Working Life Challenges

Yes, it is true, I have many years of experience in office life to be able to impart some Points of Prue on how to survive it! Thanks for asking, Angela.

When I started out in advertising, I was as crazy, passionate and highly strung as the next guy. I have been told that the most mixed-up kids end up surviving the best in the stressful, back-stabbing, deadline and budget-driven business that is advertising. My opinion ? They are right.

1)      Handling Stress.

My opinion is that you have to learn how to manage your stress as early on as you can. Burn out, breakdown or being fired, could be the result of not learning how to. Many turn to the bottle, others to sex, others to meditation, yet others to total seclusion on weekends. Whatever it is that “floats your boat”, as Ryan Seacrest would say, learn how to use it well.

In my early years, I could not handle it well and was calmly asked by an ex boss to take a week’s leave to “recover my mind” after I pulled an electric typewriter out of the socket and flung it at him. (In case you are wondering, he survived unscathed, as he equally as calmly closed the door on the fast approaching killer-typewriter. The door didn’t survive!)

I also think that a certain amount of stress is necessary to get the job done. 

Learn how to turn it into positive, driving energy so that deadlines and late nights are a pleasure. 

Learn how to use its adrenalin rush to perform killer presentations. (Acting classes at school and a touch of the extrovert, also help.) 

Learn how to spot a stress attack in your colleagues and niftily avoid them when one is looming. (That must be the training gained while avoiding abusive parents, that formed mixed-up kids, helping there!) Learn how to spot your own acute stress attack so that you can control its destructive behaviour before it happens. 

Do not give in to pressure to perform; be confident in your ability. 

After all, you are still employed, so you must be doing something right.

Believe me, over time, you will panic less, see problems as opportunities rather than as problematic obstacles, channel stress into positive energy and generally perform better. 

Remember that you chose your job or career. You choose to stay there. Yet it is still only a job. Your life is so much more than your job. It is not worth the stress and destruction that stress can wreak in the bigger picture. You can leave it behind.

2)      Managing Colleagues.

Actually, this request was for my Point of Prue on managing difficult work colleagues. But I believe that managing colleagues means managing them all so that none are difficult. There will be nasty characters, there will be those that suck you dry then claim your work as theirs and there will be those who seem to do nothing yet get all the glory and promotions. And there is you. 

My opinion is that you should use all of them to your advantage, and yet, that you should mind your own business and do your job as well as you can. But I have to caution that I am lousy at office politics. I refuse to enter into it. I refuse to play the game. And that has got me into situations that have led to my resignation as others around me DO play the game and have survived better. So you may want to skip this point and learn how to manage colleagues from a master of office politics – there are plenty out there!

I believe that you must be a chameleon on order to manage difficult people. 

Become the person they respond to. Learn to work with them. 

Be sure not to irritate them or cross them. But don’t ever be subservient to them as they will use that against you. 

Learn how you can be useful to them. Seek out what it is they live for and use that knowledge to tame them so that they become less difficult. 

And remember that you are the one learning from all of this. 

Of course, there will be some colleagues who are just plain nasty; try to steer clear of them if you can and never give them ammunition to use against you. 

And also know that these people are colleagues, you leave them behind when you go home.

3)      Self Confidence at work.

How do you learn to exude self confidence in the office? 

There are always things that you can do that others cannot. Write them down and reflect on them when you are feeling insecure. 

Write down all the things that you have done well, done on time, done better than expected, done without being asked, done that went beyond the requested, done that was creative or out-of-the-box etc. 

Review that list each Monday morning and be surprised by its length. 

Feed your self confidence barrel with these deeds. 

Realise that you are valuable and are contributing to the team. 

Watch and emulate how confident people carry themselves, tall and upright, a faint smile on their lips, a positive gaze. They sit in the “power seat” in a meeting environment. They command the room. They speak when necessary in a low, level voice. They are neither arrogant nor brash. They fit in to the mood of the moment. 

Practise acting like a confident person, it will rub off very fast and become you. 

Practise the look, the voice, the poise in the mirror at home and at parties. 

Mix with those around you who are confident, with the mindset that you are as confident as they are. Anything is possible, you just have to believe in yourself. 

I believe in the saying, “… whether you believe you can, or believe you cannot, you are right.” 

To be self confident, there is only one belief for you, right? 

In the words of Little Toot, the tug boat “ I can do it. I can do it.”