Overcoming Challenges at Work

Your success in getting along with others in your workplace has a major influence on your career success. You can have excellent job skills and good productivity, but if you don’t fit in with the people you work with and your colleagues find you difficult, you’ll have a much tougher time winning promotions and advancing your career. On the flip side, you may have to work with someone difficult or manage conflict among colleagues.

Dealing with difficult people
Sometimes, people who work together don’t get along. Some people are difficult because of their personalities; others are difficult because of their positions in the company. You may never know why certain people are difficult, but the reason could be a lack of self-esteem or confidence.

For better or worse, what goes on at work comprises the most significant portion of your social life. You most likely spend more time with coworkers than you do with friends outside work, and in many instances, you spend more time at your job than you do with your family. Mastering the techniques of understanding various personality traits and group dynamics will make you work life a lot less stressful.

Coping with conflict
You can manage office conflict effectively in lots of ways. Practice active listening, ask clarifying questions, be willing to compromise, look at the bigger picture, watch your language, and put yourself in the other person’s shoes. When the temperature goes up, actively look for ways to cool it down. Vent if you must (just not at work).

Managing ethical dilemmas
Countless unfamiliar situations can arise in the workplace – situations in which you simply don’t know how to behave. Knowing how to handle every situation that comes up is impossible, but there are ways to handle the ups and downs of life on the job. In a future blog I will discuss how your ethical manners can be your trademark.

Handling sexuality
Know your company’s policies before you get into any situation involving more than day-to-day contact with another employee. Your company may have rigid rules about fraternizing and may have special provisions designed to head off suspicions of harassment. The etiquette of office romances involves a combination of good judgment and discretion, but company rules are absolute. Yield to temptation of the wrong sort, and you may find yourself out of a job or transferred to a remote location that’s snowbound eight months out of the year.

Assuming that both you and your prospective partner are unencumbered and officially eligible, and that your company has no policy against it, there’s nothing shameful about a blossoming romance. But no etiquette exists for illicit romances – just sad consequences.

Excerpt taken from Business Etiquette for Dummies – Displaying Good Manners at Work