How To Deal With Office Politics

Hey friends, in my previous blog on work ethics, I told you to avoid being involved in office politics. In this blog, we will discuss what office politics is, the negative effects of office politics and how to deal with it.
First of all, I will explain to you what office politics is. The internet definition of office politics is ” actions and behavior involving competition for status or power in a workplace.” In simple words, we can say that office politics is the tactics used to gain more power than others in the corporate world. Almost every person working in the corporate sector gets involved in office politics once in their work life. It is practically impossible to have zero involvement in it.

Avoiding office politics could worsen your career; every employee must use ethical office politics to their advantage. The problem starts when you get completely involved in it or use it unethically and lose your focus from work. The colleagues must have healthy competition and focus on being a good asset for their organization instead of defaming others to gain more power.

First, let’s discuss the negative effects of office politics.

Negative Effects Of Office Politics

1. Lose focus on work: As I told you earlier when an employee gets completely involved in politics, he puts most of his efforts into it, making him lose his focus from work.
2. Lose Relationship With Colleagues: You may lose your good relations with your colleagues if you always think about yourself and do not appreciate your colleagues. Many friendships have been ruined because of office politics.
3. It Can Ruin Your Career: There have been multiple examples of employees getting fired because they did unethical ways to get a promotion. Even if you are not caught in politics, you may also ruin your career if you get too involved in it instead of working.
4. Increases Stress: If you focus on what other people are thinking about you instead of working, it will make you stressed, and hence it will also affect your work efficiency.

Now, let’s come to the most crucial part of our blog. Now we will discuss how to deal with office politics.

How To Deal With Office Politics

1. Stay Away From Gossip: Have a formal conversation with your colleagues but do not turn that conversation into gossip. If anyone is trying to do so, then tell them that you don’t want to get involved in any gossip. You can also leave the place immediately without any second thought.
2. Treat Every Colleague Equally: You may enjoy spending time with some of your colleagues, and at the same time, you may hate some of them. It is normal in our daily life; also, we love to spend our time with some of our friends and hate some others. But, instead of avoiding your colleagues, you should interact and treat them the same as you treat others. No matter what they feel about you.
3. Avoid Back-Bitching: Never talk rudely about any colleague to some other colleague. If you have any problem with someone, tell him directly or keep it up to yourself. But, do not start back-bitching about him to others.
4. Remain Un-Biased: This is not the same as treating every colleague equally. So, it means not to take anyone’s side and remain unbiased with everyone. You can make friends with some of your colleagues and spend most of your quality time with them. But, when it comes to office hours, you must leave your relations aside and remain unbiased. Whenever any situation comes in your life when you have to give your genuine feedback about your colleagues.

I hope this blog has helped you in understanding office politics. Now, you may have got the idea of how much you need to be involved in office politics.

Check out our other blog: Ten Professional Work Ethics

KEEP SMILING AND STAY ENERGETIC 🙂