Jennifer Selby Long

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698 appearances 14 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard May 2025

Jennifer Selby Long’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Chief Change Officer™: Ensemble · #105 Growing Beyond Office Politics with Jennifer Selby Long: Escaping Toxic Cultures That Linger - Part Two · 15 Dec 2024 podcast

One person's actions trigger another's defense mechanism. And before you know it, the focus shifts from collaboration to competition. Understanding this dynamic is key to addressing it. The question becomes, how do we redirect these energies back towards shared goals and healthier workplace relationships?

Could you elaborate on the last point you just made?

At the end of the day, it's about knowing yourselves and being intentional in choosing the workplace culture that fits your character and values. If you thrive in office politics and it energizes you, a politically charged environment might suit you. But if that's not who you are, staying in such an environment could lead to frustration, burnout, disengagement, and lower productivity.

For those feeling stopped, Reflect on whether you can adapt without compromising your values. Ask yourself, does this place, does this environment truly support who I am and how I work best? If the answer is no, it might be time to move on to a place that aligns better with your strengths. It allows you to grow. Change isn't just about leaving. It's about finding the right fit to thrive.

Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.

Chief Change Officer™: Ensemble · #104 Growing Beyond Office Politics with Jennifer Selby Long: Escaping Toxic Cultures That Linger - Part One · 15 Dec 2024 podcast

I think it's a very fair and valid question. Why do they exist and what are those factors that contribute to the prevalence of politics in our modern workplaces? In my practice, what I see are two main reasons that office politics exist. The first one is failure to build trust and cohesion, which is, if you will, the subjective or personal reason.

And the second one's failure to align on strategy or strategic direction, which is more the business side. I do think politics are part of a human condition, and they always have been.

Now, there is a newer factor that I think contribute today, and that's the global and virtual nature of many businesses combined with what I'm going to boldly call a certain willful blindness on the part of nearly everyone to accept some of the hard realities and trade-offs of that situation or condition.

So fundamentally, what we know is even in today's more virtual environment, people who need to make difficult decisions together in a complex business environment actually need to be together in person far more often than most of us realize.

So the resistance to this comes from both employees who've now gotten used to working at home, they're resisting traveling to get together for off-sites, resisting coming to office locations to work together in person, and from senior leaders who winced at that travel and entertainment budget that's going to be needed to bring people together who aren't in the same city, certainly quite a bit more than once a year.

Now, Vince, would you like a recent example? Yes, please. An example would be nice. A leadership team that I worked with over several years now, and they used to work together really well. In fact, when I first started working with them, we didn't even do any sort of team effectiveness assessment because I assessed informally this team is very effective. That's not what they need my help with.

But as I watched them over the past year, they were beginning to feel threatened by each other. There was backbiting. There was bickering. There were power struggles among this team. And this became very concerning to me. Now, their membership had started to change a little bit. A key team member was leaving to retire.

And their responsibilities at a team and the pressure on them had broadened considerably. They were leading a type of business transformation that had never been attempted before. And so... You've got to start asking what is going on here that this team is becoming, if you will, political. They're getting in these power struggles with each other and these battles.

And this was rolling on down through the organization to where all the people in their organization were starting to complain and say, you seem to be battling with each other all the time. We're not ever sure quite what to do. You don't move as one anymore like you used to. In this situation, I really needed to get this team together in person to work through this.

But the T&E budget had been slashed to basically zero in that organization. In my opinion, that was where we would call a penny wise and pound foolish decision.

to cut those T&E budgets across the company because the team all agreed once we were able to get together to push hard for an exception to that T&E budget situation that we did the work that they really needed to do with a vigorous and proper assessment of what is going on, what is in the way, why has the team performance deteriorated, why were they in a split battle.

It was an incredibly powerful time that we spent together, but we all agreed it should have been six to nine months earlier. But there was this sort of resistance to make getting an exception to the T&E budget flash to getting on a plane to fly for this meeting. I do think the resistance comes from both sides, but one of the things that we do have to accept...

in today's more virtual, more global world is you might not feel like getting on that plane. I certainly know I don't at times, but you do need to make complex decisions together and you need to deal with team dynamics together in person.

I really think most leadership teams probably need to be together at least once a quarter in person, despite the personal hardship and the extra cost associated with this. Yeah. Now, I will say separately, I don't think that the cause or the contributions to politics are as simple as these little catchphrases like power corrupts.

because I see too many leaders who are not corrupted by power, and I see too many ambitious people who maintain their ethics and integrity all the way up the ladder, and they don't. And so I don't believe in it as simple or as trite as something like power corrupt.

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