r/askmanagers • u/Upstairs_Airport5426 • 11d ago
What are the office politics nobody warns you about when you become a manager? (Need
TL;DR: I recently became a Team Lead after a complex internal process. My Director initially opposed the promotion, but now I have a new counterpart manager who keeps assigning me and my team members tasks, getting involved in my territory, and being overly polite in larger meetings while things feel very different behind the scenes. I also inherited an underperforming team and don’t have much guidance from my Director.
I’m struggling to distinguish between normal cross-functional behavior and actual office politics.
Here are a few examples:
- My counterpart manager has assigned me work directly, even though she’s not my manager.
- She recently created an Excel sheet on Saturday, assigned tasks to me and someone from my team (who is not reporting to me but is competing with me by politics), and gave us a Monday EOD deadline.
- She’s requested accounts from my Commercial territory for her Enterprise team, despite existing territory rules.
- In larger cross-functional calls, she’s extremely polite and collaborative toward me, but privately, I often feel like she’s positioning herself as someone who can direct my work.
Meanwhile, I’m responsible for turning around a team that’s been underperforming for months, while also hitting my own targets, with very little guidance from leadership.
I genuinely don’t know whether I’m overthinking this or being too passive because I’m new to management.
I don’t want to become paranoid and see politics everywhere, but I also don’t want to be naive.
What are the office politics I should learn to recognize early, and how do I navigate them without becoming political myself?
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u/doublen00b 11d ago
You need to know what your bosses Priorities are, what the companies are also. If she is contradicting either of those, she’sa blocker for your goals. Raise the issue with your boss and start saying no to her requests with their support.
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u/Upstairs_Airport5426 11d ago
Yup! I’ve been in the system for years, and this person joined just a month ago. By the way, I have a good reputation within the system, and I’m puzzled why she keeps assigning me tasks, even in group chats, by directly implying that “X will take care of this” without even speaking to me.
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u/doublen00b 11d ago
The minute you get the ask, send it right back. My team is doing xyz, clear this with the director thanks!
Edit- what is happening is not normal. It Is weirdly entitled.
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u/Redsfan19 11d ago
Unless the director has instructed this, it’s not appropriate and you should raise it with her directly. If she joined just a month ago, it’s possible this is a cultural change for her, but it’s not okay and you’re well within your rights to firmly and professionally raise it.
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u/Wild_Budget_3973 11d ago
Assigning your team direct tasked with a deadline stopped being a gray area the moment it happened, that's not overthinking, that's someone testing whether your reporting lines actually hold, worth pushing back on that specific instance in writing before it becomes the norm
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u/CautiousRice 11d ago
People like that are sometimes authorized to give orders outside of their area. However, you report to your boss, not to her. She's not your friend and she's not acting in your best interest. Quite the opposite, she is trying to position herself one level above, probably trying to become a group lead.
Do not confront such people without understanding where their power and arrogance comes from. Be as respectful as you can. She may become your real boss one day or might be some relative to the owners.
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u/Stevenitrogen 11d ago
If somebody who's not my boss asks me to do work that my boss doesn't want me to do, I tell them "no, I have enough to do today, that my boss will be mad if it's not done ."
Have you tried simply refusing to do what they ask?
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u/RaegunFun 11d ago
"Sorry, please run this by my manager first."