Dirty Tricks at Work: Five Ways to Protect Yourself
When people go to work, they often go to play. Surely work is a serious place for many, and I’m not talking about children’s games, but about the serious work of the band of selfish people who are fine to take advantage of their naive colleagues. People who have a strong sense of integrity often find themselves maneuvered and destined to arrive looking at the podium from a distance as the winners display their trophies.
You will be surprised how simple it is to equip yourself with self defense knowledge and skills. Ever since I wrote “21 Dirty Tricks at Work,” I have loved the way avid readers have studied and been able to learn the techniques for winning with integrity.
The priority is to build your awareness. These are some of the most common dirty tricks played in the office…
CreativeMapie: Exaggerate participation in the ideas and good work of others or blatantly steal them while hiding the valuable contributions of the creators.
Development opportunity: The tactic of motivating someone to take on a task, project, or assignment that they could reasonably turn down by pretending it is a development opportunity.
email to the gods: Using email to embarrass or coerce another. This is usually an email coming from a colleague (including true or false information) making accusations of guilt, which are also copied to bosses, directors, clients, suppliers, etc.
So you need to learn to protect yourself. Here are my top 5 tips…
Tip #1: Be curious and ask questions. Don’t ask them accusingly. Make sure you keep it clear and keep asking until you get to the bottom of what’s really going on.
Tip #2: Control your emotions. Sure you might get upset when you see a dirty “Fall Guy” trick coming your way, but if you lose your temper, you’ll have a harder time coping. So keep a cool head.
Tip #3: Try to find out why they are doing it. There must be a reason: what benefit do they get if you fall for it? If you can figure this out, you may be able to implement the next tip more easily.
Tip No. 4: Be constructive. Once you’ve asked a lot of questions, try to come up with some creative win-win solutions.
Tip #5: Try to maintain your own integrity. Don’t be tempted to play tricks on him; chances are they see it coming and are ready to trip you up.
If you practice these tips, you’ll soon begin to realize how quickly you can make progress without getting into an argument. You’ll find that you don’t have to be a victim of office politics. And the more positive action you take, the less likely your more Machiavellian colleagues will play a game with you. So take heart, there is something you can do to stand up to political games and dirty tricks without joining!