It should have gone so much better. Hired as an agent of change, David was lauded for his creativity, his ability to envision a path of progress, and his action-oriented decisiveness. As the hospital president commented during his introductions, David was the “right person to take our newly acquired orthopedic center to the next level.”
Now, after less than three years at the helm, it was all unraveling. Trust and morale were at disturbingly low levels. Two top-flight orthopedic surgeons had bolted. And most damning, Initiative 2025, the centerpiece of David’s push for change, was sputtering amid resistance and false starts.
What happened? David was a quick study with insightful perspectives. The course David had charted certainly had merit, as nearly everyone agreed. Unfortunately, they also agreed on three other themes.
First, David was pushing for so many changes that his unit had lost focus.
Second, David ran a one-man show. He plotted the future, and while he asked for opinions at times, most people soon learned that it was all window dressing. David’s actions were unaffected by others’ input.
Third, and perhaps most significant, David marginalized those who were bold enough to offer questions or challenges to his prescribed course of action. Consequently, he missed key ideas and hit traps and roadblocks that should have been easily avoidable.
Amid the confusion, insiders were not surprised to learn that David had moved along, accepting a leadership role with a much smaller orthopedic practice in a different state. Few people were sorry to see him go.
In the aftermath of his departure, opinions coalesced. Most agreed that David lacked any semblance of interpersonal tact. He had no finesse. But there was another theme that was obvious to all. “He was one of the most politically obsessed people that I’ve ever seen,” one senior administrator noted. Another colleague quickly chimed in, “And one of the most politically inept!”
Both comments were spot-on. For David, everything was a political machination, a series of calculated moves, all plotted to secure approval for his pet projects and enhance his self-image. Yet, the positive side of politics — building rapport and understanding and demonstrating a legitimate process of transparent decision-making — were sorely missed.
Stated differently, David was politically naïve, seemingly dismissing the all-important impact of political sensitivity and practice. As we will see, in many ways, leader success turns on a well-established set of political sensitivities.
Organizational political skill is typically defined as the “ability to understand others … and use this knowledge to influence others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal and organizational objectives.”(1) Against this criteria, David’s understanding of others and his capacity for positive influence were woefully short.
THE REALITY OF ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICS
Politics. The word itself prompts visceral reactions. Images abound. Our minds jump to the hackneyed, inefficient, and seemingly ineffective processes that define our contemporary political systems. We turn to images of backroom manipulations where the powerful connive and win, mostly at the expense of those who are less prominent and less privy to some sacred inner circle.
We imagine scenarios where the schmoozing of social networks outwits and trumps well-placed logic. We picture, in our mind’s eye, colleagues who have created a carefully crafted image that belies how little they really know and do.
The word politics, as used in popular parlance, has a pejorative tone that suggests something ugly, sinister, and coercive is taking place. While these views are real, living in all organizations, they stymy our perspective of politics as a creative, vital, and positive force for action.
Healthcare organizations are complex, and growth, often through strategic acquisition, has expanded the range of complexity. Resource scarcity is an ongoing reality. Add in the regulatory nature of the industry and the constant struggle to acquire and retain a talented workforce, and the scenario speaks to the obvious.
Healthcare organizations are among our most politically complex entities. Of course, politics are inherent to the successful operations of all organizations — a reality that successful leaders recognize and accept. For example, in an important early study, Madison and colleagues found that most managers believed that politics was a frequent dimension of day-to-day organizational life.(2)
As we have already noted, leaders create influence — intentional influence, influence that moves people to behave in a particular and desired manner. In turn, politics are simply mechanisms of influence.
It may be as simple as taking the time to have a sincere and private conversation with a respected senior thought leader before embarking on a tricky new initiative. It may involve learning about the pressures affecting our boss that leads us to defer a key request until the timing is better. It may be understanding how to build and use a coalition of colleagues to bring persuasive pressure for a needed action.
It may be knowing and checking in with the key people who must be kept in the loop before launching a new program, even when doing so tugs against our most precious resource: time.
As we begin, we must emphasize one theme. There is nothing negative, manipulative, or sinister about such acute political awareness and efforts at influence.(3) In fact, the field of positive politics has emerged in recent years and underscores the point.(4)
Most of us prefer a rational model of organizational decision-making. With this model, power and control are centralized and are applied (most of the time) rather consistently, and decisions are deliberately made to maximize outcomes for the overall entity.(5) In complex organizations however, a second model — a political model — co-exists. Here, power and control are inconsistent, decentralized, and shift, given the power of select coalitions and interest groups. Decisions, in many cases, are the product of bargaining and negotiations where those with the greatest leverage prevail.(5) Against this realization, we begin our study by examining the key role of power in the political process.
POWER FUNDAMENTALS
The themes of power, influence, and politics are inextricably linked. Accordingly, a brief dive into some of the basic dimensions of organizational power merits attention. The research and theory regarding organizational power are formidable.(6)
In general, we accept five bases of power:(7)
Legitimate power — derived from one’s formal position in the organizational hierarchy.
Expert power — derived from the knowledge and expertise about how an issue should be handled.
Reward power — derived, as the term implies, from one’s capacity to recognize and reward others or refrain from doing so.
