Office politics often has a bad connotation. How does the usual view of office politics differ from the view expressed by the researchers on “politically skillful leaders.”

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Although we often think of office politics in negative terms, leaders have to be able to handle office politics if they want to be effective and help their followers and teammates. Indeed, Ahearn, Ferris, Hochwarter, Douglas, and Ammeter (2004) found that politically skillful leaders helped their work teams be more effective and even increased the team members’ feelings of empowerment. Likewise, Treadway and his colleagues (Treadway et al., 2004) found that leaders high on political skill created a greater sense of organizational support for their subordinates, which in turn enhanced the subordinates’ feelings of trust, reduced their cynicism, and increased their job satisfaction. As a result, subordinates whose leaders were more politically skillful had higher organizational commitment.
Ferris, Perrewé, and Douglas (2002) argued that political skill is a key component of social competence at work. Ferris et al. (2005) developed the Political Skill Inventory (PSI) to measure this type of social ability. They validated their scale using seven different samples and four different studies. They concluded that political skill involves the following four dimensions: (1) social astuteness, (2) interpersonal influence, (3) networking ability, and (4) apparent sincerity. Although research on political skill is still fairly new, a review of the literature suggests that it has considerable promise (Yammarino & Mumford, 2011).