A much better approach is to make it painful to fire you, by having a skill or knowledge no one else has. Not all bosses like toadies, and when those who do get fired the toadies go also.
Yes! And practice saying the phrase “What are you going to do?” in an off-handed manner. This allows you to sympathise with the complainers without actually saying anything that could get back to the person being complained about.
Unless you’re the boss, because you might not always be the boss.
Keep your mouth shut and don’t spread gossip. Make yourself someone your co-workers feel they can trust with their deep, dark secrets about who’s sleeping with whom, or who’s getting kickbacks from vendors.
When you feel like such behavior crosses the line, tell your boss, and ONLY your boss. Then shut up about it once again.
And write everything down in your own personal diary (not on your computer!) You know, just in case.
Never reply to an email without knowing who the recipient is, their position in the company, and why they asked you the question.
I found that the best way to kill the rumor mill was to tell the rumor-monger to accompany me to the subject’s office/cubicle so we could ask if it was true. They always refused, to which I would reply: if you can’t have enough integrity to find out if it’s true, it shouldn’t be said.
Taking sides in office disputes will almost always bite you in the ass. If you choose wrongly, it can cost you friends and even your job.
Sadly true. The guy who spends 8 hours a day in meetings telling everyone about the great work he does is a thousand times more likely to be promoted than the guy who quietly does the job so well that nobody notices.
So, know your boss. If he is lazy then you are going to to have to be lazy too, it’s waht he understands.
Yeah, but the guy who does his job well and efficiently but still takes the time to make sure that people are aware of what his is doing is the most likely of all to get promoted.
Excellent advice. If your company has an org chart app, learn how to use it.
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Don’t trust anyone. I mean, don’t go around announcing it, but assume that anyone can pull the rug out from under you at any time - don’t depend on anyone for your career health.
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The company is not your friend. You are exchanging your time and effort for money. You are in an adversarial relationship with them because they will always try to maximize your effort and minimize your money, and you’re trying to do the opposite.
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Managing your supervisors is great advice. Don’t come to them with, “Mary is making my life miserable, and never does her work!” Come to them with, “I need some direction here - I’m not sure which duties are mine and which are Mary’s.” Don’t be afraid to use emails to have a record, but use that judiciously - proving your boss wrong rarely goes well for you.
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People who gossip with you gossip about you. Just assume this is always true, because it probably is.
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This seems obvious, but it apparently isn’t - don’t brag at work about questionable personal behaviours. I don’t care if you like to go party it up on the weekends; bragging about it Monday gives you the reputation of: A. being an immature person who likes to party and B. someone who doesn’t know enough to keep private behaviour private.
Never assume confidentiality. Whatever you say to anyone in the office may eventually be repeated to somebody else.
This goes double – no, quadruple – for e-mail. No matter to whom you address it, every message you send has the potential to be forwarded to everybody in the entire company.
And speaking of that, make sure you know what is on your Facebook etc., and what your reputation looks like if someone searches for you on the web.
When you are new, and if you have flex time, or even if you don’t, making it a practice to arrive at work five minutes before your boss and leave five minutes after is good. In less structured environments checking and answering emails at midnight is sometimes useful.
You can only go so far at work by keeping your head down and not playing politics. If you want to progress in your career, you will eventually need to take risks, choose sides or make tough decisions that may piss someone off.
That’s not the same thing as “bitching”. It’s ok, and actually beneficial, to acknowledge a problem. But you have to also work on solutions. A bit of venting is also okay for your underdrones, but enabling or contributing to pointless “complainstorming” sessions where people just bitch and moan without proposing a solution are unproductive.
I actually tell my people the exact opposite. If they have a skill or knowledge that no one else has, when an internal transfer opportunity comes up they won’t be able to move because I need that knowledge in my department. Much better to make sure they are completely replaceable by sharing any unique knowledge or skills they have. That way when the new job opens up in the other department, they can leave my department with a minimum of delay. It helps them, and it helps my department by preventing key-person dependencies.
According to the Onion News Networks most youth are apathetic over office politics.
Thanks, I think.
I’m COO of 350 person division – not saying I have nothing to learn, but I’m not exactly your target audience (“…mid-level managers, junior executives”) either.
In re: office politics, as in all of life, there is only one rule: don’t be a dick.
Cheers.
^^ this ^^ was going to be my response… there are times when you (or all of us) need to “bitch, just to bitch”; but more often than not, if you are bitching about the way something is being done, then you are best-served to have an “alternative solution” in your back pocket.
Then I would certainly be interested in your class.
Perhaps it is the industry I work in, but I’d say at least 50% of the people I’ve worked with are dickheads.
Bring pie.