Coercive power — derived from one’s capacity to make and enact threats for undesired outcomes, prompting others to go along to avoid punishment.
Referent power — derived from one’s personality, charisma, and authentic liking, psychologically embracing our hope to gain approval from another.
More recently, we have added access to information as an important focus of power.
Of course, these bases often overlap. Importantly, these works underscore that one’s capacity to exert power over others often exists beyond the boundaries of formal, legitimate power.
An additional theme — the concept of dependency — merits attention.(8) A dependency relationship exists between parties whenever one party A) possesses or controls something that another party B) values, desires, or needs. Under such conditions, we would say that B is dependent on A.
For example, our bosses control certain resources (research release time, travel funds, and administrative support) — all factors that are important and valued as we fulfill our roles as a scholar-researchers. Clearly, we are dependent on our bosses. Here, power is formal and legitimate, and we strive to comply with the requests our bosses make of us.
However, dependency can play out in more subtle ways. Another example may be helpful.
My academic world is captured within the two-pound domain of my computer. My research, class outlines, reports, and even my schedule are all encased in that machine and magically appear each morning with the flick of my finger. That is … until it does not.
We’ve all been there. On one fateful morning, I attempted to start the machine and nothing happened. As a proud techno-neophyte, I resorted to my normal options of rebooting and swearing — neither of which proved successful. So, I turned to my next best option: a call to the university help desk.
On the other end of the phone was a young man — likely a computer science undergraduate major working to help with his tuition payments. He asked me a few technical questions, none of which I understood nor had the capacity to answer. Then, he said, “I’ll tell you what to do.” And I readily and thankfully complied.
I was dependent on him. He possessed knowledge and ability that I dearly needed and that I sorely lacked. Eschewing any traditional professorial-student relationship, I’d do whatever he said.
The example demonstrates a key theoretical concept: the general dependency postulate. This concept asserts that the greater A’s dependency is on B, the greater is B’s power over A. As such, you can recognize and appreciate why the help desk worker held such power over me, at least in one carefully defined and limited situation.
Let’s add one more twist. Dependency increases when the resources controlled are essential or important, scarce or not readily available, and non-substitutable with no apparent alternative that can provide similar value.
At this stage, another important political power dimension must be considered. Leaders are notoriously bad at reading target responses and gauging depth of commitment. It is easy and somewhat common for leaders to misread compliance for commitment.
To some extent, this was one of the problems experienced by David in our opening example. Initially, when David presented a series of bold changes, he did not receive much pushback. In part, this was because people were just getting to know David and chose to give him the benefit of the doubt — the so-called honeymoon period.
These were acts of compliance rather than deep acceptance and genuine commitment. David did not see this and continued pushing without building the necessary interpersonal and political power bases, and eventually compliance turned to active resistance.
The lesson for us is to be clear about what we need and even clearer about what we are getting. For example, does the situation require commitment or is mere compliance good enough? And are we mistaking compliance for commitment?
Realize that if we are angling for a major change initiative, we need commitment from a critical mass of our people.(9) Compliance from a minority of people is realistic and acceptable, but commitment from the majority is essential.
You may wonder how a talented person like David could have so misread the situation. Essentially, he failed in the realm of interpersonal political finesse. He surrounded himself with a self-selected and quite small inner circle of people who were enamored with their newly found power and never pushed back. He failed to reach out to key players, either individually or in small groups, to hear about points of natural concern and resistance.
He sequestered himself in his office under the guise that my door is always open and assumed that his lack of visitors conveyed pervasive acceptance. Rather than encouraging discussion and involvement, he pushed ahead, only to realize, too late, that not enough people were following.
Excerpted from Inspired Physician Leadership: Creating Influence and Impact, Second Edition by Charles R. Stoner, DBA, and Jason S. Stoner, PhD.
References
Ferris GR, Treadway DC, Kolodinski RW, Hochwarter WA, et al. Development and Validation of the Political Skill Inventory. Journal of Management. 2005;31:126–152, p. 127.
Madison DL, Allen RW, Porter LW, Renwich P, Mayes BT. Organizational Politics: An Explanation of Managers’ Perceptions. Human Relations. 1980;33(2):455–474.
Fairholm GW. Organizational Power Politics: Tactics in Organizational Leadership. Santa Barbara CA: ACC-CLO, LLC;2009.
Hochwarter WA. The Positive Side of Organizational Politics. In G. Ferris & D. Treadway (eds). Politics in Organizations: Theory and Research Considerations, pp. 20–45. New York: Routledge;2012.
Pfeffer J. Power in Organizations. London: Pitman;1981.
See for example, Katz D, Kahn RL. The Social Psychology of Organizations. New York: Wiley;1978. Pfeffer J. Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations. Boston: Harvard Business School Press;1992.
The generally accepted five bases of power are drawn from the original work and French and Raven. French JRP, Raven G. The Social Bases of Power. I.D. Cartwright & A.F. Zander (eds.). Group Dynamics, p. 607-623. Evanston IL: Row Peterson;1960.
Emerson RM. Power-dependence Relations. In M.E. Olsen & M.N. Marger (eds). Power in Modern Societies. New York: Routledge;1993.
Kotter J. Leading Change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press;1996.