Office politics, social skills and teamwork
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Title : Office politics, social skills and teamwork
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You are now reading the article Office politics, social skills and teamwork With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2017/12/office-politics-social-skills-and.html
Title : Office politics, social skills and teamwork
link : Office politics, social skills and teamwork
news-today.world | Hi guys, as the year draws to a close, allow me to share with you a few frank observations from the world of corporate finance. Perhaps some of what I am saying here is going to be obvious to those of you who have been in the working world for a while, but I'm probably writing this for my younger readers who have yet to make that big transition from student life to working life. So let's begin with what happened yesterday.
Teamwork vs brain power
My colleague had a brilliant idea for a Christmas party: he booked us two Escape Rooms to play and for those of you who are not familiar with Escape Rooms, I wrote a review about one in Singapore a while ago here. I checked, they were both of a similar level of difficulty. There was a big group of us going to the Escape Rooms, the challenge was for us to split up into two teams and see which team could escape first. What he cleverly did was to split us up by age: the older people in management positions were all in one team whilst the younger members of staff were in the other. I suppose given my age, I could have been placed in the other team but I was actually quite relieved to have been placed in the younger team. Not only did I like the idea of being considered 'young' (LOL, at my ripe old age of 41) but I also thought that the younger team would do better. On paper, the older team definitely had the advantage of having some of the most brilliant minds in corporate finance to take on the kinds of logic and reasoning puzzles that you typically have to solve in these Escape Rooms. On paper, the older group were of course vastly more qualified than the younger group. We were at Escape Land on Oxford Street and I was very impressed with the experience - it was a very well put together Escape Room.
Well the younger team did win for a simple reason: teamwork. At first I thought chaos would emerge as there was no real team leader: But ironically, that didn't seem to matter so much once we naturally fell into certain roles that we knew we were good at - there wasn't even a formal process of assigning roles, we simply knew how to work as a team like that. Compared to some of the other Escape Rooms I have played in the past, this room was challenging to say the least, but given that I was working with some exceptionally brilliant people, we managed to escape with 3:21 on the clock. When we emerged, we realized we had won because the older group were still locked in their room. As there wasn't another booking after ours, the older group were given an extra five minutes to try to solve the last step to their escape, but still failed. My colleagues wanted to stand outside their door and try to hear what was going on - it was clear that there was one leader who had emerged (quite predictably) and I could hear one person shouting, trying to tell the others what to do. Well clearly, that didn't work for them - the younger group had worked without a leader, but had a form of synergy and teamwork that allowed us to triumph. I am now wondering if hypothetically, you put all of us in one Escape Room, management and the younger staff together and we worked with one leader giving orders - would we have succeeded? What lessons can we learn from such an experience then?
How my NS experience has shaped me
We are a small company - we're growing but we're still quite small and that often means having to outsource some functions to other companies and it often involves us working with different parties like external consultants and experts on various projects. There's this person we had to work with this year, let's call him Tom (clearly not his real name). Nobody liked Tom, everyone had something bad to say about him. He has clashed with practically everybody in the company - oh the countless number of arguments, it has been ugly. You see, respect should be earned in any business context but I think Tom expects people to respect him because of what he is engaged to do. I don't doubt that Tom is very good at what he does, he is just quite obnoxious and boastful about the things he has done. His arrogance has turned practically everyone in the company against him and there have been so many complains to the boss about him already. So I was with a few colleagues when one of them started saying something nasty about Tom and it seemed that everyone joined in. My reaction was not to join in, but for some reason, I defended Tom: I found one thing I liked about him and shared it with the group. I am not sure why I did that - it was not like I liked Tom, oh believe you me, I dislike people who talk endlessly about themselves! But I suppose like in NS, I have no choice about whom I get to work with - my attitude is always to try to make the best of a bad situation. Even if you have to work with someone you dislike, they must have at least one or two redeeming features that you can possibly find?
