Could you handle “Office Politics”?

How to handle Office Politics?

1,556 Views Updated: 25 Oct 2017
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“Office politics” can be referred to the strategies of certain people for gaining the professional or personal advantage. In other words, it is nothing but manifesting the situations to gain the advantage. Office politics is likely to happen in any workplace where more than one employee works. When opinion differs, conflict arises. No need of fearing about office politics. You can handle the conflict situations with ease. At the same time, you can learn to avoid the occurrence of conflicts too. By giving attention to the behavior of your colleagues, you can easily cope with office politics.

Here are the important tips to handle ‘Office Politics’ wisely.

#1. Be Cautious About Your Choice

Fight or flight is the common reactions of many people who encounter office politics. In fact, it is a usual human reaction. Both of these options are not good for a healthy career development. Instinctive fight response may not help you in giving strength to your point while instinctive flight may make you week as the people may take you for granted. You need to be able to constantly choose reactions based on the situation. Hence, be careful in choosing your responses. Never react without thinking. Whatever the situation is, just think a while and respond.

#2. Keep Your Vision On Business Objectives

When conflict arises, it is very common to focus on differences. Doing so, you are not giving any chance for improving your point of view. You are only inviting more resistance to your goal. Focusing on people’s opinions or positions may not help you. Instead, keep your vision on your business objectives. Think from the organization point of view. Discuss advantages and disadvantages of every option. Ultimately, it is the business that needs to be booming. If business wins, everybody in the organization is deemed to be successful. By keeping this point in view, direct the discussion towards business goal. If you act in such manner, you are likely to get more appreciations from your boss.

#3. Learn To Operate Within The Given Constraint

At the workplace, there are a lot of issues on which you have very less control over. Complaining is the most common response to those situations on which you do not have complete control. Remember that complaining is not going to give you any positive results. Instead of complaining by feeling victimized about the occurrence, focus on what you can do to cope the situation. This technique helps to provide you relief from the helplessness feeling. Though eventual outcomes may not get decided or changed, by operating within the given constraints, you can let others know that you have made your best within the given constraints. This approach allows your boss to understand your positive attitude towards the organization. Hence, you can get more appreciations from your boss.

#4. Do Not Take Sides

Office politics may sometimes stick you in between two influential personalities who are competing with each other. While these two personalities try to control the situation, you may worry about the outcome of the situation. In such cases, do not take sides. Focus on business objective and try to handle the situation. Encourage open communications between the parties. By avoiding taking sides, you can help to manage the conflict in an efficient manner. You can gain trust from both the parties.

#5. Temper Management

What goes around comes around. This is applicable in a workplace too. There are times where you feel angry on a person and want to teach a lesson. But do not. When you humiliate or insult people, they tend to remember the moments. By managing your temper, you can enjoy healthy career advancement. Organizations are focusing on 360-degree evaluation to promote a candidate. You might be the best performer, but if you are not an approachable person, you might end up in failure.

#6. Learn To Understand

People often feel unjustified if they ar not understood by others. Generally, we want others to understand our feelings. We do not give much priority to understand others. Top business leaders and people managers have managed to master this urge. Trying to understand others is very helpful in overcoming office politics. When another party understands that you are trying to understand them, open communications can be motivated.

By mastering the art of handling office politics, you can protect yourself from being a victim of office politics. Do you agree? Tell us about it. Comment on the boc below to share your views and thoughts!