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The question pretty much speaks for itself. I am a hard worker, very productive, and usually the one everyone turns to when they have a problem.

However, I work in a privately owned company, and several times have been told by my supervisor "don't agree to help (person) without my approval, that request is just a power play" after (person) has asked me to implement something to help their productivity and I agreed to because I could see the benefit in it.

I'm capable of playing the office politics game, I just detest it and feel it is a waste of energy. I also want to keep myself as accessible as possible to everyone in the company without anyone having to wonder if what they say to or around me will come back to bite them. I also have little patience for subterfuge and doublespeak.

Is there a professional way to cut through the red tape and office politics without stepping on too many toes?

I think that in this situation, honest communication will do wonders for you. Typing up this question shows that you've thought through the problem in enough detail to express it to both your coworker and your supervisor.

1. Tell coworkers that you have to get approval. You can say, "This looks like a great project, I'd like to devote some time to work on it; let me run it by [supervisor] first." If they ask why, tell them it's what your supervisor wants. Ignore what your supervisor said about "power play" because you don't care and it doesn't matter. Part of supervising employees may be managing their workload so it's not odd or unprofessional to comply with your supervisor's request.




2. Tell your supervisor that you don't like red tape and office politics and you want to keep yourself and your skills accessible to any project that benefits the company, no matter who's running it. Try not to take a tone that suggests you're entitled to this, because you're not—this is your preference as an employee. Hopefully your supervisor will ease up a bit or at least explain to you the costs of your request and benefits of their time management policy.

Being subjected to micromanagement can be very onerous. By communicating the conditions under which you feel you work best, you associate your preferences with your productivity. This gives your supervisor an incentive to cooperate and a way to justify it with their superiors, if necessary.

You have an unrealistic view of office politics. You do need to play the game to some extent, you don't need to be duplicitous or use doublespeak. But making sure people know your achievements, making sure people want to cooperate with you are all good things and they are all office politics. You need to expand your view of office politics, no one can afford to ignore them.

If you aren't playing, people will find you easy to defeat. They will find it easy to give you less than you deserve. They will find it easy to get rid of you. You ignore politics at your own peril and many a person has found themselves fired because they thought the game was beneath them.

For instance in the case above, you might be making it harder to do something organizationally that you don't know about because you are helping out an organizational opponent. Perhaps your boss has more critical things he wants you to work on as well which is part of why he doesn't want you doing such things. And maybe the person is trying to get you assigned to him or to do something else to undermine your boss. You never help people who are trying to undermine your boss. Perhaps someone thinks you are not necessary because you have time for all this extra unapproved work. Your boss may be trying to protect you.

That said, you don't have to be nasty to refuse the work. Nor do you have to be a snake to play office politics.

All work above the first level of supervision is political. If you aren't helping your boss succeed, then you are harming him and he is the one who decides on your performance. Think about that.

The simple answer is: No. You cannot completely avoid office politics.

However, you can avoid a lot of the worst of it. Don't worry about what other people are doing, don't try and undermine them or bring them down. Just focus on your own image.

If you build up your own reputation to be good at your job, perform well, be reliable, etc then you are not a tempting target for people to use as a scapegoat. So long as you are then careful not to get pulled into things you can remain mostly free of the fray.

The problem with avoiding all politics though is that it doesn't take two to tango in this case. If someone decides to target you then you are now involved whether you like it or not.

The key to success is making your own position strong enough that you are not likely to be attacked, while at the same time not making any enemies of your own. Which is a form of office politics again.

By making sure that my contributions are visible, that I'm helpful and friendly, and that I don't ever pull other people down then in most places I've worked I've been able to remain completely free of the political side. That only hasn't worked in one company where everything was going to hell and everyone from upper management on down was desperately finding someone to blame but the culture there was so toxic that I didn't want to stay long and I moved on.

I see no "office politics" here; I see only you going out of your chain of command and spending company time performing tasks that you are not paid to perform. You are there to do what your manager instructs, not what some other person asks.

You cannot be "successful" if you continue doing this. Your manager will eventually have to drop you.