Navigating Office Politics: Turning Toxic Situations to Your Advantage

Office politics can be a minefield, especially when you work in a toxic environment, but what if I told you that there's a way to turn all of these challenges into opportunities for you and your career.

In this episode, I'm going to show you how to navigate office politics and how to leverage them to your advantage, even when you work in the most toxic workplace.

Hey everybody and welcome back to my channel. For those of you who are new, I'm Doug Howard, and I'm your go to leadership coach and consultant. Here on this channel, we share weekly insights, tools, and stories to help you level up your leadership skills. If you find value in these videos, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and ring the bell to stay updated on our latest episodes. And if you enjoy this video, give it a thumbs up.

In today's episode, we're going to dive into the murky waters of office politics, and we're going to explore strategies to help you navigate and leverage office politics to your advantage. You're going to learn how to identify political dynamics, build strategic alliances, communicate effectively, and maintain your integrity while advancing your career.

What are Office Politics?

Now let's start by understanding what office politics is. At the highest level, office politics is the strategies that other people use to gain an advantage over you in the workplace. In most cases, it's unfair. Recognizing and understanding these dynamics is very important because when you understand how these dynamics work, it can help you navigate these situations more effectively.

Common Office Politic Dynamics

Let's take a look at some common office politic dynamics.

First, we have power plays. Now, this is when individuals use their power, their authority, or their influence to control resources or control decisions. An example of this would be a manager using their authority or their influence to get their preferred project funded while sidelining other projects that they don't really care about.

Another common office politic dynamic is alliances and rivalries. So this is where you see the formation of groups that are supporting each other or groups that are opposing each other. I experienced this a lot in my career, We had a misaligned goals with other departments like the sales team and the IT department and I worked in engineering. Because we had competing goals, it became us working in silos and butting heads with each other and not really working together a lot. It created a lot of negative office politics dynamics between our department and the other departments.

Another office politic dynamic to look out for is information control. What I mean by this is when people in your organization are limiting access to information and using that to their advantage or using that to put you at a disadvantage. For an example you might see an employee withhold critical project information to undermine someone else on the team, or maybe it's to benefit them so that they look good so that they can save the day, like creating a problem for them to solve.

One of the most common office politics dynamics you'll see is gatekeeping. This is where you see someone controlling access to resources or controlling access to people. Maybe someone on their team would be a great fit to help you on a project, but the manager refuses to let that person work with you. Almost like a power play or a power trip because they don't want, they don't want to give up their resources to help someone else in the company. It's a very us versus them mentality.

Another common office politic dynamic is credit stealing. This one's pretty self explanatory, but this is when you see other people taking credit for other people's work. For example, someone in your company might present your idea as their own and take credit for it.

Now the last office politic I want to cover is one that really shows up a lot and this is favoritism. Basically this is unequal treatment of people on the company and doing this in a way that benefits certain people over others. I saw this a lot in my work at the companies I worked for. There was a lot of nepotism at the companies I worked for. It was a privately owned company, the CEO had a lot of family members and friends that were working in roles that quite frankly, they weren't qualified to be in, but their friends and family members of the CEO. Of course, when it came to vacation days or getting perks or getting approval on expenses or trips, things like that, all those benefits really went to the nepotism people in the company and the other people that weren't really a product of friends and family or nepotism. They didn't get to take advantage of any of those benefits and it created some big schisms in the company.

To quickly recap those common political dynamics, we have power plays, alliances and rivalries, information control, gatekeeping, credit stealing, and favoritism. Understanding these dynamics is crucial because they all collectively form the backdrop against which all office interactions take place. Next, let's talk about how to identify toxic situations within this political landscape.

How to Identify Toxic Situations Within a Political Landscape

Here's some signs to look out for.

Backstabbing. This is when you see colleagues undermining each other only for personal gain. Throwing people under the bus or, finger pointing or calling attention to other people's mistakes and going out of their way to make other people look stupid. This is obviously a big sign of a toxic work environment.

Next we have exclusion. So this means, seeing people being left out of important meetings or being left out of decision making processes that they should be involved in. I experienced this a lot as a young manager when I was promoted to engineering manager. I worked in a nepotism environment and there was no engineering representation in the senior leadership meetings, so decisions were being made about our engineering department and I was not included in those meetings and it's because I wasn't best friends with the CEO and I wasn't a family member of the CEO. So I wasn't included in important decisions that were being made about our team.

