[hyperpape]

I'm surprised no one has made this distinction, but you're really talking about three kinds of communication:

1. Functional communication about the job you're doing

2. Social conversations

3. Office politics

There is overlap: #2 will help grease the wheels for #1 and #3, while #1 becomes #3 when a situation is dysfunctional/you rise in the corporate hierarchy.

Despite the overlap, these are fundamentally different things, and perhaps it will help your anxiety to realize that you don't have to be a social butterfly to do well in an office.

Myself, I've gotten a lot better at small talk (a few years doing deliveries to construction companies as a city-boy with a grad school education will force you to get out of your comfort zone), and I can crack a joke, but I'm still not the life of a party, and I come across as a little weird. Still, I can communicate with people at work.

Be honest, be yourself but do try to get past the hangups you feel, and try to understand what other people care about, how you can help them, and put them at ease. You can be on the quiet side and still do those things.

Beyond that, I'd add that you should find some people who write or speak about workplace behavior. Maybe even read something alien: something from someone in marketing, sales or a "people" job, and treat it like a matter you can study and practice, just like anything else you'd do.

[pc86]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but there is nothing dysfunctional about office politics. Politics is how you get something done with a large group of people who have different individual goals, that's it. It's a necessity for achieving something greater than any of those people could achieve on their own.

[adrianratnapala]

> but there is nothing dysfunctional about office politics.

I think hyperpape was saying it is dysfunctional when "... functional communication" becomes office politics. E.g. if engineers have technical disagreement about, say, whether to use one or two thread pools in server XYZ, then they should be able to sort it out at the technical level.

Failure modes are when (a) someone decides to play politics in order impose their technical vision or (b) the technical discussion becomes a win-or-loose matter that somehow weighs on the balance of political power.

The bit about "rise in the corporate hierarchy" is because at high levels, you aren't making purely technical decisions; decisions will inherently involve steering people rather than things. That means it is right and proper for communication to deal with the political aspect that would be dysfunctional at a lower level.

[hyperpape]

It's a terminological difference, and I totally get your point of view. I also agree that some amount of politics is the cost of doing business (but per my point about rising in the corporate hierarchy, it shouldn't be something that impinges on the average employee's success).

Negotiation between people who have a shared idea of what goals are, but different ideas of how to get there is a good thing, and I can see how it makes sense to call it politics. Actively cultivating influence by undermining other people, shifting blame and only focusing on your own advancement is bad, and what I was referring to.

[noelsusman]

That's not how people typically use the phrase "office politics".

[sbergot]

My interpretation is that a junior should not expected to be good at office politics.

[adrianratnapala]

> ... you don't have to be a social butterfly to do well in an office.

Indeed "social butterfly" types tend to be bad at communication in your sense #1 because they aren't clear about their terms, and don't expect it when others are.

But then highly technical nerd-engineers also often have the same problems; though perhaps for different reasons.