Posts filed under ‘Psychology’
Workplace Politics and its affect of Organizational Culture !!!
Introduction
Politics will always be a part of organizations so long as people are involved. Organizations that are overrun with politics, however, will sooner or later take their place among the also-rans. Political decisions encourage hypocrisy, secrecy, deal making, rumors, power brokers, self-interests, image building, self-promotion, and cliques — not a receipt for effective teamwork.
Understanding Office Politics
Workplace politics is not new, particularly in countries like India and tragedy is that most of the time “HR Department” is a center of such activities. Anyone who has ever had any job, anywhere, knows that the dynamics among those who are part of the work environment play an important part in how a business is run. Apparently office politics is an increasing problem according to a study by Accountemps. “Eighteen percent of an administrator’s time — more than nine weeks out of every year — is spent resolving conflicts among employees” (“Surviving Office Politics.” Talent Scout. April 16, 1998).
Besides causing problems for the individuals who work together, the end result can be far more devastating. Employees and managers who must concentrate on the political aspects of work may have less time to pay attention their jobs. This translates into financial loss, which may in turn translate into job loss.
Office politics is something most people recognize when they see it in action, but find difficult to define. “Office Politics: Do You Play or Pass” defines it as “…the use and misuse of power in the workplace” (Alesko, Michael. “Office Politics: Do You Play or Pass,” Today’s Careers).
Avoiding Office Politics
Yesterday, as I was interacting with one of the senior guy in one of the well known company in Bangalore, as per his suggestions, if you cannot avoid work-place politics, we a part of it. Well, that was really shocking. My point is very clear:
If you don’t know the problem; you are INNOCENT. If you know the problem, but don’t know the solution; you are IGNORANT
If you know the problem, you know the solution, but you don’t want to use or implement; you are a CULPRIT.
Like every problem, there is a solution to workplace politics as well, provided you want to be fair in your dealings. To reduce the impact of politics in your organization, consider the following:
Stress Performance. Rewards must be earned –not granted in return for favors. Base promotions, assignments and pay increases on performance. This implies that you must develop a reliable basis for measuring performance.
Accept recommendations based upon their merits – not on whether you personally like persons making the recommendations.
Reject recommendations because they are unsound — not because persons making the recommendations have a history of fighting your proposals.
Communicate everything. Secrets keep organizations sick. Open communication about promotions, new plans, changes, and bad news — anything that affects the workplace — makes it hard for rumor and innuendo to thrive.
Managers who fully explain their decisions help immunize their culture against deal making and favoritism.
“It is sometimes tempting,” said a manager, “to make a deal with the devil. To tell you the truth, I’ve thought about buying off the leader of the opposition by offering her a good promotion.”
Of course the long-run result of a deal with the devil is the loss of your soul.
Another leader reported, “I knew he was not the best qualified, but I can depend on him to support me and to do what I ask him to do.”
Such political decisions by the leaders crush teamwork and commitment to the overall good.
A short list for reducing politics is:
- Measure performance.
- Pay off on performance.
- Publicize performance data.
- Reveal the reasons for decisions.
- Openly consider all good ideas.
- Shun deal making.
- Do not enter into secret deals.
- Avoid all political behavior.
Conclusion
It is easy to blame the system. It is easy to blame others for your faults. Lets not do that and create a competitive and challenging workplace environment.
Generally people who don’t have any work to do, they get indulged in “Workplace politics”. And it is said and painful to say that most of the time HR Professionals and trainers are part and parcels of such politics. As such it self, HR Professionals in
India are not as productive as their counterparts in US or UK or other European Countries, so lets be away from this game of “Workplace Politics”
Sanjeev Sharma
(Pune-India)
Workplace Politics Is Not a Game
by Rick Brenner
We often think about “playing the game” — either with relish or repugnance. Whatever your level of skill or interest, you’ll do better if you see workplace politics as it is. It is not a game.
e all know that workplace politics can affect our level of success and even happiness. Whatever your skill level, you’ll do better if you recognize that workplace politics isn’t a game in the usual sense. Understanding how it differs from sports or parlor games can enhance your chances of success.
Politics and games are similar in one important way — winning a game requires skills specific to that game. To be successful politically, we must learn to see things as they are. And we can begin by realizing that workplace politics is not a game.
