Writing about office survival and politics, made me looking for practice guide. after Google it, i found this nice article about office politics.Reading it, the author mention that office politics is practice. Its sometimes also called “playing the game”.
First, the author explain that we come to work as “free-agent mode”.The reason to come to work his motivated by our own ambitions and looking for a way to accomplish it in social environment using politics and networking. we come to work not necessary for the benefits of the organization but for your’s only.
After it, the author gives an example of a dilemma:telling the truth to a new job candidate or “play the game” AKA lie to him with sugar. In that example, the worker decide to say the truth which made her boss angry. how awful of him…
the author explain that politics is practice, and thus we arrived to our twist in this article. we will give several tip how to practice(which the author don’t explain-he just telling his students to keep notes of their every day life).
So, here are part of tips that will help you practice “office politics” as real player. Keep in mind that this are tips which this were used by me and worked most of the times. but they are not the 10 commandments not written by stone.
- the moment you enter the office, say hello to as many people as you can. don’t go directly to your room,start reading email, making phone calls or whatever. Go for 15 minutes and try to say “hello” to as many people as you can. This will help you gain confidence, you can talk to simple workers and to the highest manager. Smile. Ask every time someone else to a “morning coffee break”.If he is to busy, try another one. This way you can extend your network people. Talk to the janitor never know if he just heard of a good real estate investment that might be interesting.
It doesn’t matter if you had a fight with your wife earlier this morning, or you were stuck in 1 hour traffic jam. the “Hello”/“What up” that matters. also, you can read this one. - Search for a mentor.
- Don’t be a swing vote.
- Don’t be afraid to lie to your boss. we do not encourage doing it. lie is bad, BUT there are several scenarios which this is required for your survival:here is one:
you had a task you needed to accomplish and you wasted your time doing something else instead. then the deadline is just a few days and you know you don’t have to time to finish it in reasonable 9 working hours.
Go to your Boss and ask for more time in the delivery and start fill him with excuses for it. Anything goes:my dog ate my homework(remember high school?), you were sick,you were at customers out of the office most of the time, you worked on it but its to complex to finish in the time frame that was initially setup…\
So, there are few more in the list that can help you master office politics. we will add in the future a few more actions that can be useful in surviving the game of office politics.
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