Comments on: Some thoughts about office politics

By: Berni

Berni — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:41:36 +0000

Not sure why this hasn’t come up yet but this stuff often shows up as a “he said/she said complaint” with third hand info thrown in to muddy the waters. My response was (and is) to this day never to have a conversation like this with an employee. My staff would know my immediate response was “I will not engage in a conversation ABOUT another employee” and “so why don’t we all sit down TOGETHER and get a grip on this thing”. I still don’t know if it is the healthiest way of crimping office politics but everyone knew how the matter would be dealt with – only face to face. I now live in a latin culture where face to face is harder to deal with for the employees. But what else is one to do?

By: kim shepherd

kim shepherd — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 19:01:19 +0000

To help stop any temptation towards political infighting, I instituted a “Boo Boo of the Month” contest where mistakes were rewarded. Literally, the worst mistake doer of the month received a Starbuck’s gift card. On one level, my thinking was that people are more likely to retain a story of disaster over one of achievement. On another level, it made it very difficult to tattle tale on a fellow employees if the issue was seen through my lens of positivity. These monthly contests went on for nearly 10 years with remarkable results.

By: Chris Reyes

Chris Reyes — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 15:49:39 +0000

Here is a link to an article that I had read that made a lot of sense. It follows the path that Dave pointed out. A lot of people leave good institutions because of issues like this. As always Dave, you are a Cracker Jack!

https://www.higheredjobs.com/Articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=1730&utm_source=09_26_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=InsiderUpdate

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 23:45:58 +0000

I had an experience with a previous employer. One member of my team wanted to transfer to a different department. I was fine with it, but wanted to have her transition her important projects over a couple of weeks and make sure nothing cratered. The other manager wanted her to transfer immediately and told me that any disruption was “my problem”.

I escalated to my management who discussed it at a higher level. The next thing I knew, an email was sent by the division head to about a dozen people asking “is this just Peter being Peter, or is this a real problem”. I would point out this division head was pretty new in his position and had never worked with me. And that I had consistently received top performance reviews for many years.

After seeing how that manager behaved, it was obvious that I had no future at that company, and left 6 months later. By the way, the division head ran the business into the ground and was terminated about 18 months later.

I was grateful, because leaving was the best thing I could have done. But having a senior manager play office politics games created a toxic environment that many fled.

By: Clarence Treat

Clarence Treat — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 23:06:36 +0000

Very tough subject to address, especially when a person might have a valid complaint. As a Fire Captain, I had few problems within my crew and the subtle approach worked every time that I can remember. Complaints about the other two shifts were usually addressed Captain to Captain, and, again, in every case the situations wereg resolved without escalation of the problem. I think firefighters, however, are a different breed of employees. C