Most people think politics begins when you start playing it on purpose.
That belief is comforting. It is also wrong.
If you work inside an organization, you are already participating in politics. The only question is whether you are doing it deliberately or accidentally.
Politics is not scheming
Politics is often misunderstood as manipulation, ambition, or bad intent.
In practice, it is simpler.
Politics is how decisions get made when resources are scarce and priorities conflict.
It shows up in:
Who gets heard
Whose work gets protected
Which risks are tolerated
What gets funded or cut
You do not opt into this. You enter it the moment your work depends on other people’s choices.
Silence is participation
One of the most common political mistakes is believing neutrality exists.
If you do not advocate for a direction, you endorse the default.
If you do not challenge a decision, you legitimize it.
If you quietly absorb consequences, you normalize the structure that created them.
None of this requires bad intent. It is just how systems interpret behavior.
Silence is data.
How good intentions get misread
Many capable professionals try to stay out of politics by focusing on execution.
They deliver. They stay helpful. They avoid conflict. They let others decide.
From their perspective, this feels principled.
From the system’s perspective, it sends a clear signal.
You are available to implement decisions, not shape them.
Over time, this signal hardens. You are trusted with work, but excluded from influence.
That exclusion is not punishment. It is interpretation.
The political cost of being agreeable
Agreeableness is often rewarded early. It reduces friction and speeds delivery.
Later, it carries a cost.
If you never push back, people stop expecting you to have an opinion. If you never create tension, your judgment is never tested. If you always make things work, the system has no reason to change.
You become reliable.
You become invisible.
This is how politics works without anyone raising their voice.
What participation actually looks like
Participating in politics does not mean grandstanding.
It means:
Naming tradeoffs out loud
Making risks explicit instead of absorbing them quietly
Asking who benefits and who pays
Choosing when to align and when to dissent
These acts create information. Information changes outcomes.
Avoiding them does not keep you clean. It just keeps the system opaque.
Career health implication
Career health requires agency.
Agency requires being legible as someone who can be disagreed with, not just depended on.
If you are never part of disagreement, you are not part of decision making.
That is a political position, whether you chose it or not.
A closing reframe
You do not need to become a different person to engage with politics.
You need to stop pretending you are not already involved.
Once you accept that, you can choose how visible your judgment is, where you spend your influence, and which battles are worth the cost.
Tomorrow, we will look at influence as a skill, not a personality trait.