How to deal with boss's favourites

New Delhi: Ever heard of your boss having a fling with a colleague and don’t know whether to believe it or wave it off as a rumour?

Have you ever been accused of spreading a rumour?

Or maybe you have felt that you work all the time but it never gets noticed, whereas those who spend half the time gossiping walk away with all the glory?

In Corporate, Bipasha is made a victim of a battle between two corporate giants.

Madhur Bhandarkar’s Corporate threw light on feuds between companies, but there are battles between employees to be the boss’s favourite and to clinch an assignment or promotion.

Office politics isn’t just a petty nuisance. It causes stress, may affect an organisation’s productivity and harm employees emotionally.

Starting Tuesday, IBNLive brings you five problems related to office politics and expert advice on how to tackle them.

Our first office problem is favouritism.

Favouritism: The boss’s gang

The boss has his favourites whose best qualification often is that they are excellent at flattering him or her.

When Shanti Mehra, 22, joined a bank after completing her MBA, her boss had her own set of five favourites. The group held regular gossip sessions, meetings and dinner get-togethers.

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"Greed is Good," domineering boss Michael Douglas tells his employees in Wall Street.

Shanti made a few attempts to join them without being invited but after being made to feel unwelcome, she let things be.

Whatever work she did was evaluated by the five favourites who gave their biased feedbacks to the boss. After six months, Shanti’s boss accused her of not taking initiatives, being slow and not contributing to work.

Shanti quit and was surprised to find several lucrative offers from banks and financial institutions that were impressed by her projects.

“I never realised I was better than those five. My confidence had gone for a toss and I still don’t understand why I put up with that. Maybe because that was my first job and I didn’t know how such things work in offices,” says Shanti.

Expertspeak

Aruna Broota, psychologist: Shanti’s first boss was probably full of complexes and inferiorities. As she saw Shanti's work, she must have felt threatened and excluded her socially from her group.

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In the TV series Ally McBeal, Calista Flockhart has to endure quirky colleagues.

All of us want to be included and appreciated. Shanti could have gradually tried to come close to one of her colleagues instead of directly trying the boss.

Colleagues are not your family-learn this. They are not always going to help unless you are of some use to them.

This is the exchange theory.

This give and take of mutual benefits is opportunity-based and not loyalty-based.

Shanti fortunately went to a professional environment where work is valued over personal likes and dislikes. Still, I would caution Shanti not to go overboard with her expectations from the new environment.

Sanjay Salooja, corporate philosopher and growth strategist:

What Shanti faced is reality for most. There are three situations:

• Performance is low but relationship management is high-you get what you want, including promotion.
• Performance is high but relationship management is poor-you do not get what you want, including promotion.
• Performance is great and so is the relationship with the boss-all promotions and opportunities will be at your feet.

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In Bruce Almighty, Jim Carrey becomes God to score over his co-workers.

What working people need to understand is that their PR capability is as important as their competency. Now, if one is not in the pet group, how do you deal with this?

Strategy 1: Ask yourself what are the skills that I need to acquire which will help me win the respect and admiration of the supervisor. Work hard to acquire them and also make them visible.

Strategy 2: Make a personal brand-building programme - ensure it does not sound too loud but gives the message you want to give to the supervisor

Strategy 3: Build relationships. There are essentially two kinds of people you will encounter in life: Open and self-contained.

‘Open people’ have the following traits:

• They show and share feelings freely. They make decisions based on feelings. If you look at them, they appear relaxed and warm. If you shake hands, they do in a friendly manner.
• While conversing with them they give you a great deal of nonverbal feedback. They are highly enthusiastic; respond to ideas and concepts.

‘Self-contained people’ have the following traits:

• They show and sharing feelings in a guarded fashion. They will make decisions based on evidence. In conversations they will always focus on issues and tasks. In general, they prefer to work independently. They are hard to get to know.
• They will essentially respond to realities, experiences, and facts. Overall they do not show much enthusiasm and are highly disciplined about how time is used by others.

It has been seen that we all will fall into either of the two styles. Some of us may have both of them but will still belong pre-dominantly to one style.

People will always let you know their style through three channels of communication: Verbal (words), Vocal (tone, inflection) and Visual (body language).

Observe people to know them. You can do this in any relationship and learn the art of building rapport and reducing stress and conflict from any relationship.