Navigating Politics as a Senior Leader: Overcome Approval-Withholding Behaviors

When you’re dealing with somebody who’s looking to slow you down, be proactive about understanding the concerns and addressing them in a public forum.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Overcome approval-withholding behaviors

Some stakeholders either won’t like your ideas or they don’t want you to advance your career in the organization. To slow you down, they’ll deliberately withhold approval for your ideas if they have a role in the decision-making process.

To get past this, ask for their concerns and do so in a public forum. You can do it in a meeting, or on an email where multiple people are cc’d. Ask for conditional approval to move forward with your idea. Say something like, “Are those all your concerns and if we address those concerns, and bring you the data, will you approve the idea?” You’re putting that person on record to say yes to your idea if you address their concerns. It tends to corner them into making a decision rather than constantly throwing out new objections to your idea.

I know one situation where the senior vice president didn’t want an individual in the organization to advance. She was constantly second guessing this person’s decisions. She threw out new objections every single day. This individual turned to using their staff meetings to discuss the concerns. During the staff meeting, he asked her, “Hey, I know you have problems with this idea. Can you tell me if those are your top two concerns?” The SVP said, “Yes, that’s what I’m worried about.” He then said, “Okay, if I come back to you with the data, and address those two concerns, will you approve this idea?” And she said, “Absolutely, that would be great.” A couple of weeks later, he came back with the data. He shared it in the staff meeting where everybody had heard her say yes a couple of weeks before. She had no choice in that moment other than to approve the idea.

When you’re dealing with this situation, actively seek out this stakeholder’s objections. If you avoid the person and avoid their concerns, they’re going to keep coming up with new objections to slow you down. Another technique you can use is to find ways to make your success their success. Ask them to be a sponsor of your project. If the project moves forward, it’s going to be good for them as well as good for you.

When you’re dealing with somebody who’s looking to slow you down, be proactive about understanding the concerns and addressing them in a public forum.

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