You Don’t Hate Politics

Most people who say they hate politics hate hollow political actions, not impactful politics.

[First published 8-May-2026 on Medium.com]

Mechanics of Politics. Image created by Julie Fleischer using Canva.

The two things I’ve heard said most when “organizational politics” comes up are:

I hate politics.

Ironically, I hear this most often from the people who I work with that are especially good at making the right things happen. That is, the ones who successfully navigate the political landscape they claim to hate for the betterment of the company.

Even if you hate it, politics are a necessary part of leadership.

This is from nearly everyone else. They don’t want to go so far as to say they like politics, but they want to acknowledge the necessity of influencing others to get things done.

I’ve had a hard time getting myself into either camp. The reason why: I think we’ve been lumping two different types of politics within the one concept.

One politics is hollow politics. These are Machiavellian. They are performative. When people play hollow politics, they build relationships with those who can get them access to more power, and they discard those relationships when they’ve run their course. They influence at the lizard-brain level, making people angry, scared, or afraid of being left out of the group. And, even though they will always say that their end-goal is the success of the team and value to the customer, their actions prove their end-goal is access to more power.

Most people aren’t playing hollow politics. Or, they certainly aren’t playing hollow politics all the time. I suspect we all fall into their trap occasionally, especially as pressures mount.

The politics most people play, and the ones most of us are aspiring to play, are impactful politics. This means building meaningful relationships and also valuing all relationships, even if some are cultivated more than others. It means influencing at the heart-level, making people inspired to follow through a shared sense of purpose. And, it means paying more than lip-service to team success. It means actually setting team success as the desired end-goal.

The confusion comes because: Both types of politics involve relationship building, influencing, and maintaining a focus on the end-goal. The means are the same, but the mechanics underlying hollow political actions and impactful political actions are exact opposites.

Which is good to know. Because it means I don’t have to say I hate politics or I find politics a “necessary evil”. Impactful politics are necessary, but it would be hard to consider them evil. And, while we can never avoid that hollow politics are part of the environment, they’re never the part that’s necessary.

And, impactful politics are straightforward to play: Maintain a focus on team success and customer satisfaction as the end-game. Build meaningful relationships that help you get things done, and, through your passion for meeting customer needs and making the team a shining success, inspire others to act.

None of that sounds “political” in the sense people mean when they say they hate politics.

And yet, it’s all that is actually needed.