7 minute read
Building a Case for Leader Political Behavior
By Dr. Parker Ellen
Leadership is an immensely popular topic, as evidenced by the more than 60,000 results returned if you search for a “leadership” book on Amazon. Everyone loves talking about leadership. In fact, it is one of the few topics that I cover in my classes, undergraduate or graduate, where almost every student wants to weigh in. There is no shortage of opinions on what leadership is or what makes someone a great leader. It’s also an aspiration for many; people often strive to be leaders in their organizations, in their fields and in their communities.
Organizational politics, however, typically generates a very different response. At the mere mention of the topic, I see faces cringe. Many still have thoughts and are eager to share stories of others’ self-interested and manipulative maneuverings at work, but there is not the same level of excitement about organizational politics. Instead, any passion is rooted in animosity, often the result of missing out on a seemingly deserved opportunity or promotion. Few will speak of organizational politics with admiration, and it is rare to find someone who will openly admit to trying to become more political at work.
A byproduct of this dichotomy is difficulty in comprehending the intersection of leadership and organizational politics. Political leadership seems paradoxical. How can something with a nearly universal positive connotation be blended with something that has a nearly universal negative connotation? The confusion only seems to grow with suggestions that there are actually positive aspects of leader political behavior.
To be clear, arguments for political behavior at work are not new. And some articles and books have clearly stated that leaders actually need to behave politically. Yet much of this advice stems from conceptualizations of workplaces as “political arenas” where engaging in organizational politics is necessary for professional survival and critical for career advancement. If you want to move up in the organization, you will likely need to be a savvy workplace politician. Indeed, research has shown that the intensity and prevalence of organizational politics is increased at higher levels of the organizational hierarchy.
At the heart of my attempt to blend leadership and organizational politics is my belief that there are positives of leader political behavior that extend beyond the self-enhancement and advancement of those leaders engaging in the political maneuverings. In fact, one focus of my research is the ways in which leader political acts can be considered a form of prosocial behavior – enacted for the explicit benefit of others. I’ve termed the concept leader political support¹ and defined it as “leaders’ tactical or strategic use of power or influence to provide for, advocate for or otherwise aid followers by attempting to alter the distribution of advantages within the organization in followers’ favor.” In short, leader political support captures leaders’ use of political behavior to benefit others, rather than themselves.
Over the course of several years, my colleagues and I have worked to validate this concept. We combined the results of conversations with executives with a review of the academic literature on political behavior to develop a survey instrument that measures the extent to which managers engage in leader political support. Using this measure, we have explored the drivers and outcomes².
To understand the characteristics of managers who engage in leader political support, we conducted two different surveys. The first sample was of 66 leaders in a single organization. Drawing from the idea that leaders needed to be effective workplace “politicians,” we collected data on leaders’ political skill (i.e., their ability to influence others effectively), political will (i.e., their motivation to influence others) and perceptions that their workplace was political. Consistent with our expectations, all three were positively associated with leader political support. We replicated these findings in a sample of 205 leaders from different organizations. Additionally, in this second sample we found a strong, positive correlation between leaders’ social capital (i.e., their stock of relational resources) and reports of engaging in leader political support.
To understand the consequences of leader political support, we surveyed 200 leader-follower dyads from different organizations. We asked the leaders to report the extent to which they engaged in leader political support, and we asked their followers to respond to survey questions about their own attitudes and behaviors. In line with our predictions, our results indicated that followers tend to respond positively to leaders who exhibit political support. More specifically, leader political support was positively associated with follower ratings of leader effectiveness and leader reputation, as well as with follower commitment to the leader and follower citizenship (i.e., helping) behavior.
In essence, when leaders behave politically on behalf of their followers, they are held in higher regard. Additionally, leader political support creates a sense of indebtedness, such that followers reciprocate with increased commitment to the leader.
This is largely intuitive; when leaders use their power and influence to benefit followers, those followers tend to respond in kind. Most notable, though, is the positive association between leader political support and follower citizenship behavior. This indicates that leader political support creates a generalized sense of reciprocity. That is, followers who profit from leader political behavior also seem to respond by helping their co-workers.
For organizational leaders at all levels, our research demonstrates the positive aspects of political behavior. First, our results indicate that political behavior can benefit more than just the actor. Leaders can, and do, engage in organizational politics to help others. This can take the form of leaders using their power and influence to procure resources for followers, create developmental opportunities for them or correct potential organizational injustices followers might have endured. Regardless of the form leader political support takes, it is likely to strengthen the bond between leaders and followers and, more importantly, contribute to a stronger climate within their teams by promoting a culture where the norm is for group members to help one another. Thus, instead of avoiding organizational politics (which often is not a productive approach) or attempting to eradicate organizational politics (which is not a very realistic approach), leaders should look for opportunities to engage in organizational politics to benefit their followers.
¹ Ellen III, B. P. (2014). “Considering the positive possibilities of leader political behavior.” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(6), 892-896.
² Ellen III, B. P., Ferris, G. R. & Buckley, M. R. (2022). “Toward a more political perspective of leader effectiveness: Leader political support construct validation.” Journal of Organizational Behavior, 43(4), 744-762.
Parker Ellen
Dr. B. Parker Ellen, III is an Associate Professor of Management and the Bobby and Barbara Martin Fellow in the MSU College of Business. His research focuses on organizational politics, leadership and interpersonal mistreatment. It has been published in numerous academic outlets, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management Studies and The Leadership Quarterly. Ellen holds a BS in civil engineering from Auburn University, an MS in managerial sciences from Georgia State University and a PhD in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management from Florida State University. Prior to academia, Parker was a consultant and executive in the engineering industry, where his responsibilities included co-directing the firmwide training program for mid-career professionals. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Organizational Behavior and is a coauthor of the book Political Skill at Work: How to Influence, Motivate and Win Support.
