While the term political savvy can elicit a negative perception, it isn't necessarily a bad thing. As stated by Samuel Bacharach in his book, Get Them on Your Side, Keep Them on Your Side , "It's the one competence that everyone needs but the one that nobody talks about. Many people can have good ideas, but real leaders are those who know how to mobilize others around these ideas."  Political savvy can be defined as the ability to maximize and leverage relationships in order to achieve organizational, team, and individual goals.  As a leader you must understand that part of your role is to get people on board. Leaders with political savvy can use their political skills to successfully meet their chapter's challenges and to improve the performance and productivity of the chapter team.  How can you tell if a leader has political skills? Simply if they appear not to have any such skills at all. Behaviors that are genuine, authentic, straightforward and effective are associated with political savvy.  You need political savvy to deal with personalities and rules and to personally affect the actions, decisions, opinions or thinking of others. Savvy is a critical leadership skill and becoming politically savvy is not difficult.  

Hone your powers of perception- Read people's non-verbal behaviors and sense the motivation of others. Practice influence. Establish a good rapport with others.  Communicate well and get them to like you. Learn to network effectively. Build friendships and beneficial working relationships by garnering support, negotiating, and managing conflict. Think before you speak. Have impulse control. Choose your battles wisely and size up situations before deciding how to present ideas to others. Be sincere. Display high level of integrity, authenticity , sincerity and genuineness.

No politics in our chapter, you say.  Think again. Assuming you make group decisions, politics is really the process of group decision-making. Accept the political environment as a reality, then positively respond to it.