The Office Jungle

Read something daring. If you read lightweight try heavyweight and vice versa.

Buy something new. Wear a new colour. Change your hairstyle, or the colour of your hair. See every new film the first week it comes out, and go to fringe theatre.

If you like classics buy Oasis and vice versa. Do anything different – but – when you mention these things or walk in wearing new clothes it’s important your colleagues think it was just a ‘so what?’ sort of thing you felt like doing, and not that it’s a life-changing exercise you’re doing in a desperate attempt to be interesting.

2 Ask questions:

For some reason people seem to like this. If not, at least it confuses them momentarily and makes them think. Ask colleagues, ‘Why do you do that?’ ‘Why do you do it like that?’ ‘What makes you think that?’ or ‘Why did you say that?’ These phrases are great because they sound controversial without being so. They make you sound like the deep thinker and philosopher who has options in mind, even if you won’t discuss them. Or they make the person talking over-explain themselves and sound like a prat.

3 Change a detail:

There’s no need to change your overall appearance, just work on a few of the finer details, such as colour, texture, cut or pattern. Parting your hair differently can be just as dramatic as a new cut. If you have long flowing hair wear it up for a while. If you have short back and sides try lengthening the sideburns. Shave off a beard or moustache. If you wear dull-looking suits try red socks or tights. Instead of the clichéd flashy tie try a pocket hankie or cufflinks or a buttonhole instead. If your desk is a barren wasteground tidy it up and buy some flowers.

Change is good for the soul, as well as beneficial to your impact at work. Your brain needs constant stimulation. For your own well-being never get caught in a rut. The worst type of stereotyping is the sort you do to yourself.

4 Targets and Objectives

Planning objectives isn’t an inflexible pastime. You don’t have to carve your goals in great tablets of stone – but you can write them down in pencil and make improvements and alterations as you go along.

One of the great truths of life is that if you don’t know where you’re going, you sure as hell won’t get there.

Blueprints

Make a list of three types of objectives:

• Short-Term Career

• Long-Term Career

• Life

Short-Term Career

This objective is self-explanatory. What direction do you see your job going in? What are your goals within your company? How do you want to be perceived and how ambitious are you?

Long-Term Career

This is harder to visualize. Do you see yourself running the company you work for one day? Or are you happy enough in the position you hold? Do you want to start your own business? Do your long-term plans include a complete change of path? Do you have something more scintillating in mind? Find out what you consider to be dreams and what you plan to turn into reality. Then set time-scales and action plans.

Life

This list should include ideas on marriage, family, housing and well-being. Do you intend staying in this country or moving abroad? Do you want to be rich – if so, how rich? Did you plan on running off to a commune one day and living off the land? Are there any hobbies you always wanted to take up? Do you aim to get fit? Give up smoking? Learn to speak Cantonese?

How to Be Happy

People see happiness as a basic right. Parents are fond of telling their kids: ‘All I want is for you to be happy.’ We tell ourselves: ‘I just want to be happy.’ Yet true happiness is a difficult thing to achieve, and words like ‘just’ and ‘all’ don’t make it any easier.

What makes you happy? The trouble is we don’t know. We think we have a good idea: ‘I would be happy if I could win money … change jobs … sell my house … get married … get divorced … get drunk …’ The list is endless. Yet a change in circumstance doesn’t always guarantee a change in mood. Take the Office Whinger, for instance. Can you think that anything anyone could do would make them happy on a long-term basis? If they won the pools they’d be complaining that one holiday seems very much like another after a while.

Most of us stumble through our working lives without ever understanding our own pecking order of requirements to be happy. Again, we have been too busy listening to other people tell us what we want. Money, status, being your own boss – these will all make some people happy but there’s many others they won’t suit.

The Buzz

You need to understand what gives you the biggest buzz during the working day. Often the results are surprising. We are all individuals when it comes to The Buzz.

Printed below is a list of some of the things that will give job satisfaction. Tick the ten that would give you the biggest buzz and then try and list them in order. Be honest with yourself and visualize each event happening to study your true feelings.