It was purely on that basis that I defended Tom, but I think I chose my words wrongly and gave the group the impression that I liked Tom - which really isn't the case. It was just my nature to make the best of a bad situation that you can't get out of, quintessentially, that's what I did in NS and have applied that principle in every situation of my life since, such as when I have to deal with someone like Tom. My efforts to 'defend' Tom went down badly with the group: a colleague telling me to 'shut up' - not the most mature or eloquent response, but I suppose that reflected the way my colleagues felt about Tom. Actually working life isn't that different from NS at all, in that I have no choice about whom I work with. I was not the kind of person who would gang up on someone like Tom; I am more of a lone wolf who just wants to be given work and then left alone till it gets done - if Tom wants to isolate people with his obnoxious ways, that's his problem but I am not going to go round stirring up the mud. In hindsight, I should have just kept quiet rather than defended Tom - whatever I do to allow me to work with Tom should be an internal thought process. Sharing that with my colleagues was a bad idea - I guess they're just very different people.
I have a friend in another company who recently quit his job because he was forced to work with a new guy in his company whom he clashed with a lot - a character much like Tom. I was a bit shocked at that because he left a well paid job because of a personality clash that could have been resolved. The fact is you can get the best job in the world and then someone like Tom starts working in your company - then what? Do you quit and find a new job? Or do you find a way to put up with the situation and mitigate the problems Tom would cause? Well, I think there is a balance to be struck - on one hand, you don't want to be a doormat who will suffer in silence, putting up with any crap they throw at you. On the other hand, I am somewhat surprised at the attitude of my colleagues and this friend who recently resigned over dealing with people like Tom - yeah I get it, Tom's a pain, he's hard to work with, I certainly don't like him either. But I'm not asking you to be his best friend, no - we just have to learn to maintain a formal and polite working relationship that allows us to get work done together. That was one of the most important lessons I learnt whilst serving NS and when you compare me to these European people who have never had to serve a form of NS, I suppose our mindsets and attitudes are quite different. I'm not saying that my approach is better, I'm just surprised at the difference as I have a sense of resignation about whether I like Tom or not, I still have to work with him.
Asking for help when I don't need it
You see, in my mind, I have accepted that no matter how much I disliked Tom or how obnoxious he is, I have to work with him. I could have simply tried to be his friend, but you know me, I am not that straight forward. So instead, I asked him for his help and advice on an aspect of my job that I really don't need any help with - but it was just a gesture of respect to say, hey I value your opinion, please would you be kind enough to share it with me? It was a gesture purely to stroke his ego and I did it quite publicly. Naturally, it pleased him as I had asked him for his help publicly, in a meeting and it wouldn't have had the same effect if I had simply spoken to him in private. I don't know if what I did was that obvious, as what I have done is risky: I don't want to risk isolating myself from the rest of my colleagues just in case they decide they want Tom gone for good. If I am not seen to be 'one of them', I wonder if I can stay on in the company after they force Tom out (which is a distinct possibility). But if Tom is here to stay, then I'd rather have him as a friend than an enemy. Can I do that and still maintain my good working relationships with the rest of my team? Or do I simply lie low, stand back and wait for this to play out, to stand back and let the others oust Tom?
A part of me would love to get back to work after the Christmas holidays and realize that Tom is gone for good - nothing would boost morale in the company more than that. Heck, we'll gladly forgo our Christmas bonus just to ensure that we don't have to deal with Tom anymore - I swear nothing has brought the team closer together than our shared contempt for Tom. I swear the team has been sitting around saying horrible things about Tom a lot of late and I've not really joined in - I listen, I need to know what is going on, but I don't say much apart from asking questions like, "so what happened this morning? I was away at a meeting but I heard there was another argument involving Tom..." On the other hand, I know Tom is good at what he does and could potentially deliver a lot of value for the company regardless of his rather toxic personality. Money talks in the banking world, it is not a popularity contest. He was engaged not because he would be well liked, but because he is able to make the company a lot of money. Welcome to the adult world - you know, I'm not in primary school anymore. So on that basis, another part of me just accepts that he's here to stay and I'd better learn to get along with him the way I got along with even the more nastiest, most toxic people I had to deal with in NS. Hey, I did learn something useful in NS after all.
