7 WORK STRUGGLES AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM
Struggles are real. We have to overcome them before they consume us and hinder us from achieving our career goals. Here are 7 common work struggles and some actionable tips to overcome them.
1. LOOKING AT OTHERS' STRENGTHS AND GOOD SIDES.
You remain professional at all times despite your boss not treating you well. This is a struggle of either giving in to your emotions or managing it well and not taking it personally so you can focus at work.
This, at some point, is something you won’t be able to address by yourself. The boss or your officemate is the one who can change their attitudes towards work. It’s a battle of managing your emotions well so you don’t get affected by hearsay and negative opinions about the company/job.
2. BEING HUMBLE YET CONFIDENT OF ABILITIES.
You remain professional at all times despite your boss not treating you well. This is a struggle of either giving in to your emotions or managing it well and not taking it personally so you can focus at work.
This, at some point, is something you won’t be able to address by yourself. The boss or your officemate is the one who can change their attitudes towards work. It’s a battle of managing your emotions well so you don’t get affected by hearsay and negative opinions about the company/job.
3. RUNNING OUT OF MONEY, TWO DAYS AFTER YOUR 1ST CUT OFF.
It’s been two days since you received your 1st cut off salary, but you are now running out of money.
There’s no other way to overcome this struggle but to allocate money for savings first before spending on needs and wants.
If you still lack even you’re only spending enough for your needs, you might as well look for a part-time job or strive more at work so you’ll have a higher chance of getting promoted and having a salary increase.
4. MOTIVATING YOURSELF WHEN YOUR WORKPLACE LEADERS DON'T MOTIVATE YOU.
If your motivation isn’t strong enough, you can either be mediocre and just settle for less or decide to quit your job as early as now.
Given that we have extrinsic motivation that you’d get from your colleagues and bosses, if you are not getting the right motivation from them, it might add up to your discouragement and stress.
Always seek motivation and strength from God, from your family, and from the work itself - if your job is something you really love to do. Don’t quit your job too early or you might regret later on.
It’s very important to seek motivation at work, good enough to push yourself through your limits and overcome work challenges.
5. DOING YOUR BEST BUT LACK RESOURCES IN YOUR OFFICE.
You did your best but it wasn’t enough to produce the required daily output at work-- not because you’re unproductive, but because you lack in resources. There is a need for the company to hire new people to help you out, add facilities and office equipment, or improve your current technology to ensure you’ll be able to complete tasks effectively.
Raising this concern to high-ups should be your first action. This isn’t the most effective at times, but letting your bosses know about issues will alarm them to eventually hire for new people for the team. The company would still decide if these issues will be resolved immediately.
6. BEING POSITIVE IN A NEGATIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT.
If most of your colleagues are talking against the company, their bosses, and other teammates but still stay in the office, this might be your struggle as a professional - being positive despite the negative work environment.
Given that, listen to your colleagues with empathy. Show that you care for them. Remember that hurt people hurt people and this might be the case for them, if they only complain once or twice.
But if these things occur often, be constructive in your correction . Use the two punch approach: positive and negative. Some might find this as a constructive feedback towards their behaviour. If you’re not confrontational in this matter, just don’t let yourself be affected with their negative words.
Thriving in this work environment and staying focused towards your daily goals is very important.
7. BRINGING WORK AT HOME.
It’s a struggle when you still have to work to do even after staying overtime in the office. This doesn’t only lessen your time with your family, but adds some stress too. Study shows that 50% people who bring their work home and that incidence of work-life interference are higher among those who “hold professional jobs with more authority, decision-making latitude, pressure, and longer hours.”
Audit your work week. Track your time by 30 or 60-minute intervals to see if there are constant interruptions at work (surfing the net, attending meetings that provides no value, email interruptions, etc..). Check if you have unproductive activities that you can instead spend solely for work tasks.
See if your colleagues are also bringing work at home and this is a norm to everyone. If it’s not something you can’t take anymore, quitting your job is an option. If not, something is wrong with your job responsibilities or your ability to complete tasks.
Review your job description and check if what listed there are the duties you’re still doing today. Perhaps, you might be doing tasks other colleagues should have taken care of.
5 ACTIONABLE TIPS TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT COLLEAGUES
We are sometimes faced with difficult co-workers. Whatever industry, company, and the job you’re in, the fact is you’ll never avoid working with people who have a different working style, interest, and expectations as you. There’ll always be someone who is different from your personality and what you do.