1 Clearing your desk of work.

2 Enjoying the company of colleagues.

3 The social life of work – drinks at the pub, outings, team sports, etc.

4 Making a product.

5 Selling a product.

6 Outdoing your colleagues.

7 Hearing the office gossip.

8 Getting paid.

9 Completing a task as a team.

10 Making a customer happy.

11 Being thanked by a customer in person.

12 Receiving a written note, a tip or a small gift from a customer.

13 Winning praise from your boss.

14 Hearing the company as a whole is doing well.

15 Winning public praise.

16 Winning a prize from the company for your work.

17 Seeing your name in the press or on TV.

18 Owning a company.

19 Gaining respect from others.

20 Gaining friendship from others.

21 Leaving the office at the end of the day.

22 Being promoted to a job with a higher-ranking title but for no extra pay.

23 Keeping your same title and duties but being given a pay rise.

24 Learning new skills.

25 Moaning about the boss.

ACTION PLAN:

1 Take time to learn about your own personal ‘buzz’ factor. What makes you happy in your career?

2 Then begin setting goals to achieve your objectives.Make lists and long-term plans.

5 Over the Barricades

‘You can achieve anything in this life if you only try hard enough.’ Would that this were true. Remember, you’re going to target more realistic solutions. You know you could be a multimillionaire if you really set your mind to it; but you also know you can be a lazy, undisciplined, little toe-rag deep down, too – however positive you manage to appear most of the time.

The Only Way is Up

Once you’ve worked out your objectives, the next step is to take a good look at any barricades that you feel are blocking your path to achieving them.

EXERCISE:

Settle down with a sturdy felt-tip and as much ire and angst as you can muster and fill a sheet of paper with all the things that you believe are barriers between yourself and true happiness, business success and achievement.

Anger and resentment are vital for this exercise, so let rip. If you’re such a decent type and feel the need of a little stimulation to get started, try a few of these options:

Unsupportive/pushy mother/father.

Bullied at school.

Bullied at work.

Unhelpful teachers.

Critical boss.

Unsupportive boss.

Unsupportive staff.

Kids/husband/wife/dog/gerbil in need of maintenance.

Sneering colleagues.

The glass-ceiling syndrome.

Sexism.

Racism.

Ageism.

The wrong government in power.

Constant change at work.

Fear of change.

Accent.

Appearance.

Lack of qualifications.

Too many qualifications.

Lack of confidence.

Managers who can’t manage.

Staff who can’t work.

Poor communications at work.

Fire-fighting.

In-fighting.

Nobody understands me, only the dog … etc., etc.

List what you feel to be your personal barriers. Think randomly and brainstorm as much as possible. Then divide your barriers under three headings:

• Surmountable

• Self-inflicted

• Insurmountable

Then fit your problems under the appropriate headings.

Insurmountable

These will be barriers that you have decided are totally out of your control. By their very nature you can do nothing about them. You therefore have only one course of action left to take: Let them drop.

However annoying or unbearable they are, choosing to beat your head against them every day of your working life is self-inflicted torture.

One thing you always retain power over is your response to their stimulus.

Maybe you work with an impossible colleague. You can’t change them, but you can change your response. Decide not to get angry, upset or frustrated. This is difficult, but it is your prerogative – and it may result in you feeling calmer, and therefore more positive, at work. This gives a more positive outlook on the outcome of such actions.

Self-Inflicted

These will usually be personal problems, like shyness or lack of confidence. Or they might encompass problems like a roaring social life, resulting in regular tiredness or hangovers.

These you do have control over. Make the decision to change.

Surmountable

There are many business barriers that lie within your control. Look at your list and decide which are of a high priority, the issues which you can choose to do something about. Remember to be realistic. Set achievable targets and deadlines. Monitor your own progress and list the steps you need to take.

Dealing With Difficult Barriers

Many of your perceived barriers will include human blockers, such as your boss, colleagues, other staff – and even clients. People are difficult to deal with, and even more difficult to change, because – quite simply – they all think they’re right and believe that their chosen behaviour – however bizarre or repulsive – is justified.

Sometimes spotting the culprits and recognizing their negative behaviour can be the first step to solving the problem.

Here are a few human career-blockers that may benefit from the ministrations of Dyno-Rod:

The Arsonist

Fire-fighters tackle all the urgent, but relatively short-term, chores in the office while losing sight of longer-term goals.

The Arsonist could keep Swan Vesta in business with his or her poor sense of prioritizing, and consequent loud demands for relatively unimportant jobs to be treated as crucial.

The Red-Tape Retentive

These people trust no one and so insist that every job, even the smallest, be stamped, counter-stamped, signed and filed, thereby wasting man-hours and tree forests in their never-ending quest to wrap simple chores with a welter of red tape.

The Cheerful Chatterer

Time them – see how many of your precious hours they waste per week bending your ear and stretching your patience with their cheery banter. We all like a laugh but these people are the Bernard Mannings of the open-plan office. Leave enough space on your desk for them to rest as much as half a buttock and they’ll be with you for so long you’ll lose the will to live.

