Micropolitics Gone Bad

I am going to "borrow" my classmate Beth Sepelyak's definition of micropolitics - influencing others to attain desired goals. Well, I am going to give an example of micropolitics being used for evil. In many cases, we think of an example of a principal using his/her influence over staff and students to improve student achievement. Unfortunately, as I was reading this week I thought of more than one example in my previous school district where a teacher (or group of teachers) used their influence to derail the efforts of the building principal - this was those teachers' goal.

In either case, I think the "influencer" plays a large role in this, but ultimately, I think it is the people that are influenced that truly make the difference in whether or not the goals are achieved.