Leadership Training for the Real World

If you’re in a situation where somebody is keeping resources from you, help them understand how your agenda supports their agenda.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Resource hoarding

A way to get ahead or maintain positions of importance is to hoard resources and build a kingdom. By pulling more resources like people and budget into your sphere of influence, you gain power in the organization. But building kingdoms can prevent things from getting done. If you need resources, help the person who has them understand how their resource contribution advances their own agenda. Get public commitments of those resources and manage those commitments through project plans. One other thing to realize here is, if you have resources and people are coming to you to contribute those resources to their projects, you need to understand that you need to provide those resources to valid projects. Be a good contributor to the growth of your organization.

I know one CIO who had just joined the company. He was trying to make a name for himself. He knew getting resources was critical for so many of the projects out there, and he held a lot of those IT resources. He made it really difficult for some people to get the resources they needed. He came at this from the perspective of, “I’m only going to allocate resources to projects that make me look important.” A lot of those projects were in a really big business unit. The problem was, there were some small business units that needed those resources too. But he was always saying no.

One project sponsor in one of those small business units was having a hard time getting the IT support he needed. He sat down with the CIO and he said, “You know, I know that big business unit seems like it matters the most, but this small business unit is really the future of the company, and I think you really want to be a part of that growth story. So if you contribute your resources, you’re going to be a big part of that story going forward.” It totally changed the way the CIO was looking at the situation. He immediately allocated a lot of resources to this small business unit. He then went to the senior leadership team and started bragging about he was contributing and really driving the growth of this small business unit. It was a little bit unseemly, but that stakeholder who needed those resources for that small business unit got what he needed.

If you’re in the situation where somebody’s holding back those resources, a great way to free those resources up is to help that person understand how your agenda drives their agenda. If you can make that connection for them, the resources are going to flow your way.

Want to learn more about navigating politics as a senior leader? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!