News »Browse Articles »
Simple ways to manage office politics
0
Simple ways to manage office politics
Simple ways to manage office politics
So what if you are good at work? In today’s day and age the requirement for marketing yourself is as crucial if not more than just doing your job diligently.
Today’s successful corporate honcho needs to take lessons from successful marketing campaigns and remember the fact that a prime mover of advertising / marketing is to make people aware of the products and services that enrich our lives. And if your peers and bosses do not know how important you are to their lives, why would they take a second look?
Welcome to the real world of office politics. Before you begin to cringe at the thought of politicking at work or fall back on the old adage that politics is the last resort of scoundrels, think again. This brand of politics at the workplace is not just for the baddies.
The good guys need to be as much a part of it and this requires a paradigm shift in the thinking amongst this class of individuals. The goodies need to improve their skills at office politics – which anyway is just a euphemism for marketing yourself well. And since good guys usually value personal integrity more than career advancements, there is every reason for them to employ marketing tactics to ensure that the "baddies" don’t rise higher.
So, what`s the most crucial aspect of this new thinking? Every individual at work should think of himself as a business unit. Gaining market share and climbing up the career ladder should be a key concern. He should remember that office politics is the use of one`s individual power within an organization for the purpose of obtaining advantages beyond one`s legitimate authority. "Office Politics" is the term used to refer to the marketing efforts each person employs to compete with the others.
To be good at marketing yourself, the first step is to objectively assess your own strengths and weaknesses. There is a crying need for emotional intelligence to figure out what other people struggle with. Try and understand how you can get along with folks that you hate – figure out what motivates them to behave the way they do. If you have a reasonable handle on these aspects, then fear not… you are ready to face up to politics@work.
Now we come to the question whether marketing itself is a total no-no. Since all of us have come across some form bad marketing practices, we naturally tend to dismiss all marketing as underhand and manipulative. This is not true for all cases as marketing does provide us with options and also creates awareness about products and services that make a difference to our lives.
Political competence is the one skill everyone wishes to have more of—but no one talks about it. When you ask people how they achieve results within their organizations, they cite market analysis, strategic planning and brainstorming. They never mention politics.
The good guys always tend to give more value to job skills than social skills and that is the biggest mistake they make. These guys need to understand that both job skills and social skills are equally important for an individual to advance in his career. In the days to come "Office Politics" will lose its stigma and more middle-class people will become better skilled at marketing themselves to employers in forthright and compelling ways. Office politics should therefore be considered as a boon and not as a bane and all the employees of a concern should always take it with the right spirit.
Source:
http://www.bpowatchindia.com/bpo_features/office_politics/october-08-2008/office
So what if you are good at work? In today’s day and age the requirement for marketing yourself is as crucial if not more than just doing your job diligently.
Today’s successful corporate honcho needs to take lessons from successful marketing campaigns and remember the fact that a prime mover of advertising / marketing is to make people aware of the products and services that enrich our lives. And if your peers and bosses do not know how important you are to their lives, why would they take a second look?
Welcome to the real world of office politics. Before you begin to cringe at the thought of politicking at work or fall back on the old adage that politics is the last resort of scoundrels, think again. This brand of politics at the workplace is not just for the baddies.
The good guys need to be as much a part of it and this requires a paradigm shift in the thinking amongst this class of individuals. The goodies need to improve their skills at office politics – which anyway is just a euphemism for marketing yourself well. And since good guys usually value personal integrity more than career advancements, there is every reason for them to employ marketing tactics to ensure that the "baddies" don’t rise higher.
So, what`s the most crucial aspect of this new thinking? Every individual at work should think of himself as a business unit. Gaining market share and climbing up the career ladder should be a key concern. He should remember that office politics is the use of one`s individual power within an organization for the purpose of obtaining advantages beyond one`s legitimate authority. "Office Politics" is the term used to refer to the marketing efforts each person employs to compete with the others.
To be good at marketing yourself, the first step is to objectively assess your own strengths and weaknesses. There is a crying need for emotional intelligence to figure out what other people struggle with. Try and understand how you can get along with folks that you hate – figure out what motivates them to behave the way they do. If you have a reasonable handle on these aspects, then fear not… you are ready to face up to politics@work.
Now we come to the question whether marketing itself is a total no-no. Since all of us have come across some form bad marketing practices, we naturally tend to dismiss all marketing as underhand and manipulative. This is not true for all cases as marketing does provide us with options and also creates awareness about products and services that make a difference to our lives.
Political competence is the one skill everyone wishes to have more of—but no one talks about it. When you ask people how they achieve results within their organizations, they cite market analysis, strategic planning and brainstorming. They never mention politics.
The good guys always tend to give more value to job skills than social skills and that is the biggest mistake they make. These guys need to understand that both job skills and social skills are equally important for an individual to advance in his career. In the days to come "Office Politics" will lose its stigma and more middle-class people will become better skilled at marketing themselves to employers in forthright and compelling ways. Office politics should therefore be considered as a boon and not as a bane and all the employees of a concern should always take it with the right spirit.
Source:
http://www.bpowatchindia.com/bpo_features/office_politics/october-08-2008/office