Some people have it easier than others
Being in a customer facing role, I use my languages to my advantage and my Indian clients remember me as the guy from Singapore who can speak some Hindi. It takes a huge effort to learn Hindi - believe you me, it is hard work. Yes anyone can learn a new language as long as they invest the time, energy and effort but we're talking about a lot of effort here. And then there are the Italian clients - same thing, to them, I am the only guy in the company who speaks Italian. Then you have my colleague who only uses English with the clients but they adore her - why? Because she is stunningly beautiful and could have been a supermodel with looks like that. I hate to say this, but in some industries such as banking, engineering and IT - there are far more men than women and you're far more likely to meet a middle aged, bald man like me in a meeting than a woman who belongs on a catwalk with her supermodel good looks. My colleague clearly has an advantage over me when it comes to dealing with clients as the men (and both she and I have been dealing with men like 90% of the time) clearly want to talk to her for no matter reason than she is beautiful. I can imagine that when she was in school, all the boys would be wanting to ask her out on a date and she would clearly have all the advantages of being beautiful - life's just not fair is it? I have to rely on being funny or clever whilst she doesn't even have to try as hard as me.
It's just like the way some people have an unfair advantage over others in life - I have friends who have very rich parents, that's just some kind of lottery you win to be born into a family like that. There's no goddess of justice out there making sure those who are disadvantaged get compensated: we just have to work harder to catch up and that's what I do. Perhaps that explains my attitude towards Tom - I guess on the surface, it may seem like I am more tolerant of people like him or that my experience in NS helps me deal with situations like that. But otherwise, I suppose at some level, I am also thinking strategically. I need to rely on building bonds and alliances at work to navigate the minefield we call office politics - so even if I don't like someone like Tom (let's face it, him and I are never going to become friends outside work), I still need to cultivate a cordial, professional working relationship with him and that's probably why I am subconsciously trying to find redeeming aspects about Tom to justify why working with him isn't so bad after all. Am I guilty of being sincere in trying to build a working relationship with Tom in spite of the fact that I don't like him, or am I simply doing that to give me an advantage when I don't have rich parents or good looks?
So that's it from me on this topic. What do you think? How should I handle the tricky situation with Tom and my colleagues? Have you ever encountered someone like him before? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
 |
| Yes let's tackle the issue of office politics |
Teamwork vs brain power
My colleague had a brilliant idea for a Christmas party: he booked us two Escape Rooms to play and for those of you who are not familiar with Escape Rooms, I wrote a review about one in Singapore a while ago here. I checked, they were both of a similar level of difficulty. There was a big group of us going to the Escape Rooms, the challenge was for us to split up into two teams and see which team could escape first. What he cleverly did was to split us up by age: the older people in management positions were all in one team whilst the younger members of staff were in the other. I suppose given my age, I could have been placed in the other team but I was actually quite relieved to have been placed in the younger team. Not only did I like the idea of being considered 'young' (LOL, at my ripe old age of 41) but I also thought that the younger team would do better. On paper, the older team definitely had the advantage of having some of the most brilliant minds in corporate finance to take on the kinds of logic and reasoning puzzles that you typically have to solve in these Escape Rooms. On paper, the older group were of course vastly more qualified than the younger group. We were at Escape Land on Oxford Street and I was very impressed with the experience - it was a very well put together Escape Room.
Well the younger team did win for a simple reason: teamwork. At first I thought chaos would emerge as there was no real team leader: But ironically, that didn't seem to matter so much once we naturally fell into certain roles that we knew we were good at - there wasn't even a formal process of assigning roles, we simply knew how to work as a team like that. Compared to some of the other Escape Rooms I have played in the past, this room was challenging to say the least, but given that I was working with some exceptionally brilliant people, we managed to escape with 3:21 on the clock. When we emerged, we realized we had won because the older group were still locked in their room. As there wasn't another booking after ours, the older group were given an extra five minutes to try to solve the last step to their escape, but still failed. My colleagues wanted to stand outside their door and try to hear what was going on - it was clear that there was one leader who had emerged (quite predictably) and I could hear one person shouting, trying to tell the others what to do. Well clearly, that didn't work for them - the younger group had worked without a leader, but had a form of synergy and teamwork that allowed us to triumph. I am now wondering if hypothetically, you put all of us in one Escape Room, management and the younger staff together and we worked with one leader giving orders - would we have succeeded? What lessons can we learn from such an experience then?
