Is Workplace Infighting Bringing You Down?

Is your workplace about as peaceful as the Middle East?  Do you find you have to duck down in your cubicle to avoid the flying missiles and shrapnel of rumors and gossip? Infighting can cause a lot of work-related stress.

When it comes to negativity and office politics, you can’t single-handedly eliminate them, but you can limit your involvement.  Here are two suggestions:

 Avoid gossip.  There are two ways people participate in gossip.  One is by talking and the other is by listening.  Even if you never spread rumors, if your face lights up and you eagerly listen to every story, you are participating in gossip.  Once people realize that you don’t participate–by what you say or what you listen to–they will stop coming to you with the gossip.

Be neutral.  Do people try to get you on one side or the other in office politics?  Your wisest move is to be neutral.   You might even say, “Thanks for sharing your opinion with me, but I’m going to choose to be Switzerland on this one.”  Once people realize that you are  neutral, they will probably stop pestering you to take a position.

Work can be stressful enough without participating in the drama that is sometimes part of the culture.  A wise person once said, “We teach people how to treat us.”  Your consistent abstention from gossip, negativity and office politics teaches people where you stand and offers everyone a more constructive alternative than infighting.

© Copyright 2012 DJW Life Coach LLC. All rights reserved.

About djwlifecoach

I am retired from 40+ years of helping individuals and teams build lives and organizations they love. One of the great joys of my retirement from professional practice is having greater bandwidth to donate my professional and creative talents to support and promote animal and social welfare charities. During my 30 years as an organization transformation consultant, I served as a senior partner in four of the world’s largest, most prestigious global professional services firms. In 2005, I took a five-year sabbatical to find healing and peace because non-stop work had taken its toll. My recovery from burnout led to finding my purpose guiding others on their journeys. As a board-certified coach, author, consultant, radio host, Reiki Master and EFT/tapping practitioner, I share hope, possibilities and empowerment with the world. 111419 DJW Sid CH Pet Corner Photo ShootI help clients achieve rapid, extraordinary, sustainable results by connecting who they are with what they do, a connection often lost through stress and the sheer busy-ness of daily life. Courageous self-awareness and unconditional self-love lead to honest choices based on priorities that nurture you and those around you on a journey to wholeness. Decades in coaching, consulting, change management, organization development, human resources and mixed media artistic expression honed my business sense, professionalism, creativity, intuition, leadership and communication skills. The result? Practical tools that help you become more insightful, creative, committed, productive and fulfilled. Even the most dedicated and hard-working individuals can shift from frustration to a sense of futility when their values, passion, work, and lives become disconnected. One of the problems with not taking care of our health is that the effects of ignoring it are often slow to show up. We continue to juggle family responsibilities, work and finances until we lose ourselves, waking up one day 50 pounds heavier in body and soul—no good to ourselves or anyone else. I love working with people who are ready to take life-changing action to make their dreams a reality. At each moment, you have inside you all the wisdom you seek to choose your life and your way of showing up. Limiting thoughts, beliefs and feelings can block you from moving forward. An absence of love and concern for yourself can result in negative head talk that holds you back with discouraging messages about who you are and what you can do. By listening and caring deeply, I guide you in connecting with your own inner wisdom. We identify the way you’d like to live. We determine what’s blocking you and release you from the hold those blocks have over you—unleashing the positive energy that will fuel you forward. Together we develop a plan to move you closer to your heart’s desire. My books, blog, radio show and signature coaching programs help individuals and organizations harness the transformative energy of love to turn unexplored possibilities into fulfilling realities and step into their greatness. What’s love got to do with it? Everything! My book, Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! (Hay House/ Balboa Press 2013) shares my story and the stories of 10 of my clients along with my signature Discovery Framework. For fun, I love reading, sewing, knitting, yin yoga, afternoon tea, opera and movies. I live in Williamsburg, Virginia with my spouse, Wilson Abney, and the cat who runs our life, Maisy Jane.
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