Next we have favoritism. I covered this briefly a moment ago, but obviously this is the unequal treatment of people in your company, and it's unequal in a way that benefits certain people over others. Again there's some overlap here with some of these, but I went through that too and a lot of people do. Someone's buddies with the boss and that person who's buddies with the boss or who's kissing up to the boss, whether it's genuine or not, you'll see that person who's buddies with the boss get awarded the promotions. They'll get awarded the best projects. They'll get awarded the best opportunities. Or they'll get more latitude when it comes to, perks like working from home or leaving early on Fridays or getting more vacation days or stuff like that.

Last, we have misinformation. This one's really dangerous. This is spreading false or misleading information to manipulate outcomes. In other words, it's fake news. I went through this a lot, too. I would see other department managers or directors, proposing ideas and over promising. In my head, I thought, these people are lying. They're saying that this new idea they have is gonna, save the world. It's the silver bullet that's going to solve every problem in the company. And, I'm listening to this thinking, man, this is BS. This is just wrong. There's no way anyone's going to believe this or buy this. They're selling these ideas to people who aren't qualified to pick holes in their ideas. So they just start lying and relying on those lies to get by.

Do you recognize any of these signs? If you do, you might be in a toxic work environment. But for more insights on recognizing if you are in a toxic work environment, you should check out my episode called The Top 5 Signs That Your Team Is Stuck in a Toxic Culture and How to Fix It. This episode will help you identify and address toxic elements in your workplace.

How to Build Strategic Alliances

Now that we've identified the signs of a toxic environment, let's move on to building strategic alliances throughout your company. This is important because forming alliances can help you gain support and also protect yourself from political attacks. Here's how to do it.

Step one is you want to identify the key players in your company. This simply means take a look around your company and recognize who holds the influence and power. The obvious people that you're going to think of are your boss or, people that are in decision making positions. But don't overlook other people who maybe aren't in positions of authority. There might be people who have the ear of the CEO. There might be people who have the ear of your boss. Or there might be people who have a heavy influence because they have a high credibility and expertise in their specific area.

The obvious place to look is bosses and managers and executives, but don't overlook people that have a good reputation in the company. People that have a lot of connections, have a lot of friends in the company, because people like that are going to have a lot of influence in the organization. So I just want to be clear, cause we, we tend to overlook that. We tend to think, all right you got to kiss up to the boss. No first of all, I'm not saying kiss up, but there's a big difference between influence and authority.

After you identify who these people are, the second step is finding common interests with them. What I mean by that is, once you figure out who these people are, figure out what their goals are, or what their motives are, what do they want, and with respect to the company and with respect to projects and your work roles and whatnot. Figure out what their goals are. Is there a project they're trying to push through? Is there some type of, process improvement they're trying to create? Or is there some type of innovative idea they're trying to gain buy in on? Figure out what this person is motivated by or what they're trying to do right now.

When you figure out what that is, then you want to take a step back and figure out how can you align your goals with the goals of those influential colleagues. So if someone is trying to, again create a new process that's gonna create improvements for that person's team, figure out how your goals that you have, something that you're working on, can be aligned with that to support that.

Once you've done that, then you want to reach out to that person and offer value to them. You want to show that you understand what they're trying to do. Whether it's implementing a new process or whether it's enhancing quality or whatever it is. It could be a million things. Once you figure that out, you want to call attention to it by, having a casual chat with them. Hey, I noticed that you're trying to get this thing pushed through. I noticed that, you really have been working hard to improve this or whatever it is. Call attention to it and then show how you can contribute to their success.

By expanding on that example, Hey, I noticed you've been doing X, Y, and Z. I feel like I can help you with this. I really agree with that. I support that. I think that's a great idea because X, Y, and Z. Here's how I can help you with that. Here's how my team can help you with that. Whatever your role is, figure out how you can show them that you understand what they're trying to do and that you want to support them and how you can support them.

After you've gotten this far, the fourth step is pretty obvious. Be trustworthy. So once you've extended that bridge to them and start the ball rolling in collaborating with them on this, you want to make sure you maintain trust and continue building trust. That means simply maintaining your integrity and being reliable, following up on what you said you're going to do and, following through. This is key, when you do what you say you're going to do, then that just continues to build that trust and it becomes a positive snowball effect for building a strong relationship with them.

Some examples for how to do this. One is mentorship, you could start by seeking out mentors who can offer guidance and support to you. This is all about building alliances so you could approach a senior colleague who maybe has a lot of experience with navigating office politics. People who have moved into higher roles in the company or people have been promoted a lot, people who are in manager levels or director levels, a lot of times, these people are good at navigating office politics because that's a big reason why they had success in their career and it's a big reason why they got promoted to the role that they're at.

