|
FEATURE ARTICLE
Why Office Politics Matters
Office politics
can be either a positive or negative influence on your career. If
you aren't successful in dealing with it, you can lose your job, get
demoted or be alienated from key projects or people. If you are successful
in dealing with politics, you can gain access to key influential players
inside the company and even gain a promotion.
If you want to
advance in your company, create more success, increase your responsibility
and work on high profile projects, learn how to deal with the politics
that exist in your company and group.
Here are five
ways to put the power of politics to work for you:
1. Be liked.
If you look around at the people who play the political game the best,
they are the ones who get everyone to like them. The first key is
getting people to like you, make sure they feel you are on their side.
When you are liked, people are less inclined to battle you when the
politics start to involve you or your work. When you get along with
people, it makes it easier for others to support your ideas.
2, Keep it
professional at all times.
No matter how frustrated, irritated or short-tempered you become,
it's vital you keep your professional composure. Things will affect
you at work that you don't want to react to and lose yourself. Remember
that part of the political game is keeping yourself level headed and
composed.
2. Don't whine
and complain.
It's easy to complain about management, your boss, other people, your
workload, deadlines and projects. Also, you will find many others
who will join you in the complain game because it's a nice release
and feels good to find others who share your frustrations. However,
whining and complaining is a passive approach that is about standing
on the sidelines and judging versus proactively working toward eliminating
the cause of the problem.
4. Don't make
enemies or burn bridges.
There will be people at work you won't like or respect. It's important
to not let this affect your ability to get along with them. It's easy
to make enemies or have someone not like you or you not like them.
However, this makes your job more difficult and just expands the work
politics that already existed.
5. Don't make
others look bad.
Making others look bad brings work politics to an elevated level.
Most of the time, you don't consciously try make someone look bad.
However, you can be careless or not aware of the impact of your actions
on others. Actively try to make people look good because this will
come back and look favorably on you.
Return
to top
|