Reason? We are all unique.
So what do you do when it happens?
Here are five actionable tips that you can apply to deal with your difficult colleagues.
1. MANAGE YOUR EMOTIONS.
It’s easy to be angry and be frustrated when you can’t do your work just because someone doesn’t collaborate with you on a project. Your emotions go up, and you just label that person “difficult” or “lazy.”
Pause for a while. Take a deep breath and a short break.
You’ve been offended twice or thrice. Be patient about it. To overlook an offense is a wisdom and attitude you should take. The offense isn’t inevitable.
If you’ve been working for several months or years in the company, ask yourself, “Is there a pattern that exists every time I deal with co-workers in the office?”. You might find that you couldn’t relate to a majority of people in your office.
Let’s face the truth that sometimes the problem isn’t them. There may be something wrong with you. You’re just overreacting to things.
Get a broad view or perspective at work.
2. EXAMINE YOURSELF.
Examine yourself and know how you can adjust to them, in case you always see a pattern and you’re the only person who can’t deal with work issues. You can ask your mentor or a person outside the company to give you advice and help you.
Another tip is to take a DISC or YOUnique (local version) of the Personality Development test to help you know what personalities you have. This test will also help you understand others by discerning their personalities. Through this, you’ll be able to work on both strengths and avoid clashing on both weaknesses.
3. DON'T BE PASSIVELY AGGRESSIVE.
As Filipinos, we tend to be non-confrontational when it comes to personal conflicts. We wait until things get worse before we even try to solve the issue.
However, by being proactive, we’ll be able to resolve conflicts as early as we can.
Don’t be a passively-aggressive person where you talk about a colleague behind his back. Instead of getting involved in office gossips, try to find ways on how to set personal discussions with that person.
4. SIT DOWN AND TALK.
Pray and wait for the right timing (but don’t wait for too much) where you can ask your colleague for small talk in your office, coffee chat, or dinner discussion. Team building activities facilitated by your HR/OD staff is also a good time to initiate informal conversations with your difficult colleague.
It doesn’t happen just like that, but some co-workers aren’t bad at all. If you can initiate a friendship with them, they’ll be happy to favor you in return.
Instead of the “YOU” conversation, why not make it into an “I” conversation. With respect and sincerity from you first, you’d get their attention and can even make friends with them.
5. SHOW ACTS OF KINDNESS.
Acts of kindness are also important if you’re dealing this issue for the longest time. I had a friend who bought chocolates for his co-worker. After weeks of right engagement, those difficult colleagues he previously had became his real friends.
5 EFFECTIVE WAYS TO DEAL WITH OFFICE POLITICS
Office politics is a strategy of people to try and gain advantage, either for personal interest or a cause they support.
The term often has a negative connotation, which is basically why people seek advantage of work matters at the expenses of others.
Here are five effective ways to deal with office politics.
1. CONCENTRATE ON YOUR WORK. BE PROFESSIONAL.
Office politics is an issue of character.
Until and unless your boss or colleagues in higher positions have decided to change how they lead their people, office politics and favoritism always be there.
If you think it’s too unfair as you are more hardworking than your teammates, set emotions aside. But if this results to some serious personal offense like bullying, then that’s something you should act on already (this is another topic that I’ll be discussing in the next few weeks).
Concentrate on your work.
If you let yourself get distracted with office politics, it will add stress and might negatively affect your performance.
As you perform well, make sure others know about it. Sometimes silence at work is one reason why you aren’t getting the promotion or in this case, the favor of your boss. Because you’re too silent about what you do, for example, you often are timid when asked suggestions or opinions about a professional matter, your boss may be thinking that you aren’t cooperative. Your officemate gets more favor because he contributes something to the team.
Make yourself better than yesterday.
Strong skill set is a good insulation against office politics. Ask yourself, am I making greater work than what I’ve done yesterday?
2. AVOID CONTRIBUTING TO THE PROBLEM
Sometimes there is a tendency to try and solve office politics. In wanting to become a hero and trying to fix it, you may unknowingly contribute to the problem by starting gossip within your team.
Participating in mindless and senseless conversation isn’t the way to go.
Live a career with integrity.
Be very careful with every word you speak to your boss or to your officemate. Professionalism is the name of the game.