I hate to say this, but especially if you see someone who's a manager, who you think this person might not be qualified to be a manager, how did they become a manager? There's a good chance they're really good at navigating office politics. So that's a good person to mentor. I'm not saying to be unethical. I'm not saying to lie or anything like that, but to pick their brain on, Hey, how do you handle situations like this? Hey, I'm having this situation with a coworker and I feel like they keep sabotaging me on this. Have you ever had that happen to you? How do you overcome that situation? Could you give me some advice? There's a good chance people that are in high ranking positions in your company, they know how to navigate office politics.

Another example of how you can do this is collaborative projects. So find ways to work on projects that align with the interests of the key players in your company. If you hear of an initiative going on that a key person in your company or a person that has influence in your company, if they're working on something, it could be work related an actual project or an initiative, or it could be non work related. Maybe this person is trying to organize after hour social events for the company. Pay attention to what they're doing and look for ways to work on projects together with them that align with their interests. So when you see what those are, you want to volunteer to be a part of it. Volunteer for a high visibility project that the key player is leading.

Another way to do this is by attending networking events. Now there's two ways to do this. One, you could attend networking events within your company. Let's say you work for a very large company and there's, kind of social hours and things like that, meet and greets and company update meetings. A lot of times people go into these meetings, just acting like a fly on the wall, sitting there being quiet, waiting for the meeting to end, and then going back to their desk. Instead, leverage these meetings to your advantage. Spark up organic conversations with people in these meetings, people that you normally don't talk to, and just get to know more people in the company. You're going to find that if you are working in a company that has a toxic work environment, there's a good chance that other people are struggling with some of these dynamics too.

In this case, you don't just go to a company event, spark up a conversation and Hey, are you dealing with toxic work environment situations? No, instead, what you do is you spark up a conversation with them about anything else, get to know them a little bit and maybe after a few conversations, then you start sharing, I had this challenge with so and so, have you ever had something like that? Then you start opening up and then that person starts feeling comfortable with you. You can actually start building camaraderie and having a support network for helping you when you're dealing with something that's a product of a toxic work environment.

Another example of this would be joining cross departmental teams. I'm a big advocate of joining teams that span across different departments. For example, you could participate in a task force that includes members from various departments to build a wider network for yourself. If there's ever projects that are going to include people from other areas of the company, find a way to get involved in that. That's just a great way to organically meet other people in the company and build those relationships. Again, when you're in a toxic environment, one of the most important things is just building those alliances and having a bigger support network and having a more diverse range of people to pick their brains and figure out, how they can support you or how they can help you or how they can help you navigate this.

It also helps with just keeping your reputation up. For example, if someone in another department I don't know, is gaslighting you, let's just say. If you build relationship with other people in that department, those people are going to stick up for you when you're not even in that room. If someone else in a department meeting is, is gaslighting you and you're not there to defend yourself, having those relationships with other people in other departments is key because then they're going to stand up for you when you're not there.

Building strategic alliances can provide you with support and protection in a politically charged workplace, which is only going to make it easier for you to navigate those challenges and to advance your career.

Now I want to move on to another crucial element of navigating toxic workplaces, and that's effective communication strategies.

Effective Communication Strategies

Effective communication is the key to navigating office politics. Here are some strategies to help you communicate effectively.

The first strategy is active listening. Now you hear this all the time, but it's true. Active listening is the best communication. It's the most important communication skill. When we think of communication, we think of one way communication, the way I'm talking and my tone of voice and things like that but the most important part of communication is listening. When you know how to listen to people and understand their perspective and retain what they said, it makes the rest of the communication on your part so much easier. When you're listening to someone, you can gain all those tools you need, like understanding what their perspective is and how they're influenced and what's important to them. It gets you out of your head and it gets you focused on the other person. That's more important than anything you say or do.

With that being said, active listening, this means you've got to understand the perspective of other people and tailor your communication to them in a way that's going to resonate with them. You want to listen carefully during meetings and you want to make sure you're responding thoughtfully to show that you understood, and that you listened, and that you value other people's input. This means listening more than you talk.

The second communication tool is assertive communication. So this means clearly expressing your needs and your boundaries without being too aggressive.

For example, if someone is pressuring you to get something done, or they're really upset with you because you didn't get something done on time, don't cave and don't just say yes, sir, I'll get that done. You want to start by showing that you understand their perspective, but then, assertively communicate your stance on the situation or what you need from the situation. If someone's, pushing on you to get a project done faster, or they're frustrated with you for not getting it done on time or when they thought you should have it done. You want to push back and say, Hey, I understand your urgency and I understand your frustration, but I'm going to need more time to complete this task accurately.

