The schemes and power struggles in the work place make you tired, right?

Every office has such interesting characters – see if you can spot some of them in yours, but don’t make it too obvious. There’s the CID – that one person who is in everyone else’s business, and their best friend – the Radio Station – who is always spreading everyone’s business. There’s the Boss of everyone: they always want to tell you what to do – and want to take credit for everything you do. There’s the spy and the committee of gossips (they might be looking at you now, so be careful).  The funny thing is all these ‘un-nice’ people have nice sides too.

 

Fact is, when all these people come together with their different ways of doing things and their quest for getting ahead – we arrive at office politics. Managing all these personalities – their behaviour and reactions so that you can win their cooperation in achieving your work goals while keeping your sanity and peace intact: that’s the daily campaign you might have to run for the rest of your working life. It’s tough and we know! But you can use your own strategy to sail through. Cheer up mate, we want you to survive your first few years of work and make it out of the work jungle alive.

 

Everyone has their own values that may either match yours or not. Values are the reason why we get the feeling that some things are wrong and others, right. You can figure out your own values so you know the kind of person you want to be in the office or which group you want to join. If not, you will probably be all over the place and even do things you might not like just to make others happy. That could quickly lose you the respect of your colleagues and no one will really take you seriously.

 

There is one other thing you need to know, there are unwritten rules to navigating your relationships with all the different people in every organisation. If you want to be on top of your game, you need to learn them like the back of your hand. Then you can avoid serious mistakes and handle multiple interests. This can help you form the right alliances to help you make it through work.

 

If you can handle all the schemes and power struggles that come with office politics very well all your goals and KPIs would be very attainable. So it’s not all bad, unless you can’t be a ‘politician’.

Keep in mind that you decide what you want and how you want it. Let your values guide you to find a spot that suits you just fine, make or join a good coalition or ‘party’ and have the support you need to move forward in the office space.

 

 

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3. Petra Trust’s leadership has over 60 years of combined world-class experience in managing institutional and sovereign funds in excess of 500 billion USD.