KEY POINTS
> Office politics comes in many forms such as gossips, power struggles, insubordination and arguments which could lead to backstabbing, discrimination, harassment and bulling.
> Office gossips can be avoided by staying away from the conversation, changing the topic, ignoring and putting oneself in the shoes of someone.
> Protect your mental health in office politics by spreading good things, building relationships, plant ideas, and being a survivor instead of a victim
What is office politics
Office politics can have a negative impact on mental health. In an organization that has a workplace culture such as this may seem strong when seen from the outside but is slowly decaying inside. While it can be leveraged to be successful, just to some extent, the damage it brings far more outweighs the little advantage it may have.
Office politics comes in many forms. Office drama is one wherein gossips, power struggles, insubordination and arguments are rampant which seems, in an organization that has this, to be a regular thing in the workplace. These leads to backstabbing, discrimination, and sometimes harassment and bullying.
These negative results are prevalent and often time lead to legal matters, office politics can also affect power dynamics, office relationships, and career advancement. While there may be short term gains from having this type of culture, the detrimental effect on mental health could be severe. Moreover, work-life balance is highly affected by the stress brought by office politics.
So, if it is something organization have, can it be leveraged for the benefit of people in the organization? If not, how do we prevent it from affecting us and protect our mental health? What could organization leaders and members do to overcome it? Whose responsibility is it anyway?
How to deal with office gossip
I read the above excerpt from Simon Sinek’s book entitled Leaders Eat Last. These sentences resonate so much about office politics, particularly office gossip. When people talk about a person behind their backs and tell stories not for them to tell, hidden behind the water cooler conversation are two things that are happening – building a community and destroying relationships. These two stem from trust and dishonesty. People who enjoy a once-in-a-while office gossip tend to gather together and build a community among themselves based on the common activity which is gossiping. However, it also destroys trust from the person who is the topic of conversation as his or her story is for him or her to tell. Not to mention, office gossips are usually negative. Rarely, no one talks about good things when gossiping.
I had my fair share of experiencing this in my career. It usually happens when there is so much stuff going on, stress gets to people, and eventually, people start talking about another person they hate. Without realizing it, they had already formed a negative conclusion about the character of the person in topic and this affected the way they dealt with them.
Office gossip becomes a norm before long. It has become an almost daily activity for people and they spend a good amount of time talking about or making fun of a particular person. Again, by doing so, it changes how you interact with that person. When we know something negative about the person, it seems that we become a little better than him or her, and at the back of our heads, we have a preconceived notion that he or she is not capable as much as we knew the person before the gossip.
To stop or at least minimize office gossip, here are some actions we could take:
Do not join the conversation. When people start talking about someone else, just ignore them. Joining in the conversation is adding fuel to the fire. The more people talk about it, the more it spreads. It is the power of word of mouth.
Shift the topic. There would be times when you will not be able to avoid the conversation especially when you fear the feeling of being left out. That is fine. We can acknowledge that feeling. Listen to what is being discussed and then shift the conversation slowly to another topic to stop the gossip. It could be something related to the person’s work or a project or work that you may need more information or something out of the blue like popular trend on social media or sports game results from the previous night. It could work. It could not. But the slow shift in conversation would make people realize of better topics to talk about.
Ignore. Easier said than done. Easier over chats, but harder in actual conversation as your curious mind will always strive to listen. The need to know will always be there and being in the know will help you be part of that community. But, do you really want to belong with them? Ignoring a chat message is easy. You just don’t reply. In an actual face-to-face conversation, if you are in a group, you just need to stay silent. Let them talk. Do not be part of it. If you are just overhearing discussion from another table or clump of people talking, just put on your earphones, listen to music or watch a video.
Put yourself in the person’s shoes. One thing to remember, once you know the people who talk behind another person, do not tell your story to them. What’s preventing them from gossiping about you? These people are not trustworthy and do not deserve to be confidants. They destroy reputations. They destroy relationships. This is what causes a company to decay inside.
The core of office politics is office gossip. When people spread out stories that may or may not be true, it affects the way people look at a certain person. This widespread of dishonesty can hamper good working relationships and slow down progress.
There are other forms of office politics such as backstabbing, credit stealing, power plays, aggression, bullying and dramas but I think gossiping spells it all. Everything starts with one gossip and all hell breaks loose if people start spreading it.
And these affects our mental health.
How to protect your mental health in office politics
Knowing that office politics will always be there, regardless of the company, it would be best to leverage it to our advantage. The negative effect of office politics on our mental health may lead us to become depressed and unable to function and perform the work we need to do. If we can use it to our advantage, then maybe we can also protect our mental health.
Mental health by definition affects the way we think, we feel, and act. It is our psychological, emotional, and social well-being. By leveraging office politics, we can prevent its negative impact and instead use it to our advantage to win at work.
Here are some actions we could do to use it and have a positive impact:
Spread good things. Instead of talking about the negative things about a person, start talking about his or her positive traits. Talk about what the person did successfully and learn from it. Discussing topics that are positive will not hurt the person but only propel him or her to advance his or her position and work. In effect, to our mental health, this brings a positive euphoria for us. Compared to negative topics that would only cause stress, topics of positive in nature will alleviate any bad feelings we may have thus protecting our mental health.
Building relationship. The people who usually enjoy office gossip are subconsciously wanting to form relationships with others. The best way to do that is to find common ground. Gossiping provides that as we all love good gossip. However, as joining the conversation is a bad thing, not to mention being the one to spread it around. For a brief moment, enjoy the conversation. Do not join in. Just listen. Then start sharing positive things with the genuine intention of helping the person’s name become positive for others, not the other way around. From that crowd of people, eventually, you will see who are worth being with and those you would rather stay away from as there will be some who would prefer to negatively gossip instead of changing their attitude.
Plant ideas. Office politics results from too much office gossip. People talks spread like wildfire and it is nearly impossible to completely extinguish it. You can leverage this by instead of discussing negative things, discuss something else that could help resolve issues. Put out what you think would be best to do to solve an existing problem. Or even posing a question and asking them what they think will change the conversation and make them think of the idea. That may or may not spread however, it would definitely change things.
Be the survivor. Lastly, if you are the victim of office gossip, in my experience, it would be best not to react. Be proud. You have been the talk of the town. If your boss hears about it and has a discussion with you, whatever it is, just talk it out. Of course, the degree of the topic may entail you keeping or not keeping your job however, the truth is the truth. So be it. Ignoring and letting it be will kill the fire. Reacting will only make it grow bigger. In some cases, if it is too big, you just need to find somewhere else to work. No need to hurt yourself by staying where people do not trust or make fun of you.
Office gossip to office politics to mental health
Protecting our mental health against office politics has never been important even without us realizing it. Everything starts with a water-cooler conversation about someone and that spreads like wildfire. That fire eventually causes significant effects on someone’s reputation. Depending on the fire, it could help the person burn to ashes or burn bright. By cultivating a more positive discussion amongst coworkers, office gossip can be harnessed to build relationships and propel someone to stardom. However, if we are the topic, we can ignore it, admit the truth, or just move away and change our environment.
Our mental health is our psychological, emotional, and social well-being. We are ultimately responsible for protecting it. Instead of becoming a victim, we can be a survivor by choosing how we react. Our actions will spell out the difference. Once we figured it out, we can become better than who were yesterday.
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