, it stands to reason that they also have the ability to exert more positive influence over firm-wide affairs.
Via The Learning Factor
It’s generally presumed that employees who accrue political power at work are higher performers. But those who schmooze a little less are actually the best at their jobs.
This is an important ponderable for leaders of organisations, Managing Directors and so on.
Too much of a good thing or TMGT can often backfire in the long run! In many cases we have seen it all, especially how employees who have amassed political clout in the workplace might become too big for their shoes and thus enter into a confrontation with their seniors. People in leadership positions should beware of allowing too much of freedom to politically savvy employees. Yes it is true that such people perform very well at the workplace, often getting the work done in time and on time, in many cases they have the ability to cajole, or convince people to buy their point of view, however too much of a good thing in such cases might lead to others being undermined by the kind of success that politically savvy enjoy. Leadership is not only about guiding star perfomers to greater heights, it is also about bringing low performers to an optimum level.