This is a topic which I will believe that many working professionals like me have encountered before. Also known as office politics, it is defined as a negative reaction in the human relationship that occurs between your office colleagues or superior that in turn created discord and hinders your work performance.
There are many examples to explain the meaning of office politics and it is a common situation that most working professionals will face regardless of their job nature in any industry. Unfortunately, there isn’t any quick solution to avoid office politics altogether which is unless you are the business owner or working as a freelancer.
Workplace politics are usually caused by several factors such as the victim’s inability in their people’s skill, jealousy of their colleagues who enjoy more privilege from their superiors or boss which is a form of favoritism, hold personal grudges to the victim that can be due to work conflict or other reasons and so on.
You might be familiar with these examples of workplace politics such as.
• Abusing their job position as their superior and indirectly forced the victim to do extra work during or after office hours.
• Spreading false rumors to others is related to the victim’s behavior or job performance.
• Sabotage the victim’s career by giving wrong information or withholding vital information that is related to his or her job.
• Trying to find fault in the victim’s work performance and use this information to report to his or her superior.
From these examples, you can easily notice the similarities in the actions in which the goal is to make the victim’s life as miserable as possible in their work and eventually resigned from their job. Companies with a bad reputation in office politics usually have high turnover in their employees and will find it difficult to hire potential job candidates to work for them.
However, some people can benefit themselves in their company by using workplace politics either to get promoted in their career or using it to make things easier in their job. This is a form of “positive” workplace politics where you can create a positive working environment with your colleagues. This can be achieved by adopting a positive mindset and influence others to work for a common goal for their company.
Speaking from my job experience in the corporate world, it is still possible to avoid or prevent yourself from becoming a victim of workplace politics. You will need to put in some effort to gain the trust and support of your co-workers, have a good understanding of the company’s culture and learn to avoid any potential conflicts with others. By taking the right approach in handling the human relationship with your superiors and colleagues, it will make your life a lot easier in your career.