3. Navigating Culture and Resistance

How culture shapes power and politics

Welcome back. We've identified your sources of power. So now let's talk about how culture shapes the way power and politics play out in your organization and how to navigate different environments successfully. This is chapter three, navigating culture and resistance. So culture is everything when it comes to how power and politics operate in your workplace. What's the impact of culture? Fear kills potential. Fear-based cultures breed silence, compliance, and inauthenticity. People focus on not making mistakes rather than creating breakthrough results. In these environments, politics becomes about survival rather than contribution. Safety fuels performance. When people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and even be wrong sometimes, curiosity leads to innovation. Politics in healthy cultures is about building coalitions for good ideas and supporting each other's success.

And it all comes down to leaders set the tone. Healthy cultures self-correct because they shut down toxicity early, protect dignity, and model respect. The leaders determine whether politics will be constructive or destructive. I worked with two similar teams in the same company with completely different results. Team A's manager created fear by publicly criticizing mistakes and playing favorites, whereas Team B's manager created safety by treating failures as learning opportunities and ensuring everyone had a voice.

Assessing your culture

And what do you think? Which team had better results, higher engagement, and more innovation? Of course, it was Team B, because Team B's politics were about collaboration and mutual support. Team A's politics were about self-protection and blame avoidance. So let's go about how you can assess your culture. Here is a sobering statistic. 29% of workers regretted not leaving toxic work environments sooner, with women 37% more likely than men to express this regret.

So your work culture shapes your growth and your energy. You need to be honest about whether your environment supports your development or holds you back. So let's take a second here and do an exercise for a quick culture assessment. I want you to ask yourself, can I be authentic here or do I have to pretend to be someone else? Are questions and differing opinions welcomed, or do people stay quiet to avoid conflict? Are diverse voices, including women, represented in leadership? And do I feel energized or drained by my work environment?

Three options in a toxic culture

Be honest here, and if you answered no to most of these questions, you need to make some strategic decisions about your next steps. And again here, I would encourage you to pause the video, go over into your workbook and complete exercise six for doing this quick culture assessment. Because if it turns out after doing this assessment, you feel like you're in a toxic or limiting culture, there are three options for what you can do in this case.

You can influence what you can. Focus on your own behavior and the immediate environment around you. Model the culture you want to see. Protect and support others when possible and build relationships with like-minded people. In this case, you can also set boundaries and build resilience. If you can't change the culture, you can at least protect yourself from its worst effects. Limit exposure to toxic people. Don't internalize others' dysfunction. Build support systems outside your immediate work environment. And ultimately, move on if the workplace can't support your growth. Sometimes it's very difficult, but sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is leave. Life is really too short to spend it in an environment that diminishes your potential or damages your well-being.

Advice for women in leadership

And now I want to take a second to address something specifically for women in leadership or in male-dominated fields. You often have to work even harder and navigate more carefully, but there are some strategic approaches that work. So if you're a woman in leadership or a male-dominated field, you need to lean on women around you. Build a circle of support with other women. Connect and share experiences. Bring another woman with you to meetings or events whenever possible. There's power in numbers and mutual support.

You also should find the men you can trust. Change happens in integrated spaces, not segregated ones. Identify men who will vouch for you, open doors, and create space for your ideas. These allies are essential to breaking through barriers. And I'm sure you can find some of these allies and other women in our Power Without Permission community. And of course, lead as yourself. Be strategic and adaptable, but don't lose your authenticity.

Lead from your own strengths, warm, firm, feminine power. Speak with authority, lead with data when it strengthens your position, and balance credibility, emotion, and logic in ways that feel genuine to you. So important. I really hope this is a major takeaway for you. You can be an amazing leader. Anyone can be an amazing leader. You don't need to follow some rules for what you think leadership should look like or what you've seen it look like. Lead like you. Find ways to navigate power, politics, workplaces, different situations that are true to you, and you will be the most successful in this way.

Okay, so for the next exercise, whether you're a male or female, I want you to think about your current work environment. So go ahead and head back into your workbook. This is exercise seven. And if you are a woman, I want you to think about who are your female allies, which men have proven themselves trustworthy advocates? How comfortable are you speaking with authority?

And if you're a man, how do you create space for women's voices? Do you notice when women are interrupted or ignored? How do you use your position to advocate for diverse perspectives? And in these cases, I want you to write down one specific action you could take to improve the inclusiveness of your workplace dynamics. So go ahead, pause the video and take some time to work on this.

Building resilience in difficult cultures

All right, so let's talk a little bit about building resilience. I mentioned that was one strategy you could work on if you're in a difficult environment, because even in difficult cultures, you can build your power and effectiveness. So here are some ways you can do that. You should focus on your reputation. Be known for results, integrity, and professionalism. Make it hard for others to dismiss or undermine you. You should also document your contributions. Keep track of your achievements and impact because this protects you from revisionist history and helps you advocate for yourself.

And you want to build relationships strategically. Connect with people at different levels and in different departments. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, so to say, because you never know what might happen. A team could get disbanded. There could be layoffs. So make sure you're diversifying who you're connecting with. And stay visible. Volunteer for high visibility projects, speak up in meetings, share your successes appropriately, because visibility creates opportunities and lets other people in on what you're doing. And develop your skills continuously. The stronger your capabilities, the harder you are to ignore or replace.

So I want to tell you just a quick story about someone that I worked with. She was a director in a traditional financial services company, and the culture there was conservative and male-dominated. And instead of trying to just change everything at once, she focused on building her reputation for delivering results. She volunteered for challenging projects, built relationships across departments, and consistently communicated her team's achievements. And over two years, she became known as someone who got things done. If you needed something done, you went to her. So when a VP position opened up, she had advocates throughout the organization who recommended her. So she slowly changed that culture by succeeding within it first, then using her increased power to create more opportunities for others.

Choosing your battles

So for the next exercise, I want you to think about a political challenge you're currently facing at work. It could be a difficult colleague, a decision you disagree with, or a cultural norm that limits your effectiveness. And once you have this challenge in mind, I want you to ask yourself, is this worth the political capital it would cost to challenge? Do I have enough power and support to be effective? What would success look like and is it achievable? Or are there alternative approaches that might be more effective?

And again here, you can take some time, go back into your course workbook here in exercise eight and think about these questions, because in some cases you might find after doing an exercise like this that the most powerful thing you can do is to choose your battles carefully. So fighting for what matters most and flowing around what doesn't. You don't always have to fight. You shouldn't always flow. It's about finding when it makes sense to do one or the other. So go ahead and pause this video to answer these questions.

When it comes to culture, it shapes everything about how power and politics operate in your organization. You can't control the entire culture, but you can understand it, work strategically within it, and influence the parts you can change. So the goal here is not to become someone you're not. It's to be strategic about how you show up and navigate the realities of your environment while staying true to your values. And in our next chapter, we're going to focus on building your strategic network. This is one of the most important sources of power and influence you can develop. So stay tuned and see you there.