Resources dealing with Office Politics

A dear friend of mine was having a hard time at work due to the office politics.
Though I'm not the expert on this topic since I haven't started working yet,
I found some articles and hopefully my dear friend can find something useful in these articles.

The Good Guy's and (Gal's) Guide to Office Politics
Surfing Office Politics
Office Politics in the Workplace

I don't know how actuaries deal with the office politics, but I guess office politics is pretty much everywhere and every professional will face it one way or another. So take a look and let me know what you think.

2 comments:

James said...

When people use the words "office politics", they mean two things.

In the first case, they mean "who has the power to get things done, and how does their power affect your power to get things done?" "Office politics" becomes the process of navigating the unofficial power structure.

In the second case, "office politics" means dealing with dysfunctional people. Bullies, wimps, gossipers, emotional leeches and ne'er-do-wells.

You should need to know how to navigate the power structure, but you can't survive unless you can deal with the people. A study was done where scientists were ranked by their mangers as good, average, or poor. The scientists were then asked questions about human relations, and all of the good scientists were comfortable with dealing with irrational people.

Y said...

Interesting case study. The office politics that my friend described to me is the second case-bullies, gossips, cliques...which are more negative and drains away people's energy.