Horizontal politics are your relations with your peers and with members of other departments and organizations. Let’s discuss how to develop effective horizontal politics. Realize that when you give anyone praise or thanks for helping you, it influences them to continue to help you with favors. So give lots of praise to everyone.

To be successful, you must cooperate with, compete with, and sometimes even criticize your peers. Your success as an employee is linked to other employees in the organization. If you are cooperative and help them, they should have a positive attitude toward you and be willing to help you meet your objectives through reciprocity.

Your boss will compare you with your peers when evaluating your performance, giving raises, and granting promotions. Like a great athlete, you must learn to be a team player and do your share of the work and help your peers be successful. But at the same time, you have to look good as well, without being a selfish, bragging ball hog. If your peers do something they shouldn’t, you owe it to them to try to correct the situation or prevent it from recurring. Sometimes peers are not aware of the situation.

Be ethical. Do not cover for a peer in trouble—you will most likely only make things worse for everyone involved including yourself. And don’t expect or ask others to cover for you. You will most likely need the help of other departments and organizations to succeed. You will need the human resources department to hire new employees, accounting to approve budgets, purchasing to get materials and supplies, and so forth.

Some of these departments have procedures you should follow. Develop good human relations through being cooperative and following the guidelines set by the organization. It is also advisable to develop good relations with people in other organizations, including giving them praise for a job well done.