Organizational politics has a bad reputation, and I understand why. I’ve felt that resistance myself because I don’t do manipulation. I want to speak the truth, do good work, and lead my team well. What I’ve learned, though, is that refusing to understand the dynamics inside an organization doesn’t protect you from them.

Organizations are made of people, and people make decisions through relationships, competing priorities, limited information, and influence. I’ve also learned the hard way that performance does not speak for itself. You can be doing great work and still miss the opportunity to influence decisions that affect your team if you haven’t built the relationships and trust to be part of those conversations.

In this episode of The Real Work of Leadership, I’m talking about navigating organizational politics without playing games. I’m getting into what healthy organizational influence looks like, where I’ve gotten it wrong myself, and why understanding how your organization actually works is part of leading effectively.

0:31 – Why organizational politics isn’t automatically manipulation

2:46 – The resistance to “doing politics” and what Elisa had to rethink

5:55 – What healthy organizational influence actually looks like

9:22 – Communicating in a way that matters to the person listening

12:05 – Why strong performance alone doesn’t create organizational influence

15:50 – Building support before the formal meeting happens

18:25 – Moving from finger-pointing to solving the actual problem

20:55 – Using listening tours to understand what’s really happening inside an organization

22:00 – Identifying influence, authority, and who will be affected by a decision

26:14 – The added dynamics women face when advocating strongly at work

28:01 – Where organizational politics crosses the line into unhealthy behavior

32:03 – Understanding the system you’re leading in before making a major recommendation

Mentioned in Navigating Organizational Politics Without Playing Games

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We’re really good at promoting top performers. What we’re not nearly as good at is preparing them for the completely different skill set that comes with leading a team. I learned that pretty quickly when I moved into my first leadership role and realized there was a lot I had not been prepared for.

Becca Hammer and I have both spent years in sales, leadership, and developing teams, and we’ve both seen how different the reality of management is from what people expect going in. You have to stop jumping in and doing the work yourself. You have to learn how to coach, manage up, give feedback, delegate, and give your team room to make mistakes and learn from them.

In this episode of The Real Work of Leadership, Becca and I are talking about the shift from top performer to new manager, what surprised both of us when we first moved into leadership, and why developing new leaders has to go a lot further than handing someone a new title and expecting them to figure it out.

3:14 Becca and Elisa’s first experiences as new managers

5:33 Taking everything on and learning when to question the status quo

9:05 Moving from top performer to actually coaching a team

13:07 Your team is not you

15:54 Why companies promote leaders without preparing them

22:22 Getting clear on why you actually want to lead

29:47 The identity shift from top performer to leader

32:01 Transparency, trust, and what leaders can’t always share

36:21 Three skills new managers need to develop early

48:18 Developing yourself as a leader when your company isn’t doing it for you

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Becca Hammer is a sales and sales enablement leader with experience across media and SaaS. She began her career in sales, grew a $3 million book of business, and later moved into sales management, leading a team responsible for $15 million in revenue. She eventually moved into sales training, where she combined her sales experience with her passion for teaching. Today, she helps organizations strengthen sales management and leadership development through training and enablement.

Hammer Enablement Solutions

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Mentioned in From Top Performer to New Manager with Becca Hammer

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No one prepared me for most of what I would actually have to do as a leader. Not the hard conversations, the decisions I had to communicate but didn’t make, the pressure of carrying the number, or the responsibility of leading people through uncertainty while still being expected to deliver results.

I’ve spent more than 20 years inside revenue organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to growth-stage businesses, and I’ve been inside that pressure. I’ve made mistakes, stayed quiet when I should have spoken, spoken up without clarity, and tried to solve something myself instead of developing someone else to do it. I’ve also learned that leadership is deeply human, and that behind the data, the performance, and the results are the people you are responsible for leading.

In this episode of The Real Work of Leadership, I’m sharing more about my own leadership journey, the experiences that shaped how I think about coaching, accountability, and developing people, and the mistakes that taught me some of the hardest lessons. I’m also talking about why I believe we need more honest conversations about what leadership actually requires, especially the parts no one prepares you for.

0:33 Why Elisa is talking about leadership in the first place

1:21 More than 20 years inside revenue organizations and under real pressure

3:00 Looking beyond the data to understand the people behind it

4:38 Leadership as a responsibility to develop the people in your care

6:06 Taking over a team at 52% to goal and leading the former manager

7:55 Communicating decisions you didn’t make and leading through uncertainty

9:55 Getting clear on your reason for wanting to lead

13:08 Understanding what actually drives the people on your team

15:14 Coaching individuals differently instead of expecting everyone to work like you

17:03 Making mistakes, letting people fail, and learning instead of jumping in to save them

18:54 The gap between leadership theory and the actual work of leading

21:51 Why Elisa is willing to talk about the failures and trade-offs leadership demands

Mentioned in What No One Prepared Me For About Leadership

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Most people are promoted into leadership because they were excellent at their job. They were the high performer on their team. Then almost overnight, the job changes. You’re no longer responsible only for what you can accomplish. You’re responsible for creating outcomes through other people, and no one really prepares you for what that work actually looks like.

That’s what I want to talk about on this show. The difficult conversations, managing up, navigating organizational politics, leading across the organization, making decisions when every option has a consequence, and figuring out how to hold people accountable while still remembering that there is a human being in the room. Leadership is messy because business is human, and a lot of the real work happens in the parts nobody really talks about.

In this episode of The Real Work of Leadership, I’m sharing why I wanted to have these conversations, what you can expect from the show, and some of the leadership moments that shaped the way I lead today. We’re going to talk about the actual work of leadership as it happens in real life, including the mistakes, the wins, and the things nobody prepared us for.

1:08 What the real work of leadership actually looks like

2:39 Difficult conversations, empathy, and accountability 

4:26 Making tough decisions with humans at the center 

6:32 Navigating organizational politics and competing priorities 

7:35 Moving from high performer to leading and developing a team 

10:04 Leading across, up, and through the organization 

12:29 Putting the human element at the center of leadership 

14:50 Transparency, trust, and the limits of what leaders can share 

16:36 Elisa’s first leadership identity shift 

19:34 The conversations this show is here to have

Mentioned In What Is the Real Work of Leadership?

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