How to handle office politics

6 TIPS ON HOW TO HANDLE OFFICE POLITICS

1. Understand motives; be clear on your stand:Sometimes, you may get pulled into lobbying conversations with people with hidden agendas. For example, when pressed to agree to a pushy colleague’s proposal on a collaborative project, be ready to stand firm on your ideas. Also, stay clear from taking sides on other party issues that do not directly involve you. 

2. Keep your cool, no matter what: It could be a backstabber who is making you look incompetent in front of seniors or a credit stealer who knows your potential and extracts your expertise for his/her benefit, depriving you of rightful credit. Understand that the person is manipulating you stealthily. You need to be sharp when dealing with him/her as simply making noise to one and all will not address the issue.

Confront the backstabber in private and make it clear you know his/her intentions well – this should stop him/her from doing that. As for credit stealers, always keep your boss in the loop over the efforts you have spent on a project. This should weaken the miscreant’s power over any information s/he can use over you. 

3. Focus on finding solutions, don’t linger on the problem: There’s nothing worse than a situation wherein teammates play the blame game over a task gone wrong. Well, what’s done (or not done) is done – for the sake of your own goal and of the overall team’s productivity, invest your energies in the right direction by bringing focus back to the task at hand. If you were wrong, accept it; if not, take the higher ground and stay on course of your work.

4. Beware of gossip: “Did you know?” or “Have you heard” conversations are the fuel that run the gossip fires around office. Gossip creates biases and clouds judgement about the people who work together. It exposes personal opinions and information that may/may not be true. Be careful of what you share with those around; words spoken often get twisted as they circulate around, and will make you look bad once they surface. As a golden rule, don’t voice anything you cannot speak openly in front of everyone.

5. Keep the mood positive: A positive attitude will help tide over various ups and downs at workplace. Surround yourself with positive minded people, and remain out of the way of those who spread negativity at workplace. Everyone has problems, but office is not the place to air them. Devote your office hours to constructive work; let your attitude lead the way.

6. Build meaningful associations: This is especially true when you are in a new job. Get people to like you. While this does not mean you try too hard to impress your boss or colleagues, use every opportunity to build good working relations with those around you. These relationships will help you collaborate smoothly on the job as you would find people more willing to associate with you. 

When not tackled in a proper manner, office politics can drag your career down. Keep your professional image secure and don’t get entangled in the web of corporate politics. 

Good luck

Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Service

1. Apathy: A just don't-give-a-damn attitude on the part of the salesperson or an impression conveyed to the customer in terms of "Do I look like I give a damn?". Some people get this way when they get bored with their jobs and nobody is reminding them that their job priority is to serve their customers.

 

2. Brush-Off: Trying to get rid of the customer by either "passing the buck" or brushing-off his or her need or problem; trying to "slam-dunk" the customer with some standard procedure that doesn't solve the problem but lets the service person off the hook for doing anything special.

 

3. Coldness: A kind of chilly hostility, curtness, unfriendliness, inconsiderateness, or impatience with the customer that says, "You're a nuisance; please go away." It is amazing to find that so many restaurants carefully select the most moody, depressed, hostile person they can find for the hostess-cashier job, making sure the customer's first and last moments of truth are good ones.

 

4. Condescension: Treating the customer with a patronizing attitude, such as many health-care people do. They call the doctor "Doctor Jones," but they call you by your first name and talk to you like you're four years old.

 

5. Robotism: "Thank-you-have-a-nice-day-NEXT." The fully mechanized worker puts every customer through the same program with the same standard motion and slogans, and with no trace of warmth or individuality. A variant of this is the smiling robot who gives a permanent "star" smile, but you can tell nobody's home upstairs.

 

6. Rule Book: Putting the organizational rules above customer satisfaction, with no discretion on the part of the service person to make exceptions or use common sense. Our banks and government departments are famous for this; they usually do everything possible to eliminate all traces of human thought and judgement, with the result that no one is authorized to think. Any customer problem with more than one moving part confounds their system.

 

7. Runaround: "Sorry, you'll have to call (see) so-and-so. We don't handle that here. "Telkom" people have made this into an art; the one operator tells you to go the the Telkom store, the Telkom store tells you to log a call, the call agent tells you to.... and so the viscous circle continues. 

For more on customer service and other retail subjects, contact us at info@mretailing.co.za or visit our website at www.mretailing.co.za

Kind Regards

The Master Retailing Team