 |
| Brains without teamwork isn't enough. |
How my NS experience has shaped me
We are a small company - we're growing but we're still quite small and that often means having to outsource some functions to other companies and it often involves us working with different parties like external consultants and experts on various projects. There's this person we had to work with this year, let's call him Tom (clearly not his real name). Nobody liked Tom, everyone had something bad to say about him. He has clashed with practically everybody in the company - oh the countless number of arguments, it has been ugly. You see, respect should be earned in any business context but I think Tom expects people to respect him because of what he is engaged to do. I don't doubt that Tom is very good at what he does, he is just quite obnoxious and boastful about the things he has done. His arrogance has turned practically everyone in the company against him and there have been so many complains to the boss about him already. So I was with a few colleagues when one of them started saying something nasty about Tom and it seemed that everyone joined in. My reaction was not to join in, but for some reason, I defended Tom: I found one thing I liked about him and shared it with the group. I am not sure why I did that - it was not like I liked Tom, oh believe you me, I dislike people who talk endlessly about themselves! But I suppose like in NS, I have no choice about whom I get to work with - my attitude is always to try to make the best of a bad situation. Even if you have to work with someone you dislike, they must have at least one or two redeeming features that you can possibly find?
It was purely on that basis that I defended Tom, but I think I chose my words wrongly and gave the group the impression that I liked Tom - which really isn't the case. It was just my nature to make the best of a bad situation that you can't get out of, quintessentially, that's what I did in NS and have applied that principle in every situation of my life since, such as when I have to deal with someone like Tom. My efforts to 'defend' Tom went down badly with the group: a colleague telling me to 'shut up' - not the most mature or eloquent response, but I suppose that reflected the way my colleagues felt about Tom. Actually working life isn't that different from NS at all, in that I have no choice about whom I work with. I was not the kind of person who would gang up on someone like Tom; I am more of a lone wolf who just wants to be given work and then left alone till it gets done - if Tom wants to isolate people with his obnoxious ways, that's his problem but I am not going to go round stirring up the mud. In hindsight, I should have just kept quiet rather than defended Tom - whatever I do to allow me to work with Tom should be an internal thought process. Sharing that with my colleagues was a bad idea - I guess they're just very different people.
 |
| I don't quite know how to deal with this Tom. |
I have a friend in another company who recently quit his job because he was forced to work with a new guy in his company whom he clashed with a lot - a character much like Tom. I was a bit shocked at that because he left a well paid job because of a personality clash that could have been resolved. The fact is you can get the best job in the world and then someone like Tom starts working in your company - then what? Do you quit and find a new job? Or do you find a way to put up with the situation and mitigate the problems Tom would cause? Well, I think there is a balance to be struck - on one hand, you don't want to be a doormat who will suffer in silence, putting up with any crap they throw at you. On the other hand, I am somewhat surprised at the attitude of my colleagues and this friend who recently resigned over dealing with people like Tom - yeah I get it, Tom's a pain, he's hard to work with, I certainly don't like him either. But I'm not asking you to be his best friend, no - we just have to learn to maintain a formal and polite working relationship that allows us to get work done together. That was one of the most important lessons I learnt whilst serving NS and when you compare me to these European people who have never had to serve a form of NS, I suppose our mindsets and attitudes are quite different. I'm not saying that my approach is better, I'm just surprised at the difference as I have a sense of resignation about whether I like Tom or not, I still have to work with him.