3. LEARN WHEN TO BACK OFF AND WHEN TO MOVE FORWARD
Know when, where, and how to back off and move forward in every conversation you have with your boss.
Even if it is a good idea, suggestion, or opinion that needs to be voiced out but will make your boss look bad, keep it to yourself or wait for your turn, either during a 1 on 1 discussion with your manager(s), performance review, feedback loop, and the like.
Right timing is important.
Know your boundaries and what specific areas of work you’re only accountable to give feedback on.
Learn when to back off or move forward.
4. CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES
If you want to advance your career, there are battles you have to choose to win.
Be aware of what’s going on in the office. There may already be serious offense on you that should be raised to the HR department or to upper management. Nonetheless avoid contributing to the problem.
5. USE FAVORITISM TO YOUR OWN ADVANTAGE
Use favoritism to your own advantage.
For example, when asked during a 1 on 1 discussion how you can be helped with your work, you can say that you see that other team members are getting additional responsibilities. With that, you think you are also capable of working on those activities as well. This way, your boss can also see your eagerness to advance in your career and be a better contributor to your team – make those seemingly “unfair advantage” for others be a plus on your part.
FOUR REASONS WHY YOU'RE EASILY DISTRACTED #MillenialProblems
In today’s world, fighting against distractions is never easy. With many technological devices that you have at your hand, you can’t easily say “NO” to using them all the time.
The sad part is..
It keeps you away from getting the right job done. If you’re a student, it hinders from you from preparing for your next exam. If you’re a professional, it kills your productivity at work.
As a millennial, you can have many excuses as you can think, but you can do something about distractions.
Your first action is to identify why you’re easily distracted.
Let’s get started.
1. You set an unproductive morning routine.
It’s ironic.
You wake up early in the morning, and you say to yourself you want to become productive.
But the first thing you try to find is your mobile phone.
You get up just trying to look for it because it’s missing.
Let me tell you this.
Your first tasks early in the morning is critical because it can make or break your day.
The top entrepreneurs and CEOs have their morning routine set to keep them warm and get ready for the entire day.
They set it right early in the morning that’s why they become productive in their entire days.
Truth.
It’s not about the distractions out there; it’s just about your mindset.
One question, what do you do early in the morning?
2. You make excuses on top of your first excuse
Trying to make excuses is only a waste of time. Even lying to someone just to make him believe in what you say won’t even make you productive.
I’m poor. I don’t have enough resources.
I can’t do my presentation tomorrow. I can’t communicate well.
My friend asked me for a date. I can’t say “NO.”
So on and so forth…
It’s not the technology that distracts you all the time. It is your dozens of excuses that keep you away from accomplishing your most important tasks.
The moment you think again of your next excuse, be reminded with how much time you waste thinking about it.
3. You allow many people to access your time
It’s easy to setup meetings and chats nowadays. You can do it online, but nothing can be compared to offline interactions.
Sometimes one meeting with a person can take 3 to even 5 hours of your day, depending on who that person is. The closer you are to him, the more time you have to spend talking.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-social.
The point is you have to limit your accessibility to certain people whom you think you can really get value from.
It's not being selfish or rude; it’s respecting your own time and saying to yourself, “I have more important things to do.”
This makes more sense if you have numerous urgent tasks and it’s either getting you to nowhere or to another level of your career.
4. You do what you think is important first
Procrastination is doing on what-you-think-is-important instead of your TRUE urgent/important things.
If you combine your 10 minutes social media chat with your long lost friend every hour, that’s a total of 120 minutes or 2 HOURS of your day.
The wiser thing to do is to setup a date with her, spend 2 to 3 hours of your time chatting with her offline. That’s better than spending 2 hours every day.
You’re not becoming legalistic here. You’re trying to make use of your time well.
Time is gold.
Make it count.
YOUR TURN
What are the things that keep you distracted or make you unproductive?
Leave a quick comment below.
I’ll be around today to reply to comments and answer questions.
FOUR REASONS WHY I DON'T BELIEVE IN #YOLO (AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOO)
Originally from Drake’s song “The Motto” in his 2-minute mark, YOLO means “You Only Live Once.”
This popular phrase (commonly used with hashtag) is what I often see millennials talk and shout all over the Internet.
People talk about it because it seems to be legit and motivational at the same time.
But for me?
YOLO – I don’t believe in it.
