Office Politics - Part 2

July 10, 2012

Interview with Vicky Oliver, author of the book Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots: 201 Smart Ways to Handle the Toughest People Issues

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Mike Carruthers:
Knowing a little office politics can be a good thing for you and your career. And a good strategy is to try to be popular with your coworkers.

Vicky Oliver:
What I mean by this is that – you don’t want people complaining about you behind your back you want to be perceived as a team player.
 

Vicky Oliver, author of the book Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots, says if there is someone in your workplace that’s been there a long time it’s a good idea to get to know them.

Because that person, over the years people build alliances, and it’s difficult to know how many alliances that person has but chances are it’s numerous. I mean they’ve probably survived 5 or 6 or 7 layoffs for example and you want to be on that person’s side.

Some people worry if they don’t get feedback about the work they do. Vicky says if that’s the case you can probably rest easy.

I feel like you can make that assumption that you’re doing a good job.  And that they’re not giving you feedback because they expect you do to a great job.  It’s unfortunate but not everybody’s a good boss and they don’t know that they should give good feedback.

On the other hand there are bosses that criticize too much and in that case Vicky says…

To the extent that you can take criticism well you’re generally speaking better off and also to not take things personally. Like if somebody doesn’t give you positive feedback to some extent you just have to say maybe it’s their problem.

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