How to Be a Mind Reader: The Art of Deciphering Body Language Learning how to accurately interpret facial expressions isn’t easy, but it can make you a more effective leader.
April 10, 2007 — CIO — Eric Goldfarb knows that tuning into body language and facial expressions can indicate the thoughts and feelings that remain unspoken. He also knows how difficult those nonverbal cues can be to interpret. During a budget meeting with a direct report while working for Global Knowledge, Goldfarb noticed that his vice president kept toying with her necklace. He thought this mannerism was an indication of her discomfort with the financial target he was proposing. He also noticed her eyes and thought they expressed worry over the budget target. He repeatedly asked her during the meeting if she thought she could meet the budget, and even though she consistently answered yes, Goldfarb didn’t believe her. So he scheduled a follow-up meeting with her to dig deeper. She ended up meeting the target without a problem, and Goldfarb realized that he wasted his and her precious time by scheduling the follow-up meeting and by dragging out the first one with repetitive questions. What could Goldfarb have done differently to more accurately size up his vice president?
Goldfarb, now the CIO of auditing firm PRG-Schultz International, was astute to tune into her body language and facial expressions. However, because body language can be misleading and because facial expressions can be hard to read if you’re not practiced at it, Goldfarb needed to more pointedly probe his direct report. Instead of continually asking her, “Are you comfortable?” he might have said, “It’s really important for me to have your buy-in on this target. I don’t mean to pry but I just want to know if the discomfort you appear to be showing is a result of this budget target or something else. If it’s the target, we can work something out.” Had Goldfarb taken this tack, he wouldn’t have had to worry that his incessant questioning sent a message to this individual—one of his key lieutenants—that he didn’t trust her, or that he temporarily lost some credibility in her eyes.
Accurately interpreting the meanings of nonverbal communications, especially facial expressions, can make CIOs more effective leaders and managers, says Paul Ekman, noted psychologist and author of Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life. Reading facial expressions is a particularly useful skill for business executives because, so often in business settings, people don’t say what they really think. If CIOs could recognize how different emotions manifest themselves on the face, they’d be able to discern much more quickly, for example, when an individual is starting to get angry. They’d also be able to identify when people are trying to conceal their emotions—such as fear, contempt, disgust or surprise. This knowledge and ability can make CIOs more aware of unspoken political tensions in board or executive committee meetings. It also better equips them to handle sensitive staffing situations such as performance reviews. Ekman points to research indicating that managers who seem responsive to the unspoken emotions of their staffs are more successful in the workplace than managers who don’t.
“So much of our job [as CIOs] is spent selling things—ideas, budgets, influence. Becoming sensitive to the meanings of facial expressions, while tricky, is a way to find out very quickly who’s allied with you and who might be angry with something you said,” says Goldfarb.
To find out how good you are at interpreting facial expressions, try our quizzes, “How Well Can You Read a Face?”. (The quiz online is tougher and more scientific, partly because it gives the reader a very short time to read an expression, just as in real life.) If you want to know whether or not the smile the CEO is giving you is sincere or whether the CFO is contemptuous of you when you make a proposal, keep reading.
The truth in facial expressions
While facial expressions can be hard to decipher because they’re fleeting (lasting anywhere from less than one-half of a second to three seconds) and because people often try to conceal them, they are in fact the clearest indicator of what someone is feeling, says Ekman.
“The face is the only system that will tell us the specific emotion that’s occurring,” he says. That’s because each emotion has unique, identifiable signals in the face. Emotions manifest themselves in facial expressions because, says Ekman, it became useful over the course of human evolution to let others know when we sense danger. Facial expressions have since become automatic. Because each emotion has unique signals in the face, facial expressions are more reliable indicators of a person’s emotional state than body language.
Ekman says you can learn the fundamentals of reading facial expressions in about an hour using an interactive CD-ROM he has put together that’s available on his website, www.paulekman.com. You can also learn to read facial expressions in others by getting to know how emotions appear on your own face. Ekman advises individuals to look in a mirror and remember a personal experience that made them angry, sad, fearful or disgusted so that they can see how their expression changes as the emotion washes over them. This exercise will help you recognize muscle movements that are the clearest indicators of a particular emotion.