Here are the reasons why:
1. It is an escape route to face reality.
With the overwhelming demands, expectations, rapid changes, and challenges we face every day, it’s easy to think about ways on how to escape them.
Yes, it’s true you can’t solve problems all at once.
But if you always want to avoid facing tomorrow, you won’t progress in life.
You do all the things that seem right for you today – partying, drinking, excessive leisure, so on and so forth. But make sure you face all their equivalent consequences.
2. It blocks out what you should have fully prepared
The “bahala na” mindset that we have as Filipinos is always accompanied with YOLO.
“I only live once. I don’t have to prepare for tomorrow. Let my presentation tomorrow take care of itself”.
Heard this from your friend?
Here’s the thing.
If you don’t prepare today, you don’t just fail tomorrow’s test (whatever form it could be), you also miss out one, two or many opportunities ahead of it.
For example, You have a marketing campaign presentation tomorrow, and your boss requires a comprehensive plan for a product your company is about to launch.
But because you don’t give your best shot in the preparation phase, you get mental block during the middle of your presentation.
As a result, you don’t just fail to provide the right and insightful information that your boss deserves to get, you also miss out opportunities ahead, such as getting another opportunity to present to a more senior level of managers, which might be plus points for your promotion (if you get it right again).
You also miss the opportunity to get more favor from your boss which can help you get a broader learning scope from him as he can transfer you to a new learning project/task that your other teammates won’t get.
These may not be the same opportunities you’ll lose, but there’ll be big opportunities ahead that should have brought you closer to success.
3. It reflects fear instead of courage.
YOLO pictures fear rather than courage.
There is a bigger reason why you want to do extreme things on one night or day. You know it.
But fear keeps you from facing challenges head on.
It’s a sad reality.
But there’s the thing.
If you keep YOLO away from your mindset, you start preparing for the things to be done tomorrow.
Preparation builds that confidence and gives you an edge over others who also want to achieve much.
Instead of relying on your YOLO mindset, build up your faith by doing your best to prepare daily.
4. It promotes selfishness (the idea that it’s only you who’ll be affected).
The extreme of doing negative things isn’t equivalent to greatness.
You can justify the wrong things in this world, but the truth will always remain the same.
We are bombarded with the idea that whatever we do, there is only a single impact on us. It won’t impact others because it's a personal choice anyway.
WRONG.
Whether you’ve done it intentionally or accidentally, there’ll always be people who will be affected by the choices you make every day.
Don’t be selfish. Consider others before you decide.
Decide wisely.
HOW TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT COLLEAGUES AND AVOID THE DRAMA
We are sometimes faced with difficult co-workers. Whatever industry, company, and the job you’re in, the fact is you’ll never avoid working with people who have a different working style, interest, and expectations as you. There’ll always be someone who is different from your personality and what you do.
Reason? We are all unique.
So what do you do when it happens?
1. Examine yourself and manage your emotions.
It’s easy to be angry and be frustrated when you can’t do your work just because someone doesn’t collaborate with you on a project. Your emotions go up, and you just label that person “difficult” or “lazy.”
Pause for a while. Take a deep breath and a short break.
You’ve been offended twice or thrice. Be patient about it. To overlook an offense is a wisdom and attitude you should take. The offense isn’t inevitable.
If you’ve been working for several months or years in the company, ask yourself, “Is there a pattern that exists every time I deal with co-workers in the office?”. You might find that you couldn’t relate to a majority of people in your office.
Let’s face the truth that sometimes the problem isn’t them. There may be something wrong with you. You’re just overreacting to things.
Get a broad view or perspective at work.
Examine yourself and know how you can adjust to them, in case you always see a pattern and you’re the only person who can’t deal with work issues. You can ask your mentor or a person outside the company to give you advice and help you.
Another tip is to take a DISC or YOUnique (local version) of the Personality Development test to help you know what personalities you have. This test will also help you understand others by discerning their personalities. Through this, you’ll be able to work on both strengths and avoid clashing on both weaknesses.
2. Don’t be passively-aggressive.
As Filipinos, we tend to be non-confrontational when it comes to personal conflicts. We wait until things get worse before we even try to solve the issue.
However, by being proactive, we’ll be able to resolve conflicts as early as we can.
Don’t be a passively-aggressive person where you talk about a colleague behind his back. Instead of getting involved in office gossips, try to find ways on how to set personal discussions with that person.
