How to Rise Above Office Politics

Office politics can be far nastier than a room full of politicians with a bag full of the taxpayer’s money. Office politics can lead to being fired, and hating yourself because you have to drag yourself out of bed in order to go to a job where everyone sneers at you behind your back.

So the question is, what exactly is office politics and how does it impact a person’s ability to work?

Office politics, in short, describes the interaction between the employees that work there as well as the misuse of power. For instance, a few good examples of office politics at work, is when someone passes blame, gossips or takes credit for work they didn’t do themselves.

As you can imagine, this type of thing happens all the time in offices throughout the world. It causes tension in the workplace, leads to lost jobs and keeps many people up at night, when they would be much better off getting a good nights sleep. Not only that, but companies lose money daily due to office politics. Managers, who could be spending their valuable time seeing to more important matters, are forced to sort out disputes between employees. Even worse, companies who strive to have a harmonious team environment, which is the most efficient atmosphere to work in, find that productivity numbers are dropping, which could lead to them being fired instead of the people who are actually causing the problems.

In short, like an insidious disease, office politics can ruin a business from the inside out. Yet anyone who has ever worked in an office will tell you that office politics is unavoidable. It is much like a game, that every employee is forced to play at some point in his or her career. The only way to handle the game of office politics is to either become an expert at the game, or to avoid it at all costs. In other words, one must learn to cope with it.

Some people cope with office politics by keeping to themselves. They go to work, do their job and say almost nothing to their coworkers. While this is a great way to avoid conflict, it’s not a good way to land that fat promotion you’ve been eyeing. Some people are just naturally good at the game of office politics. Somehow, they come out on top, no matter the circumstances. For others it is a learned skill, which is usually learned at the hands of defeat. At some point in their careers, they lost a game of office politics and learned from their mistakes.

The important thing to know about office politics is that it matters. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, at some point it will raise its ugly head. In order to become successful in an office environment, you have to learn how to deal with, and cope with office politics, before you’ll truly be successful.

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