Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Office Politics for Dummies

If you're a job going person, you'll definitely talk about the bad things in office and label it as office politics. However politics is defined as "Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions" in wiki. Being a job going person by myself for the last 3 years, I've also been expressing my frustrations about bad things happening in office as "politics". If you're suffering from "Office Politics", the following 10 tips can help you out.

1. If you're afraid of something, learn about it. Darkness brings fear. Enlightenment is the cure. Learn politics.

2. Learn the art of saying "NO". Most of the time we overload ourselves by saying "Yes" to so many things. We lift the expectations up so high that we couldn't meet them.

3. Commit LESS and do MORE. Its not cheating. Its value adding.

4. Accept that people are gossiping about you, but don't gossip about others. You'll build trust among your colleagues. They'll feel safe to share you critical information, which may save your job.

5. More the friends you have, Less is the chance that you'll be fired.

6. Spend more time with your family. They will help you in hard times (at least emotionally).

7. There ain't no free food. If you're appreciated by someone, appreciate them back for whatever small help they've rendered for your success. You'll build good relationships.

8. If you ask, you'll get it. Even though you bear greater responsibilities and dependency, you won't get a promotion unless you ask for it. This is true for 99% of the times. Don't have over confidence that you'll be so lucky to fall under that 1% of exceptions.

9. Lead by inspiration not by authority. Authority works only in your presence, but inspiration works all the time.

10. Be the change you want to see. If you don't like how things are run, run things by yourself. Start a company.