Читать книгу The Office Jungle - Judi James, Judi James - Страница 4

Survival in the workplace requires an altogether disparate array of talents from those required to be merely competent at your job. To subsist, and even flourish, in the business environment you must be Confident, possess Interpersonal, Communication and Presentation skills and be proficient in Self-marketing and Assertion, as well as having a hefty dollop of Grade ‘A’ Animal Cunning in your genetic make-up.

It’s these Seven Great Secret Skills – the lifeblood of resourceful corporate existence – that this book aims to teach you.

Trapped in the Shagpile

Of course you are an idealist at heart. You want the best for yourself and you want the most out of your career. Eyes afire with ambitions and objectives, you have your sights set firmly on the window of opportunities – while your feet lie trapped in the grubby, nylon shagpile of political intrigue and emotional in-fighting that still carpets most modern workplaces.

Marketing Strategies

Your talent and career potential are not worth the paper they’re written on if no one at work is aware of them. To sell your capabilities you must first sell yourself, no matter what your qualifications and existing job-level. To market yourself effectively, however, you may decide a little Product-Tinkering is warranted first.

Being Realistic

You’re going to study your aims and objectives. You’re going to be positive about achievements and action plans, but you’re not going down the happy-clappy path to self-enlightenment. You’re not going to finish this book feeling that you’ve tapped in to unlimited inner super-powers that you were previously unaware of.

What you are going to be, then, is realistic: realistic about your objectives and realistic about the amount of time and work you intend to put in to achieve them. You know you could be Master of the Universe if you could only acquire the necessary level of focus. But maybe you want a life as well as a job. This book is not about creating resolutions that deep down you know you’ll never have the energy or application to accomplish.

Role Ambiguity

As an increasing number of companies pare down their staff to the point of corporate anorexia and beyond, in an attempt to stay solvent, so the defining lines of role and task fade into fuzzy ambiguity.

There is a similar cosy comfort to be found in role-clarity as there is in easing on the same old pair of slippers each night. You know what to expect of them and they – pretty much – know what to expect of you.

Some firms trade on a hierarchical pecking-order, using terms like ‘Fee-earners’, ‘Non-fee-earners’ or ‘Support Staff’ to keep everyone tucked in their place. Current trends, though, are moving towards redefinition – which aims at role flexibility and open-mindedness.

This ambiguity can lead to an increased workload – but, remember, it also means a sudden renegotiation of exactly what’s up for grabs, and for whom. It often signifies a shattering of traditional barriers, leaving the door open for you to reach your full potential in your career.

Curry Sauce

Then there are the people you have to work with. Office work without people is like chicken without the tikka sauce. Your colleagues add spice and flavour to the day’s tasks – but, unfortunately, they can also give you indigestion.

Playground Politics

It’s a fact of corporate life that most of us are still the same squabbling, jealous, terrified, demanding, territorial little brats we were at school. It’s just that some of us have learnt to mask or curb our rawer emotions in an attempt to appear user-friendly and businesslike. That doesn’t mean to say we still don’t feel the same when something goes wrong, or even react the same when we feel we’re being cornered.

At work we become driven by a heady mix of hierarchical needs that include money, status, power and territory. If you doubt the territorial theory try asking a colleague to move their desk a mere inch to accommodate some equipment of your own – and then sit back to watch the fur fly.

Jekyll and Hyde

Everybody changes when they set foot inside their business premises – and not always for the better, either. But then this is part of the fun of your job.

Round up any random assortment of suits – throw in a few misfits, oddballs, psycho- and sociopaths – call them a team and given them a task to do that they don’t really understand, explained to them by people who don’t really know what they’re talking about, push them into an overcrowded environment to breathe recycled, regurgitated, thematically modulated air, stir in a little paranoia courtesy of rumoured redundancies and take-over bids and – bingo! You’re looking at all the wonderful, breathtaking drama, intrigue and crises that constitute modern corporate life.