Office Politics




If you are working in an office that has more than one employee then you can’t escape office politics. Healthy or unhealthy, you have to accept it and work your way around it. Workplace is a jungle and hence your survival instincts should be at its peak, otherwise you’ll become dead as a dodo soon.



There’s a lot of game-playing, backstabbing, duplicity, lying, dirty tricks and showing off. To complicate this further, in this part of the world, you have people from different nations and cultures. They speak different languages and follow different customs. To deal with them on a daily basis is not an easy task. Everyone has their own agenda. You click with some but with many you don’t.



What sort of skills you should have to survive? Based on a research study there are 4 important skills which can help an individual to handle office politics. They are:



Shrewdness: Naïve people can’t last for long. You should know how and when to play your cards. Always have an ace up your sleeve. Know how your organisation works, without knowing that you’ll be like a blind man in a blind alley on a dark night.    



Usefulness: If you aren’t useful, you aren’t required. It can’t get simpler than this. Keep updating and upgrading yourself. Take up new assignments, accept challenges. Convince those who matter that you have it in you, that you are not dead wood.       



Networking: Not knowing the right people will hamper your chances. Come out of your comfort zone and establish relationships. Bond with the employees of the other departments. Make yourself known. Go up the pyramid.  



Genuineness: Make it look real even if you aren’t really sincere. You have to inspire that trust and confidence because if you don’t then you can’t progress. What you are and what you are perceived as should be as close as possible. But you can’t always call a spade a spade.  Call it a club, it doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t compromise on integrity.



Ultimately, it is all about perception. Project yourself correctly in the correct places among the correct people and you will not only survive but thrive in the office jungle.



-          NZ

15.9.2019

BN: 128



  












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