“Playing politics” is is largely empathy and communication skills. Giving people what they want is actually not intuitive because, again, people are generally bad at communicating what they want. It’s common to hear people maligned for being “political players” but I’ll be honest; if you’re bad at office politics, it generally implies you don’t have people’s confidence, trust, and friendship- often because you’re fixated on the idea that work should stand for itself and not recognizing the massive importance that is working with others.

Being a dick with your influence is a different concept

Being a dick in influence is what I observe more often from my (biased, certainly) sample of McKinsey alum. We both agree that salability of work product is an important and underutilized skill.