Play politics well.
I’m not talking about state, national or foreign. Who the hell has any control over that crap? (You want to contribute to your favorite party or candidate, by all means do so. And certainly vote and be active. But don’t kid yourself you’re going to have huge or decisive impact, because you’re not.)
I’m talking about office politics. Here's a selection of the lessons I’ve absorbed about same as I’ve crawled along Life’s Highway ...
Minimize whining and back-stabbing. (You will probably do some of these things anyway, since most of us do. But keep it under control.)
Don’t make it personal (you’re working with these people, not marrying them.)
If you have a toxic personality, strive to hide it behind a fake, pleasant personality. Make work-time a popularity contest. You can go home and pull the wings off flies after hours.
Don’t rub your supervisor’s nose in his bad decisions. (“I told you so ...”) He'll make it his job to get you off his crew.
Stay in your damn chair, do your damn work, and don’t shoot off your damn mouth.
Understand that most of the office crises you encounter, the ones you thought were really huge deals at the moment they happened, will turn out to be pretty small bumps in your long-term career path.
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5 comments:
Wow.....you MUST have seen something go down on your visit to Dreamworks or something.
That sounds like a recent event went down to prompt this one.
I'm not complaining....I just think it's funny.
ha-HA! (laugh Pee Wee herman style)
Its generally....
This is pretty basic stuff.
In all honestly, the kind of person who most needs to hear and learn these basic ideas isn't going to get them, apply them or think they apply to themselves. There are exceptions and there's that thing called growing up that takes years to do usually, but in my experience if you have to tell someone the basic facts of getting along in the workplace like this it's hopeless already.
The rest of us probably do our best day in and day out not to be totally obnoxious.
Define "toxic personality." What are the odds that someone who's personality fits that description would be so self aware that they would say, "Oh, he's talking about me?" "Hi, I'm George. I have red hair, I'm 6' tall and I have a toxic personality."
Why is it that we only hear about these people in the context of the workplace? Nobody ever said, "He stinks at his job, but what a lovely personality. Let's keep him."
Of course supervisors can be as obnoxious and abusive as they want to be, with no one holding them accountable for their behavior. Now, THAT's politics.
Read the Art of War and the Book of the Five Rings...
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