WARMING UP TO ENEMIES AT THE WORKPLACE

“If you’re not making enemies, you are either doing something wrong or you are not doing anything at all ” goes the popular saying. No matter how innovative your ideas are or how hard you work to achieve the goals, there will always be people within and outside the organization who will oppose you.

More often than not, the enmity you will face will be due to your achievements and not for your limitations. If you are a high achiever, chances are that you will be favoured by the management and envied by your peers.

Anyone who has faced a rival at work—a colleague threatened by your skills, a superior unwilling to acknowledge your good ideas, or a subordinate who undermines you—knows such dynamics can prove catastrophic for your career, and for your group or organization.

The idea is not to get psyched out, instead learn a few rules of organizational conflict that will sustain you and help you navigate workplace conflict far more productively.

The mantra is to remain focused on your goals and objectives and not to get too perturbed by others’ actions and attitudes. When colleagues make rude and malicious comments, they are best ignored or responding to every nasty comment could become a full time job.

It’s also important to identify concerns that are worth a conflict. Fighting over things that don’t matter either individually or as an organizational goal will lead you nowhere. It is also significant that you develop an insight into others’ opinions and points of view. Insensitivity can kill relationships and make you vulnerable in the workplace.

Embracing your enemy, is another key point of survival.

Again you are likely to be caught on the wrong foot if you tend to stay away from your enemies. You give him a chance to lobby against you behind your back. Instead if you hold your friends close to your heart learn to hold your enemies at the workplace nearer. You will never know what your enemies are thinking or doing unless you engage with them.

Humour and tact are great ways of diffusing tension.

And sometimes it is important to either ignore or overlook issues for which you have no solutions. Finally enmity at the workplace is inevitable. Warming up to your enemies can cause you less damage than what you imagine.

(ENDS)

Handy Hints

• Enmity is inevitable at the workplace.
• High Achievers have the maximum number of enemies.
• It is important to engage with your enemies.