Studying the photos of different facial expressions in Emotions Revealed will further help you learn to distinguish the emotions. Captions under each photo describe the muscle movements in the face that distinguish a sincere smile from an insincere smile, and that signal sadness, anger, surprise, fear, contempt or disgust. By studying these photos and captions, you’ll learn which facial movements are the clearest indicators of a particular emotion. You’ll also learn that if the boss doesn’t contract the muscles around his eyes when he smiles at you, he’s just being polite.
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Use your knowledge
Once you’ve learned to automatically and accurately recognize the meanings of different facial expressions, you can decide whether and how to act on the information you obtain from reading faces.
For example, if you pick up on signs of anger (thinned lips, lowered eyebrows, and raised upper eyelids) when telling a staff member that she did not get a promotion, and if you care about the staff member and want to see her advance, Ekman suggests that you might say to her, “I know that was bad news and I expect it was disappointing. I had the impression you were upset and wondered if it would help to talk about it,” or simply, “I would be glad to talk to you now or at a later time about how you feel about it.” Ekman cautions against asking a person in this situation if she is angry because it opens the CIO up to an attack.
If the staff member shows fear (raised upper eyelids, tensed lower eyelids, with eyebrows raised and drawn together), Ekman says her expression may suggest that she is concerned about her future. Ekman advises supervisors to reassure the person about her standing in the company if it’s not at risk, or to discuss the areas in which the individual needs to improve.
Ekman says that, while studying facial expressions, it’s important to keep in mind that they do not reveal what is generating the emotion, only that the emotion is occurring. Yet, he continues, “If we are sensitive to the expressions of another person, then we know what impact we’re having on them and what emotion they might be trying to conceal.” In other words, we’re a lot better off when we pay attention to and know how to assess these cues than when we’re oblivious to them.
Other stories by Meridith Levinson © 2008 CXO Media Inc
Mind Reading Whether we know it or not, we’re all street-corner psychics. Without the ability to divine others’ thoughts and feelings, we couldn’t handle the simplest social situations—or achieve true intimacy with others.
Quickly and unknowingly, he scours his mental files—on his wife’s relationship history, on her reaction to the fight they had that morning, on the way she typically reacts to similar movies. He notes the particular quiver to her voice, observes the way she’s curled up on the couch, watches the expressions flickering across her face. He takes in information from all of these channels, filters it through his own wishes and biases… until finally it hits him: She knows about his mistress!
Every day, whether we’re pushing for a raise, wrestling with the kids over homework, or judging whether a friend really likes our latest redecorating spree, we’re reading each other’s minds. Drawing on our observations, our databank of memories, our powers of reason, and our wellsprings of emotion, we constantly make educated guesses about what another person is thinking and feeling. Throughout the most heated argument or the most lighthearted chat, we’re intently collecting clues to what’s on the other person’s mind at the moment. “It’s a perceptual ability I call mindsight,” says Daniel Siegel, UCLA psychiatrist and author of The Mindful Brain. “It allows your brain to create a map of another person’s internal state.”
Mind reading of this sort—not to be confused with the infallible superhero kind of telepathy—is a critical human skill. It’s the way we make sense of other people’s behavior and decide on our own next moves. Mind reading enables us to negotiate, compete, cooperate, and achieve emotional closeness with others. It lets us figure out when we’re being manipulated or seduced. It’s how we know when someone finds our jokes hilarious or is humoring us out of politeness. Mind-reading ability is perhaps the most urgent element of social intelligence.
Do it poorly and the consequences are serious: It can lead to conflict born of misunderstanding. It can make us feel lonely within a relationship. It can even incite violence: Abusive husbands typically—and inaccurately—attribute critical thoughts to their wives; that’s why they lash out. Difficulty divining others’ thoughts and feelings—”mindblindness”— characterizes autism and is what makes the condition so socially debilitating.
Decades of research on mind reading (or, as psychologists call it, empathic accuracy) now reveal how it works, who’s especially good at it, and how we can improve our ability to divine others’ thoughts—even when our conversation partners may not know their own minds. The thoughts and feelings of others, including those closest to us, are far from transparent; that makes mind reading the only way to know someone beyond the mere surface. It’s the only way to achieve true intimacy. And the only way to love someone for who he or she really is.
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