The Virus of Office Politics

 R is a manager in Operations department and a very hardworking and dedicated employee; she is an introvert and doesn’t talk much unless required, she also does not smoke or drink and fails miserably when tries to network at office cocktail parties ; this attitude of her has earned her the title of 'snob queen' in the organization, and the fact that she is presentable and good looking has added few “adjectives” to the already decorated cap. R is confused and don't know how to change the situation, her trouble increases when K enters the scene. K is smart and outspoken, and spends most of the his time networking with bosses, he has the knack of taking credit for everything that is going good, and always out do R in meetings by speaking first or by interrupting R needlessly.

R is not in favor of confrontation, as she believed that one's work should speak for itself but was beginning to learn a different lesson in her organization. She is not sure about discussing the problem with her managers, as she is unsure of it being of any help.    

Is this your story or story of someone you know?

Organization’s today and particularly HR managers are trying hard to retain talent by offering various incentives and rewards but sometimes all these fancy strategies fail to achieve their goals leaving HR managers confused on what went wrong.

Interpersonal dynamics impacts an organization’s and an employee performance in a much greater way than we usually anticipate. Unfortunately, it's difficult to ascertain the reason behind the downhill as people often don't talk about their inner insecurities; So when a productive employee becomes unproductive or a star performer leaves an organization few HR managers are able to dig deep to find the reason for this turn of events, employees do not open up because of fear of creating a negative impression about themselves or do not want to spoil their relationship with the organization. That is why exit interviews are not a right tool to find what went wrong.

So in R’s situation who is at fault? R, K or the management? Well, no one! One will always find people like K in any organization and at all levels and there is no dearth of people like R too; so how does an HR manager solve this problem when the same is not reported?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind..That's right, in the wind and all managers should be trained to sniff the wind and find out if anything is stinking around them.

Organizational politics is not very hard to sense only if HR managers / supervisors keep their senses active. The first step to control the impact of politics in your organization is to find out the nature and extent to which this virus has spread in your system. Let me try and help, If any of the following is true in your case, then it's time you look at your organization’s people dynamics again ;

1. An employee has started making silly mistakes in his or her work and have stopped taking initiatives or actively participate in new projects, etc.
2. Employees have divided themselves in small groups, and inter group interactions are limited to meetings and formal gatherings only.
3. During meetings, you find the groups/ individuals are negative in their approach, especially about their team member’s deliverables.
4. An employee has started interacting more with someone from another department than with someone from his or her own department.
5. Emails with cc to the entire world have started circulating where employees are finger pointing at each other.
6. You notice that pity issues are usually blown out of proportion rather than getting solved amicably.

 The extent and degree of the virus infiltration are up to you to determine. The same depends from organization to organization, the impact of it on people driven small company will be much more lethal than on a process driven big giant. So the question is How do we control this virus because we all know that we cannot permanently delete it?

Simple! Invest, upload & keep refreshing best in-class virus control mechanism. Well, wish it was so easy, but as they say Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Here are a few anti-virus installation tips for HR managers and most importantly for Supervisors to control interpersonal friction in their team/organization. 

1. Know your people :-

 You know their names, employee codes, department, KRAs, etc. But do you know your team members beyond that? Do you know them as a person? Have you spent time with them to understand their inhibitions? Do you know what is their working style? Do you know if an employee on your team is best at team tasks or is he/she an individual contributor? Do know what makes him/her comfortable and what makes them put their guards on?

If not, then its time you invest in your people and figure out if they should be part of a particular team or not. An MBIT analysis or similar personality tests for your team will give you a fair enough idea of what kind of personality your team members have. An introvert should not be paired with extrovert if their driving forces are different.

1. Trust your people and let them run the show.

 Ambiguity is the mother of all confusion, defining clear boundaries is a must if you are looking at reducing friction between your people. Stop dividing tasks and distribute it like sweets, let go of your inhibition and delegate one person with responsibility and accountability for one project, even if there are more people in the same team. You should certainly encourage employees to help each other but there should ideally be only one director for one movie. Have the courage to trust your people, and they will move the world to prove you right. 

1. Train them on email etiquettes

 It’s surprising how many employees even at the senior level do not know basic email etiquette. Poor CC is the most abused of the lot, tell your employees strictly that you do not appreciate needless emails, ideally in a single location organization email should be limited only to formal communication and for daily transactions, people should be encouraged to use internal chat facility or call up extension numbers. If possible, design an email communication guideline and encourage employees to stick to it.

Invest and train people in professional email writing skills.

1. Be an agony aunt

 Create a comfort zone where in your people can trust you with their insecurities and problems, and this can happen only if you have the maturity of being non-judgemental and strength to keep the conversation inside four walls, lose a secret, and you have lost the person forever. Listen to them with an open mind and an open heart, rather than making suggestions, guide them in finding their own solutions. I strongly feel that all supervisors should be trained in counseling skills.

1. Open forum meetings are meant for discussions and not for performance review.

Do not make staff meetings or open forum meetings a platform where you discuss performance of one particular individual or department, criticism is meant to happen behind closed doors, respect your people and make sure they don’t get humiliated in front of others.

We must understand its people who run the organization and not strategies; people are the most important asset for any organization, losing them because of petty politics played by few smart heads is a loss to the organization.

Organizations need to be extra sensitive and should build the ability to sniff the problem beforehand, investing in training managers at supervisory level on short term courses like employee psychology, counseling skills or similar programs should certainly help and we all know prevention is always better than cure.