3. Sit down and talk
Pray and wait for the right timing (but don’t wait for too much) where you can ask your colleague for small talk in your office, coffee chat, or dinner discussion. Team building activities facilitated by your HR/OD staff is also a good time to initiate informal conversations with your difficult colleague.
Acts of kindness are also important if you’re dealing this issue for the longest time. I had a friend who bought chocolates for his co-worker. After weeks of right engagement, those difficult colleagues he previously had became his real friends.
It doesn’t happen just like that, but some co-workers aren’t bad at all. If you can initiate a friendship with them, they’ll be happy to favor you in return.
Instead of the “YOU” conversation, why not make it into an “I” conversation. With respect and sincerity from you first, you’d get their attention and can even make friends with them.
YOUR TURN
How do you deal with difficult colleagues in your office?
Leave a quick comment below.
I’ll be around today to reply to comments and answer questions.
5 PRODUCTIVITY TIPS WHILE STUCK IN TRAFFIC
Traffic is horrible in Manila. It’s an uncontrollable situation you can either complain all the time or do something while stuck in traffic.
If you’re that person who wants to make use of his time well, here are some productivity tips you can apply while in traffic.
1. Listen to podcasts while in car or commute.
Traffic is my school time. It’s not sarcastic, but my 30 minutes to 3 hours stuck in traffic allows me to learn 2 to 6 life and professional lessons. It’s equivalent to a half-day to whole-day seminar learning.
You can download “Podcast Addict” an Android app where you can search and subscribe to industry-related podcasts or any that discuss career tips and hacks, such as leadership and project management. You can see podcasts ratings and reviews to determine if they’re fit to your preference and your needs.
2. Schedule your next day or weekly tasks.
Some professionals complain of not doing their work duties throughout the day or week only because they forget about it.
You can avoid procrastination by scheduling all tasks the next day or week. Take your traffic time into planning minutes to plan all tasks. This activity will allow you to compute free hours of your week which you can spend for recreation and other life activities.
3. Call a relative or a friend.
Complaining about work-life balance? Here’s the deal. You can use your traffic time to call a friend or relative and ask how they are doing well. If it’s safe to use a mobile phone while you commute, take minutes to talk to your loved ones.
Those who are driving in cars can also benefit from it. They can connect their phones to their vehicle accessories (Bluetooth connection). Speak to a friend or family member while driving. Be sure always to keep safe while doing it.
4. Reading time
If you commute going to places, you can also use the traffic time to read educational materials online. Before you come out from office work, bookmark the latest article or industry news you want to know. You can spend time reading them while stuck in traffic. In that way, you’re using travel time for productive purposes instead of reading news/articles while in office.
5. Book your next dinner/coupon
Booking is important if you want to save time waiting the long queues in restaurants. It helps you to secure a specific time for a meeting or a date, without hustle.
If you’re stuck in traffic, better to use your travel time to book your next dinner for a date or client meeting. You can also search for coupons in Metrodeal and use them for future references (a money-saving tip if you may).
YOUR TURN
What do you do when stuck in traffic? Do you have any productivity tips you can share?
Leave a quick comment below.
I’ll be around today to reply to comments and answer questions.
DISCUSSING CAREER GOALS WITH YOUR BOSS
Some Asians are not trained to confront their managers and bosses regarding their work performances, others only reach out when problems occurred, particularly if they are involved in the issue.
This is not a blank statement.
The point is to give you an understanding that discussing your career goals with your boss is critical to your career success.
IDG Research did a study that indicates that 57% of how we feel about our job comes from external factors that are outside our control, and 43% comes from intrinsic motivation and attitudes that we can control.
Work engagement involving motivating yourself and discussing your career goals is your personal responsibility. Employers can take part, but you should foster growth in your career.
Here are four tips to help you discuss your career goals with your manager or boss.
1. Share your three to five year career aspirations
Longer than 3 or 5 years won’t make sense, as there will be a lot of changes after a decade or so. Thinking short term isn’t only ideal but will consider you for actions to take within that short period.
Before you initiate a meeting with your boss or wait for your quarterly or semi-annual talk with him, list down your three to five year career aspirations.
During your meeting, ask if those goals you see are realistic. Is it something your company will be able to provide, i.e. a career path that is aligned with your plans.
Knowing this doesn’t just give you assurance of stay, but it fosters career growth above anything else.
