Perhaps we could be more specific about the social / political skills. I am probably not good at these skills, but here are a few things I have noticed:
Some of your colleagues have a connection between them unrelated to the work, usually preceding it. (Former classmates. Relatives; not necessarily having the same surname. Dating each other. Dating the other person’s family member. Members of the same religious group. Etc.) This can be a strong emotional bond which may override their judgement of the other person’s competence. So for example, if one of them is your superior, and the other is your incompetent colleague you have to cooperate with, that’s a dangerous situation, and you may not even be aware of it. -- I wish I knew the recommended solution. My approach is to pay attention to company gossip, and to be careful around people who are clearly incompetent and yet not fired. And then I try to take roles where I don’t need their outputs as inputs for my work (which can be difficult, because incompetent people are very likely to be in positions where they don’t deliver the final product, as if either they or the company were aware of the situation on some level).
If someone complains about everything, that is a red flag; this person probably causes the problems, or at least contributes to them. On the other hand, if someone says everything is great and seems like they mean it, that’s possibly also a red flag; it could be a person whose mistakes have to be fixed by someone else (e.g. because of the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph), and that someone else could become you.
Extra red flag is a person who makes a lot of decisions and yet refuses to provide any of them in a written form. (Here, “written form” includes a company e-mail, or generally anything that you could later show to a third party. For example in the case when the person insists on something really stupid, things get horribly wrong, and then suddenly the person says it was actually your idea.) -- One nice trick is to send them an e-mail containing the decisions they gave you, and say something like “here is the summary of our meeting; please confirm if it’s correct, or please correct me if I’m not”.
Sometimes a person becomes an informational bottleneck between two parts of the company. That could happen naturally, or could be a strategy on their part. In such case, try to find some informal parallel channels to the other part of the graph. Do it especially if you are discouraged by the given person from doing so. For example, if they say the other part is stupid and blames them for all troubles of your part. (Guess what: He is probably telling them the same thing about your part. So now he is the only person the whole company trusts to fight for their best interests against the other stupid part.)
Okay, this was all the dark side. From the light side, being nice to people and having small talk with them is generally useful. Remember facts about them, make notes if necessary (not in front of them). Make sure you connect with everyone at least once in a while, instead of staying within your small circle of comfort.
Perhaps we could be more specific about the social / political skills. I am probably not good at these skills, but here are a few things I have noticed:
Some of your colleagues have a connection between them unrelated to the work, usually preceding it. (Former classmates. Relatives; not necessarily having the same surname. Dating each other. Dating the other person’s family member. Members of the same religious group. Etc.) This can be a strong emotional bond which may override their judgement of the other person’s competence. So for example, if one of them is your superior, and the other is your incompetent colleague you have to cooperate with, that’s a dangerous situation, and you may not even be aware of it. -- I wish I knew the recommended solution. My approach is to pay attention to company gossip, and to be careful around people who are clearly incompetent and yet not fired. And then I try to take roles where I don’t need their outputs as inputs for my work (which can be difficult, because incompetent people are very likely to be in positions where they don’t deliver the final product, as if either they or the company were aware of the situation on some level).
If someone complains about everything, that is a red flag; this person probably causes the problems, or at least contributes to them. On the other hand, if someone says everything is great and seems like they mean it, that’s possibly also a red flag; it could be a person whose mistakes have to be fixed by someone else (e.g. because of the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph), and that someone else could become you.
Extra red flag is a person who makes a lot of decisions and yet refuses to provide any of them in a written form. (Here, “written form” includes a company e-mail, or generally anything that you could later show to a third party. For example in the case when the person insists on something really stupid, things get horribly wrong, and then suddenly the person says it was actually your idea.) -- One nice trick is to send them an e-mail containing the decisions they gave you, and say something like “here is the summary of our meeting; please confirm if it’s correct, or please correct me if I’m not”.
Sometimes a person becomes an informational bottleneck between two parts of the company. That could happen naturally, or could be a strategy on their part. In such case, try to find some informal parallel channels to the other part of the graph. Do it especially if you are discouraged by the given person from doing so. For example, if they say the other part is stupid and blames them for all troubles of your part. (Guess what: He is probably telling them the same thing about your part. So now he is the only person the whole company trusts to fight for their best interests against the other stupid part.)
Okay, this was all the dark side. From the light side, being nice to people and having small talk with them is generally useful. Remember facts about them, make notes if necessary (not in front of them). Make sure you connect with everyone at least once in a while, instead of staying within your small circle of comfort.