Why Technical Skills Won’t Save You From Office Politics (But This Will)
When Logic Fails, Strategy Wins
This is
- your weekly guide and shortcut to mastering emotional intelligence through the power of empathy. I talked recently about how we can make a Dent in the Universe.
Like the rain, office politics are a fact of life. Much like the pitter-patter of the rain, the office dynamics are always there.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just sit down and focus on our code or any flow state work assignment?
The reality is that is not how it works.
It’s February, which means the beginning of the rainy season where I live. It will probably last through the end of March. I can fight it or believe naively that my technical ability will spare me from it, but that is false.
Your hard skills are not your only work. Navigating the office, whether in person or remotely, requires the delicate dance of saying the right thing at the right time, speaking up at the right moment, and acknowledging others in a manner they feel heard.
Your soft skills, or more accurately, your emotional intelligence (EQ), not your intelligence (IQ), will navigate you through this maze.
But how? Much like in your code, you spot the patterns, analyze them, and then act.
Spot the Patterns: Decoding Workplace Dynamics
It was May, and my work was, well, slow—slower than I ever remember. I had completed a big project in early April, but nothing had yet filled the void.
My desk had been moved out of a rather comfortable corner with my other analytical-focused colleagues, and we were dispersed in the building, separated, and in rather loud open office areas. Their work had slowed down as well.
I got a short and somewhat random email to see if I still needed access to a drive. This drive is for annual planning in the next fiscal year. I let the sender know I did not need particular access to that subfolder, but I wondered why the email was sent with such urgency.
Then it hit me. It did not matter that my reports, code, etc., were top-notch, and I had had an excellent review months earlier. Layoffs were coming. Why else would the patterns of an oncoming layoff be? I was self-aware, and I knew in my gut it was coming. I had decoded the patterns I was seeing.
In a matter of strong relationship management, my boss started hinting that something was coming. He was starting to have me think about where I could possibly transfer. He had not said outright that a layoff was coming, but as a compassionate person, he was helping me.
There were no hard facts about a layoff that I was informed of, but I knew through communication and the somewhat avoidance some people used to have towards me in their interactions. Some thought my guess about a layoff was illogical. But, I knew I needed to strategize, so I started sprucing up my resume.
The layoff announcement was on July 7th. I had 12 weeks until my role went away. My manager told me early to give me leeway to transfer to another department or find a new role. He assured me it was no reflection of my work and that the company would suffer without my presence, but our department was shutting down.
My instincts were right. I had already been applying elsewhere, and I was grateful to him. I expressed my disappointment, but I thanked him for fighting for me and working with me in the transition. Years later, we still communicate every once in a while on social media. He has also served as an excellent reference.
I was prepared, and my manager and I handled it cordially. This was completely outside of my technical skills, but it was necessary to transition to a new place in my tech career.
Mind the Motivations: Understanding Hidden Agendas
A colleague sat beside me, working on a major Six Sigma initiative. He partnered with various organizational stakeholders to work through challenges, get feedback, and train others in Six Sigma.
He had a colleague working with him who was supposed to be an SME from his respective department.
The colleague, I am going to call him Tom, was delightful to chat with. He often brought coffee, even brewing specialty blends and delivering it to our desk area. By working on his project with my colleague, he was going to earn a certification, which would be a real resume builder.
The problem? While he had the known technical skills and ability to schmooze with us, the work was not being done. He would assure me that it would be done, and it would either be severely late or not arrive.
Tom continued to be nice. I began to see through it when I saw my colleague get disgruntled. Tom seemed unaware that his lateness on assignments was causing such an issue and having a downstream impact.
My colleague leveraged his emotional intelligence to ask him nonjudgmentally what the barriers were. He received genuine excuses.
The barriers to project completion dragged on for months, and Tom was a significant factor.
One morning, my colleague informed me that it was a big day, and he had escalated the lack of Tom’s work to a high level. Tom was gone from the company within a couple of months. I am not sure what happened exactly, but I know his lack of reliability, trustworthiness, and consciousness of the strain he was putting on him led to his demise.
Lesson? Soft skills do not mean just being nice. Amplified emotional intelligence is about understanding your surroundings, being empathic, and taking action to resolve the issues.
Play It Smart: approachable means more opportunity
There were two Analysts I knew who I would see on my once-weekly meeting as part of a task force. They were about the same age and did similar work, but their outward reactions to their environments were starkly different.
First, I will call Sarah and approach requests with curiosity. If an ask seemed unrealistic, she would be diplomatic around timelines; her face would stay relatively neutral, even in the face of a downright ridiculous request. She didn’t by any means have a plastered smile, but usually at least a pleasant demeanor, and felt approachable. She built working relationships across the organization. She would adjust her words to make them better received depending on who she spoke to, whether a fellow data person or a senior leader.
The other one, I will call Jessica, would approach requests with generally a glare. If an ask seemed unrealistic, she would go ballistic. Her face seemed to show hundreds of thoughts simultaneously, even if it did not make sense. She was excellent at what she did; I would argue her work was even slightly more detailed than Sarah’s. However, few would approach her. She had less work coming in to showcase her skill set. She was kept on board, as she had unique skills and tasks where she was a single point of failure. But, without relationship building and social awareness, she was not shining through with her full potential. She was stuck. I was stuck doing excellent database work, but often isolated and mostly unrecognized.
Sarah was recognized. Sarah listened. Sarah could get pissed on occasion, but she was able to articulate why, and it was logical. Sarah moved up in her career.
53% of workers think playing workplace politics could get them promoted, and there is in fact a grain of truth to it. But, you do not have to actually “play” anything. Engage your Emotional Intelligence, and you are will be on the right path.
Don’t Compound the Challenges
Office culture, whether remote or in-office, is not rainbows and lollipops or, in my case, lunch at the unlimited sushi buffet (my favorite food). But it is a reality, much like the rain that is pitter-pattering.
You can work hard and excel in your technical abilities and hard skills and hardly be recognized if the human piece is missing. It does not mean you have to be all smiles. As demonstrated in the story about Tom, kindness does equate to competence.
Your social awareness around you of what makes sense to say or express non-verbally at the moment goes a long way. Your EQ is your friend and cannot be sidelined for just your EQ.
Technical skills alone will not save you from office politics, but leveraging your emotional intelligence skills in lieu of them will prevent you from compounding the challenges that come with them. You will be able to handle the inevitable challenges that come up with an empathic ear, poise, and the confidence to articulate your position in a way that is received by your audience.
✅ What I’ve been Analyzing this week (reading, watching, listening, etc.)
📖 I’m reading The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment (Management on the Cutting Edge) by Eric Siegel, and learning about how you must work from the bottom up in planning a Machine Learning solution.
📺I watched a video by
comparing DeepSeek vs. Claude vs. ChatGPT for writing. A great 13 minute analysis for your writing and well worth your time!✍️ I commented on a post by
on his Substack The Curious Detour about how inspiration is like a recipe.Want more on Empathy and Emotional Intelligence to Elevate your career? 📈
I empower💪tech people to elevate their empathy, to accelerate their careers
This article really highlights the importance of EQ in the workplace! I've noticed that as companies scale, collaboration often becomes more impersonal simply because people don't have established relationships. In those situations, having a strong EQ – being able to read the room, understand motivations, and communicate effectively – becomes absolutely crucial for successful navigation and project outcomes. Thanks for sharing these insights.
I really feel that part about Sarah and Jessica, I'm naturally a Sarah, but I know a few Jessica's who seem to get far less to do, but complain more. I've known a few Tom's too, who manage to stick around because people like them, the name you do not want to see yourself paired with on a project.
Thanks for the mention at the end too 😊