He or she may not have an exact career path he can share with you, even a strategic and concrete one. In this case, you can ask your boss based on their understanding of your limitations and strengths. They would suggest a different career path considering that knowledge of opportunities that you don’t have or specific insights into your strengths.
2. Qualifications for future roles
As you move up the corporate ladder, it entails qualifications in order to position yourself into future roles.
Ask your boss on what knowledge, skills, and experiences you need to build as early as now to reach your goals. Discuss the gap between your current performance and the profile that you need to acquire to qualify for the job that you want.
3. Request for unique projects or opportunities
If you’re doing a great job in your current role and wanted to grow more, you can request for unique projects or opportunities from your boss.
You can ask if there are opportunities where you can be his or her assistant as he leads other teams in your department or get some corporate trainings (individual or group) aside from regular events in your company.
It’s quite cheesy or seems bragging about yourself, but some professionals lack this. As Jonathan Yabut, the first Apprentice Asia Winner says, “actions should speak louder with words”. Silence and timidity won’t give you promotion.
Growth is one critical part to engage yourself at work and is necessary to advance your career. Be proactive. It’s your job to ask your boss about your current performance and what career path the company can take you further.
YOUR TURN
How do you discuss career goals with your boss?
Leave a quick comment below.
I’ll be around today to reply to comments and answer questions.
IMPROVING VALUE AND VOLUME IN A FAST-PACED WORK ENVIRONMENT
It’s not easy to work in a fast-paced corporate environment where the person who thrives the most wins. You get things done but without sacrificing the quality of your output.
In customer-based companies, like restaurants where big volumes of orders arrived almost every hour or in a tech startup, where new features should be added to online software to satisfy changing needs of customers, the key is to SCALE quality.
Is that possible?
Here are a few practical tips you can apply that works effective in improving both value and volume of client or customer service:
1. Focus on the end-results, not just on methods
If a certain process isn’t fixed and there is a buffer for strategy and personal/individual workflow, this tip can be applied.
The thing when you start micromanaging your people is that they become just a follower of your instructions. Not focusing on the end-results may end up limiting your subordinates’’ creativity, to the point of not delivering progressive or even just consistent results.
If your subordinates can play with their strengths, you can see some boost in their work performance. Researchers found that there’s a significant potential in developing what is innately right with people compared to just trying to fix what’s wrong with them.
Track the things beyond the surface to present both the value and the volume of impact of your methods – that’ll keep your customers and clients serve well in the long run. Like in business, you can leverage your resources such as outsourcing accounting services so you can focus yourself on your strengths that can propel the business forward.
2. Take time to sharpen the saw
Efficiency is getting things done in the least amount of resources. Resources could be time, money, raw materials, etc..
If you have been accomplishing tasks/projects in a similar category, there are only three things that will happen: either results will be progressive, which means output becomes better over time, stagnant or regressive – the output decreases.
If you see the last two happens (stagnant or regressive) or you want to prevent them to happen, take time to sharpen the saw.
One practical way is to start organizing training programs for hard or technical skills of your subordinates or staff members of your company.
Meanwhile, you can also invest in soft skills as well to boost their work performance.
I’ve been speaking to big local companies running their month over month soft skills – they only conduct 1 hour every month for a motivational/soft skill talk – this is better than doing nothing.
3. Prioritize and be more productive
I’ve seen this lacking in some millennials and fresh graduates: prioritization.
Ten tasks or projects, what comes first, they do first.
If your direct boss doesn’t have a standard list of tasks given to you on a daily basis and you can choose which task to finish first, start prioritizing them at your desk.
It would be easy to finish all of them if you know which ones can give the best results to your team, department or company. If you’re in the mid-level or high-level management positions, it is best to look at every task/projects’ business value. Focus on which projects that can yield better profits for the company..
In terms of productivity, there are two things most people get distracted and easily overwhelmed for the entire day: EMAILS and MEETINGS.
Touch your emails once or twice or during breaks in your entire day. If you’re not a salesman or your job isn’t entirely inclusive of email communication, then only open your email inbox in periods. Sign out if you can and focus on your task.
If you handle a team, only include people that matter in a meeting. It consumes a lot of time if you let other people who aren’t accountable to the subject matter or agenda of your meeting. Remember their time is important.
4. Manage your tasks well
I’ve followed this principle of task management from Getting Things Done book by David Allen:
Three choices: Do, Defer and Delegate
Do it now if it only takes less than two minutes. Example is answering a short enquiry of your boss/co-worker.
