How to manage office politics?

I know it is tough.

I have faced it and so I know it. I know many like you and me have or are facing office politics.

It is extremely frustrating, especially for those who become victims of it.

I threw an open question some time back on social media, what is your biggest fear?

And many responded, we fear office politics and want to know “How to manage office politics?”

So today I am going to share my experiences and the ways in which I faced and managed office politics during my career.

But before we move ahead, let me ask you if you know what all fall under office politics?

This is what I garnered over the years.

1. Scheming against your own colleagues.
2. Backstabbing your own team members.
3. Spreading false rumours about performers.
4. Sweetly making your manager believe negative against your most trusted accomplice.
5. Plotting to get your people involved in wrong doings and then acting as a whistleblower.
6. Tarnishing image of honest and sincere workers to keep yourself as the most promising team member.
7. Becoming a spy agent for your manager against your own team members.
8. To stay in the front for the promotion every year creating roadblocks for your team members so that they are not able to achieve their targets.
9. Following all good, bad and ugly practices to achieve your targets, and then ensuring others are humiliated by your manager for poor performance.
10. Making sure the old client you were taking care of doesn’t perform good under a new team member, so that the said client is given back to you.
11. Tipping your top management how ineffective your counter-part is in handling his team, by highlighting the lacunas in his leadership.

These are the few out of many situations you might face in your organization.

If you want to know HOW TO MANAGE OFFICE POLITICS in all the above-listed situations, there are a few important things you need to do.

1. Most importantly, you need to keep yourself positive in all situations, come what may.
2. Try not to involve yourself in deep conversations with people who are most of the time negative and talking ill about life, office, company, people in general. They are energy suckers.
3. Identify all such ‘Politics Players’ in your team, verticals in your organization, so that you are aware of keeping a vigil when dealing with them or when they are around you.
4. Keep transactional relationship only, with people who you suspect are as ‘Politics Players’. You cannot totally avoid them, working in an organization.
5. Build great camraderie with people across verticals and not just your team or department. People should have great opinion and feedback about you.
6. Keep you manager abreast with all the latest that is happening in your territory or the key areas of responsibilties. Your plan, resource management, challenges, execution, and updated status of every project you are running. Your manager should have full confidence on you.
7. Those who you feel are ‘Politics Players’ , try not to mess with them but do not be afraid. Stay straightforward and polite, as you are with all others.
8. Build strong rapport and relationship with your key stakeholders especially your immediate reportees,partners, vendors, channels, and your supervisors and managers. Your 360 degree feedback matters a lot.
9. Make sure you know all the organizational policies, code of conduct and ethics of operating self and your job role. So that no one around can lead you into anything soupy.
10. Identifying those spy agents in your team who leak out team secrets and discussions to your managers and represent them in a way that is advatageous to them. Let every one be aware of who those people are in your team.
11. Take a rightful stand for yourself, whenever you are being wrongly interpreted or someone has tried to tarnish your image by misrepresenting you. Confidently calrify in person or if required in a group, if it pertains to the group.
12. Whenever a third-party partner/channel/account is tagged to you, make sure you take complete handholding from the previous person handling it. Then build a fresh and strong relationship with that account by understanding their business style and then assuring of your best support. Don’t lose track and keep a constant follow-up to understand their ongoing problems. Prove yourself by giving befitting solutions.
13. As you now you would be appraised for your performance at the end of each year, make sure you keep your manager updated through verbal or written records of all your small and big achievements. So that he knows what you have been doing all through the year.
14. Any type of disconnect with your team which you are leading will happen only when you don’t communicate much. If you keep the communication open, yourself approachable and available most of the times, no outsider can bring down your team’s cohesion and spirits.
15. Be bold, assertive, open, tactful, aware, empathetic, positive, and available for your team and all other verticals in your organization.

I am suggesting all the above ways because I practiced them and made my life easier in all the companies I worked for. I learned it the hard way all on my own and found my own solutions for them. But for you, I have it ready on a platter.

Go ahead and practice them.

If I am making a difference in your life through my blog posts, keep showering your love through your comments.

Also if you feel it suitable and know someone who is struggling to overcome office politics and perform at his best, don’t forget to share this post with them. It takes just a few seconds. You might turn his world around for the greater good.