The Whinger

These are the doom and gloom merchants employed by every responsible firm to spread depression and paranoia among its workforce. They never unfold their arms because their hands have been stapled under their armpits and they can tut quicker than Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Their yawns are reminiscent of a hippopotamus’s death throes.

Life is pure monochrome for these people – no job will enthuse them or pay-rise impress them. Point out that the sun is shining and they’ll tell you there’s rain forecast for the weekend. Celebrate a promotion and they’ll be the first to inform you that you weren’t first choice for the job. Their pessimism is so contagious they will drain you of enthusiasm faster than liposuction drains fat. Their only pleasure in life comes from making others as miserable and sour-faced as themselves.

The Office Nark

These people will grass you up to the boss and claim they were doing you a favour. They have mouths as wide as the Blackwall Tunnel and will repeat even the most innocuous remark out of context, making it sound inflammatory and mutinous.

The Quicksand

Working in a pack, the Quicksand are there to ensure you sink and then stay at their level. Seemingly friendly they can turn feral at the sight of anyone trying to better themselves.

Like schoolkids, their favourite weapons are sarcasm and silence. Work late or arrive early and they’ll send you to Coventry. Dress smarter than usual and they’ll ask if you’re going for an interview. Fail to slag off the boss and they’ll accuse you of having an affair. They are the peck of salt on your shrivelling slug of ambition.

The Beta-Blocker

The Beta-Blocker constitutes a tangible threat to your career because he or she will block it deliberately – and unfortunately they are often the boss.

With a chip on his or her shoulder so great it should be called a plank they will do everything in their power to prevent you getting on or doing well.

This is called paranoia and is caused by their own insecurity. Beta-Blockers only delegate menial tasks or ones they know are impossible to deal with. If they make a cock-up they will blame it on subordinates. Their communication skills are poor and they will hold back information – which makes working for them like doing a jigsaw with half the pieces missing.

SOLUTIONS

Meeting these characters head-butt-on is guaranteed to cause trouble. Hurdles and barriers are better jumped over than rammed and flattened. Leaping is graceful and takes less energy than stomping, which looks ugly. Always remember:

• These people think they are right and are either unaware of their negative behaviour, or believe it is justified.

• You could well be a Blocker yourself. Did any of those descriptions sound familiar or make you blush?

• Aggression breeds aggression. Handle these people clumsily and you win only a Pyrrhic victory. Don’t forget there is an odd quirk in the British psyche that makes us stand up for the underdog; and Blockers are often adept at feigning wounded innocence when they feel they’re under attack.

• Whenever possible, nip bad behaviour in the bud. The sooner you deal with such people the better. Otherwise their behaviour becomes habitual and they will be shocked and offended if you attempt to modify it, however much tact is employed.

• Be assertive. Get them out of your path – but, where possible, without upsetting or belittling them. Tell them what you want, but at the same time empathize with their problems and needs. Treat them with respect – but be firm and honest, too.

Dealing With Your Own Barriers

It’s no good dealing with all those difficult, external barriers to success and happiness without taking a close look at how you deal with things, too.

Do you have a positive attitude towards what you wish to accomplish? Or do you dig your heels in and complain at the slightest obstacle? How much worse can you sometimes make a situation and how much time is wasted in the process? If you’re really honest with yourself, you might realize how frequently you moan to colleagues about your workload, blame others for your own shortcomings and behave unreasonably with those around you.

Moaning is a tragic waste of useful energy and a sad misdirection of positive thought. Discussing problems with a colleague whose judgement you value can be useful – but only if the discussion is solution-oriented. Anything else is just hot air and gas.

Casting the Blame

The trouble is, you may enjoy blaming others because doing so robs you of choice. You are bad at maths because you had a lousy teacher. You can’t dance because your mother refused to pay for ballet classes when you were five. You are no good at presentations because the other kids at school sniggered at the stammer you had when you were seven.

This kind of thinking is lazy. As long as you can find someone else to dump your inadequacies on, why try to improve? By thinking like this you take your own problems and put them out of your hands. What you must do is regain control. Those ratty kids have gone, you can buy your own maths book now – and pay for your own ballet classes, too, if you want.

You decided to lug all that rubbish around with you for years, so you can also decide to shuck it off. These are the Emotional Carrier Bags you’ve allowed yourself to get burdened with and you go on filling them up with useless junk each and every passing day.

