With work an increasingly collaborative affair, being effective at working across teams and securing support for projects is as important as it has ever been.  It’s tempting to think therefore that political acumen is a vital skill in a collaborative workforce.

Alas, being a keen political operator may not always be a good thing at work, with a recent study highlighting how it can work against you.

The study reveals that far from being admired, political colleagues are actually regarded as less able than their less political peers.

When political acumen backfires

The study discovered that there was little real evidence linking political skill with better on the job performance, with the authors suggesting two main reasons for this.

Firstly, playing politics at work can create suspicions among our colleagues as to our authenticity.  If you’re great at playing politics with other people, can your colleagues trust that you aren’t doing the same with them?  This can cause a distinct fall in your ability to get things done.

This applies even if your political wranglings are well intentioned.  If they’re not, then things can get even worse.  The authors found that when we become so accustomed to applying our political skill, then we fall into the trap of believing ever problem requires a political solution, turning such people into budding Machiavelli’s.

Too much of a good thing

Add these together and the authors suggest that highly political employees perform worse at work than their peers.

Of course, the authors are at pains to point out that one should not be bereft of political skill and hope to thrive, with there existing a more bell shaped curve.  It was when one becomes a ‘master’ at politics that things tended to go rather pear shaped.

So it seems, if you want to excel at work, then you need some political skill, just not too much of it.  This was particularly the case when the person rating our ability was not close to us.

In other words, those with whom we have a decent relationship would forgive us our sins and be used to our methods, but others were much less accommodating.

Suffice to say, this is but one study so it would be dangerous to believe that high levels of political skill are going to land us in hot water at work without a wider body of evidence to support this hypothesis.

It does suggest however that there can be too much of a good thing.