How to be politically savvy?

submitted by trident765 from self.nonmorons

One thing I am starting to realize is that I am somewhat of a political retard. This is not good because my work environment is highly political, and top-down, and the only way of getting things done is by convincing authority figures. I need to develop some basic sense of how to act in order to get things my way. I need to be able to gauge how much power I have over various people. There have been times when I thought I had enough power to over various authority figures at work that I could ignore their instructions and do things my way, but I turned out to be wrong. Any books to help with this?

all 2 comments
sorted by:
new (suggested)
topinsightfulfun

[–]fschmidt 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think you first need a change of mindset, and then you need to carefully observe how politically skilled people around you operate. My experience in higher levels of business helped me with this. Raising venture capital and attending board meetings gave me good exposure to political skills. You could try to attend more meetings at work and just quietly observe the political speech.

[–]trident765[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I do tend not to attend most meetings. There is a weekly facility-wide meeting which almost everyone attends, but I have never attended it. I will try to attend it next week.