There’s simply no need to cart them around on your shoulders. Keeping them with you means over-reacting to otherwise manageable situations. Your boss asks to see you in his or her office and you immediately assume it’s something you did wrong. You make someone else do that presentation because you know you’re no good at that sort of thing. When someone criticizes your work you go into a strop because you were always getting picked on as a kid. You failed three chances of promotion so you don’t even bother trying for the fourth. When a client starts shouting you shout right back because nobody speaks to you like that …

Your emotional carriers are stuffed with all the little prickles, insults, tragedies, let-downs and resentments of your life. We resemble bag ladies, trundling supermarket trolleys laden with barely restrained feelings through our lives. They distort reactions and make you ineffectual when dealing with your colleagues and clients.

An example of the Carrier Bag syndrome at work could be the following scenario:

You arrive in the office late after a bad journey. Your emotional carrier bags are overflowing with suppressed, seething anger about something petty a colleague said two days ago, and the way an assistant screwed up a job. The train was late and the car was out of petrol when you reached the station.

You have an important presentation to make and you required a shared secretary to type up your notes. You: ‘I need these done within the hour, please.’ Sec: ‘Sorry, I’ve got Alan’s reports to work on first.’ You: ‘But this is urgent. Why does Alan’s stuff always have to take priority? How about getting my work done first, just for once? What do I have to do to get things done around here these days?’

Sec: ‘I can have it done for you by four o’clock.’ You: ‘Well, if that’s the soonest you can fit me in. Just remember it’s important – I don’t want you rushing it and then making mistakes.’

See what happens if you behave like this? You can create arguments that in turn create dissension. The need to show suppressed resentment and frustration will probably lead to the job being done badly.

Then there’s the emotional sulk situation: ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes.’ (Massively unconvincing tone.)

‘Well you don’t sound it. Is there something wrong?’

‘No.’ (A touch of anger in the voice.)

‘Are you sure? Was it something I did?’

‘Now why should you think that?’ (Laden with sarcasm.)

All these emotional triggers get used in business – to very little in the way of constructive effect:

Boss: ‘Would you mind working late tomorrow night – it’s very important.’

Colleague: ‘Sure.’ (No eye contact. Dull tone.) Boss: ‘Did you have other plans, or something?’ Colleague: ‘Nooo … that’s OK.’ (Unconvincing tone.) Colleague to others once he’s out of earshot: ‘That bastard’s making me work tomorrow night and he must know it’s my birthday!’

Hoovering Up the Insults

Remember any good compliments lately? No – because you were probably too busy wittering modest denials to even hear them properly. You will hear insults all right, though. Insults you accept as though they were gift-wrapped, studying them straightaway for instant depression, then stuffing them into your emotional carrier bags to brood over for many years to come.

Another similar dilemma you may suffer is hoovering up other people’s negative moods and behaviour. If a colleague arrives in a bad mood you wonder if it’s your fault and become broody. If the boss is rude to you, you might take it out on others. Sit you next to a moaner and you’ll start whingeing in harmony.

Avoiding all this is easy. All you have to learn to do is become a Teflon man or woman. The Teflon man/woman is non-stick. Others throw trashy, unprofessional emotions or insults out – and you just shrug them off. If they want to be rude or badly behaved that’s no one’s concern but their own. It doesn’t have to affect your own emotions, self-esteem or work standards.

This, of course, is fatally difficult to do, but it’s not impossible once you take the Teflon concept on board.

No matter how difficult a situation becomes, always tell yourself constantly, over and over again, that you have a choice. Nobody can force you to be angry or upset – or to see yourself in a bad light.

If this seems difficult to work with, imagine the scenario where the boss has asked to see you in his or her office. You feel worried – it must be something you’ve done wrong. Now, imagine three of you had been summoned in the same way. While you’re busy feeling guilty, take a look at the way the others might perceive the same verbal stimulus.

Your confident colleague could be thinking this was the promotion or salary increase she’s been expecting for months. The third colleague could have failed his driving test the day before and got home with the bad news to find his wife had run off with the examiner. He’ll be thinking he’s on a downward roll and possibly be expecting the sack.

You all had different reactions to the one comment, based on pre-determined emotions and expectations.

Unfortunately any negative expectations and reactions can have an effect on the outcome of a meeting.

People who expect the worst often discover that’s exactly what they get.

You have a choice in nearly every situation. Does that still sound hard to believe? What if you have to do your job well because otherwise you’d get the sack? You still have the choice. Just because one of the options sounds duff doesn’t mean to say it’s not an option. You have considered not doing your job, looked at the alternatives, i.e. sack and resulting penury, and decided to do the job well. That was your choice.