Asking for help when I don't need it
You see, in my mind, I have accepted that no matter how much I disliked Tom or how obnoxious he is, I have to work with him. I could have simply tried to be his friend, but you know me, I am not that straight forward. So instead, I asked him for his help and advice on an aspect of my job that I really don't need any help with - but it was just a gesture of respect to say, hey I value your opinion, please would you be kind enough to share it with me? It was a gesture purely to stroke his ego and I did it quite publicly. Naturally, it pleased him as I had asked him for his help publicly, in a meeting and it wouldn't have had the same effect if I had simply spoken to him in private. I don't know if what I did was that obvious, as what I have done is risky: I don't want to risk isolating myself from the rest of my colleagues just in case they decide they want Tom gone for good. If I am not seen to be 'one of them', I wonder if I can stay on in the company after they force Tom out (which is a distinct possibility). But if Tom is here to stay, then I'd rather have him as a friend than an enemy. Can I do that and still maintain my good working relationships with the rest of my team? Or do I simply lie low, stand back and wait for this to play out, to stand back and let the others oust Tom?
 |
| Should I have asked Tom for help? |
A part of me would love to get back to work after the Christmas holidays and realize that Tom is gone for good - nothing would boost morale in the company more than that. Heck, we'll gladly forgo our Christmas bonus just to ensure that we don't have to deal with Tom anymore - I swear nothing has brought the team closer together than our shared contempt for Tom. I swear the team has been sitting around saying horrible things about Tom a lot of late and I've not really joined in - I listen, I need to know what is going on, but I don't say much apart from asking questions like, "so what happened this morning? I was away at a meeting but I heard there was another argument involving Tom..." On the other hand, I know Tom is good at what he does and could potentially deliver a lot of value for the company regardless of his rather toxic personality. Money talks in the banking world, it is not a popularity contest. He was engaged not because he would be well liked, but because he is able to make the company a lot of money. Welcome to the adult world - you know, I'm not in primary school anymore. So on that basis, another part of me just accepts that he's here to stay and I'd better learn to get along with him the way I got along with even the more nastiest, most toxic people I had to deal with in NS. Hey, I did learn something useful in NS after all.
Some people have it easier than others
Being in a customer facing role, I use my languages to my advantage and my Indian clients remember me as the guy from Singapore who can speak some Hindi. It takes a huge effort to learn Hindi - believe you me, it is hard work. Yes anyone can learn a new language as long as they invest the time, energy and effort but we're talking about a lot of effort here. And then there are the Italian clients - same thing, to them, I am the only guy in the company who speaks Italian. Then you have my colleague who only uses English with the clients but they adore her - why? Because she is stunningly beautiful and could have been a supermodel with looks like that. I hate to say this, but in some industries such as banking, engineering and IT - there are far more men than women and you're far more likely to meet a middle aged, bald man like me in a meeting than a woman who belongs on a catwalk with her supermodel good looks. My colleague clearly has an advantage over me when it comes to dealing with clients as the men (and both she and I have been dealing with men like 90% of the time) clearly want to talk to her for no matter reason than she is beautiful. I can imagine that when she was in school, all the boys would be wanting to ask her out on a date and she would clearly have all the advantages of being beautiful - life's just not fair is it? I have to rely on being funny or clever whilst she doesn't even have to try as hard as me.
 |
| Office politics is never easy to navigate. |
It's just like the way some people have an unfair advantage over others in life - I have friends who have very rich parents, that's just some kind of lottery you win to be born into a family like that. There's no goddess of justice out there making sure those who are disadvantaged get compensated: we just have to work harder to catch up and that's what I do. Perhaps that explains my attitude towards Tom - I guess on the surface, it may seem like I am more tolerant of people like him or that my experience in NS helps me deal with situations like that. But otherwise, I suppose at some level, I am also thinking strategically. I need to rely on building bonds and alliances at work to navigate the minefield we call office politics - so even if I don't like someone like Tom (let's face it, him and I are never going to become friends outside work), I still need to cultivate a cordial, professional working relationship with him and that's probably why I am subconsciously trying to find redeeming aspects about Tom to justify why working with him isn't so bad after all. Am I guilty of being sincere in trying to build a working relationship with Tom in spite of the fact that I don't like him, or am I simply doing that to give me an advantage when I don't have rich parents or good looks?
So that's it from me on this topic. What do you think? How should I handle the tricky situation with Tom and my colleagues? Have you ever encountered someone like him before? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.
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You are now reading the article Office politics, social skills and teamwork With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2017/12/office-politics-social-skills-and.html