You don't want to be the subject of office gossip and drama,
but you're probably talking about things that are
inserting you into those bad office politics
without even realizing it.
It's causing you to not be taken seriously by your boss
or coworkers and hurting your career. In this video,
I'm going to share what those things are and how you can avoid them.
The first thing you should never tell your coworkers is your career ambitions.
If you want to be promoted, keep it to yourself.
This is a mistake that Kristen made she wanted a promotion and
everyone knew about it, you would think this wouldn't be problematic,
and Kristen assumed her coworkers would want to help her.
Well, that was true for most of her coworkers who were advocates for her
she had a couple of coworkers who now viewed her as competition
going after the promotion they wanted.
This caused all sorts of headaches that Kristin did not want to deal with.
One of these coworkers started to actively sabotage her
undermining her ideas in meetings,
withholding information she needed to do her work and
even bad mouthing her to their boss.
This coworker also started gossiping about her.
Essentially what this coworker did was they leveraged
every available bad office politic and strategy and
it made going to work a nightmare for Kristen.
This is not a situation you want to deal with.
So how can you avoid it?
I will always be an advocate for being
unapologetically ambitious,
but admit that ambition to the right people,
specifically the people that are going to
help you achieve your career goals.
This is exactly what your network of advocates is for.
Instead of telling everybody about your promotion ambitions,
talk about that ambition to the people that are going to
help you achieve that career advancement,
your network of advocates is going to support you
they are going to advocate for you in the rooms where you're not in
they will help you amplify your impact.
Or they may be the people that are actually
creating career opportunities for you or making those promotion decisions.
And if you don't have a network of advocates and
you don't really know where to start prayer during my book
Career Glow Up is great place to start
because I have a whole chapter on network of advocates
helping you identify who should be in it and
cultivating those relationships, it's at careerglowupbook.com.
Ideally, your boss is going to be in your network of advocates
and is actively trying to help you achieve the career success
you're trying to build for yourself.
Which actually brings me to the second thing
you should never tell your coworkers and that is
things that your boss tells you what could go wrong.
Well, we need to look at Vivian story to find out Vivian had established
fantastic career trajectory and a great reputation amongst the leaders at
her company, most specifically, her boss who happened to be one of the
senior leaders and her boss trusted her shared insights even talked about
future directions and things that they were thinking about. Vivian really
wanted to be seen as someone who was in the know, and sometimes she would
share those things that she learned from her boss. This was typically
harmless most of these weren't top secrets. However, one day Vivian made
the mistake of sharing the wrong thing. Vivian shared something that her
boss had told her in confidence. And of course, it got back to her manager
which had catastrophic impact on their relationship and her career on that
company. First of all, her boss shut her out. The damage this caused had
ripple effects as well. Both her role and her influence at the company were
seriously downgraded she was no longer someone in the know, she was someone
who had been marginalized by senior leadership because she couldn't be
trusted. She was eventually pushed out of the company and left a legacy of
being a dire warning of what not to do at work. Which brings us to how can
you avoid those because at the same time, you don't want to be a
gatekeeper. Not everything your boss tells you should go in the vault.
What's important here is discernment, and identifying the information that
should be distributed, shared and talked about from the conversations that
require a bit more discretion. If Vivian had used better judgment in what
she was sharing. Not only would she have maintained the trust with her
manager, her career trajectory likely would have continued to accelerate.
Alternatively, instead of sharing the information, Vivian could have began
creating aligned impact and influence in the organization. And that
actually leads me to a really cringe story, like, honestly, I'll probably
be able to feel you cringing across the computer screen at this one. And
our third thing that we should not talk to our co workers about tearing our
grievances with our co workers. Have you ever worked with someone who
complained all the time? Let me know in the comments what you thought about
them. And as you do that, let me tell you about Ashley. Ashley had a bad
boss. Okay, no, not a bad boss, a nightmare boss, a boss who was so bad
many of her co workers were complaining about them. And she joined in
eventually complaining about the boss became something that she bonded with
her co workers about it was the thing that they talked about until one day
her boss heard about it. So I note here I need you to remember that there
are many ways for people to overhear your conversations at work other than
physically overhearing them, whether it's in recorded meetings, employee
monitoring software, or just having access to your Slack or team's
messages. Anything that you communicate at work or on a work device is
something that you can assume your boss is going to hear about, of course,
Ashley's boss, knowing that she was actively complaining about them didn't
do anything to help their relationship or her toxic work environments. What
could actually have done differently that you can learn from complaining
and airing your grievances is sometimes necessary, but you need to do it in
a controlled way for As to keep your complaints close, you can trust your
work bestie you can trust your friends and family you don't work with don't
trust your random coworker who's hitting you up on slack in those instances
in which you're complaining. Keep in mind what I just mentioned, anything
that you're typing into your work computer or talking about at work can be
things that are physically or digitally overheard. So keep it to personal
devices. bestie. When you're in a situation where you're constantly
complaining, you might realize that it's time to find another job, which
leads us directly to the fourth thing, you should never tell your co
workers that you're looking for another job, this doesn't even have to be
something you're overtly doing. For example, Pauline thought she had a
stealth job search going on Sure, she was taking the occasional zoom
interview, and occasionally cruising job postings on her break. And one day
one of her co workers found out and it wasn't a friendly coworker and her
boss found out she was looking while some bosses may be very supportive.
I've even heard from some of you where you're trying to escape a toxic work
environment, and your manager is encouraging you to do so because they're
trying to do the same thing. This won't always be the situation if you're
looking for another job and your boss finds out and they might think that
you're disloyal, which is really hypocritical when you think about job
stability and company loyalty these days. However, I digress. Worst case
scenario, your boss is going to retaliate. And you'll be able to look for
that new job full time, which is cool if you have the resources to do it
not so cool without however, this can have subtler impacts on your career.
For instance, your boss could divest in your professional growth, they're
not going to give you career advancing opportunities when they think you're
going to jump ship. It can even impact the amount and quality of the work
that you're being given by your manager. So what can you do instead, make
sure that when you're in a job search, unless you're in one of those
situations where your boss is going to be very supportive, make sure that
you're keeping it on the down low. Keeping in mind what I just mentioned,
the fact that your boss might be able to spy on you at work. Keep your job
search to your personal devices. Whenever possible. We'll take phone
interviews and zoom interviews off of company promises and definitely not
on your company computer. And of course, don't tell your co workers you're
looking for another job even if you tell them to keep it a secret expect
it's not going to be kept secret for very long. Which brings me too The
fifth thing you should never tell your co workers and this is one of the
biggest mistakes I see ambitious professionals make do not share overly
personal information about yourself with your co workers. This one can be
really obvious like a co worker who constantly talks about conspiracy
theories. Oh, awkward. Oftentimes though, it's going to be much more subtle
and an easy mistake at work to make. For instance, one of my former
clients, Emily made the mistake of oversharing with coworkers Emily was
friends with all of her coworkers. Well, she thought she was since they
were friends. She talked openly about things that were stressing her on in
her personal life like fights with her boyfriend and her credit card debt.
These topics were not problematic with the coworker she truly be funded,
but it did cause backstabbing and gossip with coworkers who were not her
friends. It even led to one co worker sabotaging her boss using details
about her life she had willingly shared, it was not a good look for her and
it was not a good situation. How can you avoid the mistake that Emily made
at work? First, I really encourage you to rethink relationships at work.
Can co workers become friends that are lifelong? Yes, of course they can.
But we need to remember they're the exception and not the rule. And most of
your co workers are not friends. This can be incredibly nuanced. So I want
you to go and watch this video right now. So we can talk more about
friendships at work.