Should be titled Stop Avoiding Workplace Politics?
It’s not a discussion of the toxic political environment we live in today.
Should be titled Stop Avoiding Workplace Politics?
It’s not a discussion of the toxic political environment we live in today.
It turns out that that the degree to which you can avoid politics is proportional to the number of other people involved. You can probably safely ignore international politics: there are around 8 billion other people involved in it, and unless you are prepared to devote most of your time to it, you probably aren't going to move any needles anywhere.
Family politics, on the other hand, involves maybe a dozen people. Usually less. We don't even call it "family politics" even though it really kind of is. Family politics is important and you can not opt out unless you don't want (this) family. Even disengagement is a form of active participation here!
Somewhere in between, there is a line. The author says (and I agree) that workplace politics is on the "really you should be caring" side.
A good clickbait title though, I probably wouldn't have clicked otherwise...
My reward for clickbait is that I stop reading it
I would say, toxic politics is also just the bad politics the OP is talking about. Basically by the definition of the OP, I think pretty much most populism qualifies as bad politics. Politics beyond the workplace can work very similar to the one within. I know people who did 'good politics' within their work context and were asked to actual enter local politics. IMHO this is the best case. While I guess we also need career politicians, I see the biggest value in people that enter politics at a later stage.
To me, "populism" in the workplace shows up as pitting two groups against each other for personal gain.
I've seen it way too many times, from the engineering side: isolating engineers so they don't see decisions, and then blaming them to external stakeholders when something fails.
We put workplace politics in the title above, and also switched from the baity "Stop avoiding" to a more representative phrase from the article.
Hmm, feel like the new title is pretty lifeless. I wouldn't have clicked this (very good IMHO) article with the current title.
"Stop Avoiding Workplace Politics" would represent it better - it's addressing people (like me) who sometimes fancy themselves above it.
Ok, I've done that above except I replaced stop with don't. ("Stop" is a linkbait trope.)