“No man is an island” is a popular and well known line from
a John Donne poem. We take it as meaning that, in general, humans can’t live in
complete isolation. Although as individuals we have our set of values and
beliefs, we certainly influence each other -even those values and beliefs were
built on influencing factors (parents, society, etc.).
In organizations, we interact with coworkers, managers, and
customers, so at work we are part of a social system, where all the parts are
interdependent. Managers play an important role in setting the tone and to
give “an organizational identity to employees”, what the company’s values and
shared mission are (1).
But employees, are the most important part of the system.
Their attitudes will affect not only their own performance, but can also affect
other employees, and obviously the company too as performance and productivity
increases or decreases.
A particular pervasive and corrosive is office politics.
Office politics can be defined as, “the subtle and informal methods of gaining
any type of power or advantage" (2). The key there: subtle and
informal. We’re not going to find rules in the employee’s manual or the
company’s standard/operational procedures on how to navigate or play office
politics. Office politics involve a lot of gossip, and it mostly happens around
the water cooler (hence the phrase “water cooler group”) or where people often
gather for casual chat.
At a previous job, there
were cliques and they always had a complaint about management, or gossip about
another clique. It was like High School all over again. While it’s important
not to engage in gossip and never, ever repeat it, no matter how tempting it
is, it’s also important not to adopt a “holier-than-thou” attitude to avoid
gossip or office politics. Just keeping a friendly, respectful attitude without
giving in to gossip.
References:
(1) Newstrom, John. Organizational Behavior: Human Behavior
at Work, 14th Edition. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 01/2015. VitalSource
Bookshelf Online.
(2) Andrica, Diane C. Handling Office Politics. 1999. Nursing
Economics 17.3: 156. ProQuest. Web. Retrieved 15 Feb 2019.
Comments
Post a Comment
YOUR COMMENTS FEED MY MIND! Thank you for your feedback!