Defer it by scheduling a time on a calendar to deal with.
Delegate it to your subordinate/employee if this can better be done by someone else. For example, I outsource accounting and admin tasks to freelancers.
Be more organize with your tasks and you’ll never go wrong even if you are overloaded with work and even if you are dealing tasks in a fast paced work environment.
YOUR TURN
How do you handle tasks in a fast paced environment?
Leave a quick comment below.
I’ll be around today to reply to comments and answer questions.
FAVORITISM AND OFFICE POLITICS AT WORK
How do I overcome office politics as a hard-working team player?
How do I deal with office politics and favoritism at work?
Office politics is a strategy of people to try and gain advantage, either for personal interest or a cause they support.
The term often has a negative connotation, which is basically why people seek advantage of work matters at the expenses of others.
A few cases where you may be experiencing favoritism and office politics:
- Your officemate is a relative of your boss, who is also the owner of the company, and he tolerates every bad move of your officemate.
- Your officemate is more likable than you, hangouts with your boss, and gets a fair advantage over you and your teammates (e.g. even if he is always comes late in coming to the office, your boss doesn’t take any action. Worst, is he even tells HR manager/assistant not to note tardiness in their records).
- Your boss gives unequal approach to results of your work and of your officemate, though output is considered to be almost the same. He highlights what your officemate has done, and puts down your work – this happens 10 times or more.
There are more examples, but that isn’t what important today. What we should be focusing on is how we can deal with it, if office politics or favoritism is already happening. \
Here are three ways to deal with office politics:
1. Concentrate on your work. Be professional.
Office politics is an issue of character.
Until and unless your boss or colleagues in higher positions have decided to change how they lead their people, office politics and favoritism always be there.
If you think it’s too unfair as you are more hardworking than your teammates, set emotions aside. But if this results to some serious personal offense like bullying, then that’s something you should act on already (this is another topic that I’ll be discussing in the next few weeks).
Concentrate on your work.
If you let yourself get distracted with office politics, it will add stress and might negatively affect your performance.
As you perform well, make sure others know about it. Sometimes silence at work is one reason why you aren’t getting the promotion or in this case, the favor of your boss. Because you’re too silent about what you do, for example, you often are timid when asked suggestions or opinions about a professional matter, your boss may be thinking that you aren’t cooperative. Your officemate gets more favor because he contributes something to the team.
It’s basically a change of mindset.
Make yourself better than yesterday.
Strong skill set is a good insulation against office politics. Ask yourself, am I making greater work than what I’ve done yesterday?
Be professional.
Don’t always take any conversation as a personal attack on you. He may just be asking you for a daily report or telling you to do work-related activity, but you don’t follow his instructions because you think, even if you do, you won’t get his favor.
Break that mindset. It won’t take you anywhere.
2. Avoid contributing to the problem.
Choose your battles.
If you want to advance your career, there are battles you have to choose to win.
Be aware of what’s going on in the office. There may already be serious offense on you that should be raised to the HR department or to upper management. Nonetheless avoid contributing to the problem.
Sometimes there is a tendency to try and solve office politics. In wanting to become a hero and trying to fix it, you may unknowingly contribute to the problem by starting gossip within your team.
Participating in mindless and senseless conversation isn’t the way to go.
Live a career with integrity.
Be very careful with every word you speak to your boss or to your officemate. Professionalism is the name of the game..
3. Learn when to back off and when to move forward.
Know when, where, and how to back off and move forward in every conversation you have with your boss.
Even if it is a good idea, suggestion, or opinion that needs to be voiced out but will make your boss look bad, keep it to yourself or wait for your turn, either during a 1 on 1 discussion with your manager(s), performance review, feedback loop, and the like.
Right timing is important.
Know your boundaries and what specific areas of work you’re only accountable to give feedback on.
Learn when to back off or move forward.
Lastly, use that favoritism to your own advantage.
For example, when asked during a 1 on 1 discussion how you can be helped with your work, you can say that you see that other team members are getting additional responsibilities. With that, you think you are also capable of working on those activities as well. This way, your boss can also see your eagerness to advance in your career and be a better contributor to your team – make those seemingly “unfair advantage” for others be a plus on your part.
YOUR TURN
How do you handle office politics and favoritism in your office?
Leave a quick comment below.
I’ll be around today to reply to comments and answer questions.