There is a need to do so as, very sad to say, the corporate world is not an ideal world. In this imperfect corporate world, there are scarcity of resources, competitive work environments, subjective performance standard, unclear job definitions, imitating power holders, win-lose organisational philosophy, craving for power, machiavellian tendencies of people, belief in external forces, hunger for acceptance, self-interest, and desire to goof off. You will put yourself at an advantage if you know how use office politics positively and will more likely to succeed than others in your career.
Ways to survive the corporate politics include:
- Recognising power and the extent
- Defending against unfair politics
- Impressing higher up and others
- Knowing how to deal with your boss, co-workers, and the lower ranks
More detailed strategies:
- Don't take sides
- Don't get personal
- Make optimum use of contacts
- Volunteer for projects, task forces and assignments
- Watch out for backstabbing colleagues
- Expose dirty tricks
- Circulate your ideas to prevent "theft"
Office politics are like being betrayed by your younger brother when he told your parents that he saw you sneak out of the house at wee hours, or even like how your new classmate went to your best friend and told her that you called her a slut behind her back, just ten times more complicated. I came up with these analogies for a reason.
At home, you are being protected by the family bond. No matter what happens, your kins are kins and this fact remains unchanged. In school, you are protected by the teachers and school rules, just do what is right, get your graduation certificate and you have no loss. However, in the corporate world you must learn how to play. Being unprotected, one failed tactic and you may be out of the game, for good and for ever.
Everywhere we go, there are people out there who are out to hurt you for their own benefits. Just how many selfless angels can we meet in life? Very few, I would say. Most people are selfish. Hence, we must learn how to protect and defend ourselves in the corporate world other than doing our job scopes well in order to survive long and well in our companies. Always remember that a smart man is one with both IQ and EQ.
Being a student, the closest experience to office politics that I have had so far are school projects. Certain strategies that I would always apply are:
- Complete all my given assignments so I would not be marked down for peer evaluation
- Help fellow project mates if I am able to and getting into your good books at the same time
- Always write down my ideas and contributions so that others cannot claim credit
- Do not take sides when I see my project mates badmouthing each other
Even though it is just school work that I am currently dealing with, I can already see the likes of office politics in the different project groups that I have been in. I have kept myself in a safe zone so far, knowing what strategies to apply and what actions to avoid when dealing with "class politics".
Back in secondary school when there were not much group projects to do and not much tasks to delegate to the few projects that we had, I did not know that friends could turn into nasty people when put into a different situation. Friendships are hard to manage when projects start coming in. You get angry at your best friend for being lazy... You blame your leader for not being understanding with slow submissions of your small individual assignments... The likes of the office politics I experience in school make me realise that by knowing what to do can earn me projectmates-turned-friends, and by not knowing how to deal the politics, can cause me to lose friends-turned-foes.
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