The third communication tool is diplomatic language. You're going to want to use neutral and professional language to avoid conflict. Instead of saying phrases like, you're wrong, you want to say phrases like, I see it differently, here's my perspective.

The fourth technique is non verbal cues. Now this is a two way street. On the one hand, you want to be mindful of your body language and your facial expressions. You want to do this by maintaining eye contact, maintaining a calm demeanor, and doing everything you can to convey confidence, openness, but as well as focusing your attention on them.

On the other hand, you want to pay attention to their body language. Do they look comfortable? Do they look relaxed around you? Or do they look uncomfortable? Do they look skeptical? You want to pay attention to what their body language is and use that to adapt your communication throughout. If they're looking on easy, I would call attention to it. I would use that assertive communication. Hey, you look a little uneasy about this discussion or, I'm sensing some skepticism here. You want to call attention, that's a technique called labeling. What it does is it either shows that you understand their perspective, because if you labeled it correctly, hey, it looks like you're, skeptical about this idea. Okay, he gets me. He gets that I'm skeptical about this. I'll open up and explain why.

Or on the other hand, it gives them the chance to clarify, if you misunderstood them. If you say, hey, it looks like you're skeptical on this, they might say no, I'm not skeptical. I'm just processing this information. This is a lot of information for me to take in. I'm a thinker, so I'm going to need some time to dwell on this. Again, it creates that mutual understanding. So you don't want to duck from it. You want to use that body language to infer how this person is feeling or what this person's attitude is, and then use that labeling technique to either confirm it and get them to open up and explain why, or to get them to explain, what their real stance is and what they're really thinking.

The fifth communication tool is conflict de-escalation. You want to use techniques to calm heated discussions, and this means using techniques to calm yourself as well as the other person. If a meeting becomes tense, you might want to suggest a short break to cool down emotions before you continue the discussion.

Another technique for de-escalating is mirroring and matching. So if someone is, really upset about something, think of their emotions on a scale of one to 10 and 10 being super emotional and irrational and aggressive and one being, cool and calm and collected and peaceful and relaxed.

If this person's communicating with you in a very emotional, aggressive way, that's let's just say a level eight out of 10, so very high, what you want to do is you don't want to meet them at a one. You want to meet them at a seven. If they say, I'm really upset with you because of X, Y, and Z. If they're at an eight, you come back to them in a reply that it's at a seven. Then you say I really understand your frustration. How can we work together to solve this?

What's going to happen is, that person is gonna go from an eight to a seven. They're gonna meet you where you were at. Then after they reply to you, then you should give them a reply back that's at a six, okay, I understand. I could see why that's very frustrating. Can you tell me a little bit more about this?

They're gonna meet you at a six. Then you just keep gradually taking them down that scale. Reply with a five. Bring them down to a five. Take them down to a four. Bring them down to a four. You just keep working that scale through mirroring and matching. This means showing them that you understand in your response, but also matching their level of intensity, one degree, maybe two degrees lower than where they're at.

The way I like to explain this is, if you're really upset about something and you're, venting at someone about something, think about how frustrating it is when that person doesn't match your intensity in the conversation. I'm so frustrated about X, Y, and Z. This really upsets me and ticks me off. If that person replies to you by saying, yeah that sucks, that's too bad. They're all calm. It actually aggravates you more. If you were at an eight, it might make you go up to a nine or 10 because you feel like this person doesn't get it. Doesn't this person understand that this is so important that this is such a big problem.

Mirroring and matching is a way of showing like, no, I get it. I understand. I take this just as seriously as you do. I understand your perspective. But let's take it down a notch. So you're saying that without saying it.

Effective communication helps you navigate political dynamics by ensuring your messages are clear, professional, and well received. But if you're struggling to use communication as a tool for effectively setting boundaries with other people, you should check out my episode called How to Set Boundaries with Difficult People. This video is going to provide you with actionable tips for managing difficult interactions with other people.

Next, I want to explore how to leverage information effectively in a politically charged environment.

Leveraging Information Effectively

Having the right information at the right time can be a powerful tool in office politics. Here's how to leverage information effectively.

First, you want to stay informed. This means keeping up with company news, industry trends and internal updates. You're going to want to regularly read company newsletters, industry publications. You're going to want to regularly attend company meetings. Meetings that you feel like, Oh, I don't want to waste time on that. You might want to consider making sure you have time for those meetings and actually paying attention to those meetings. Cause you want to stay in tune with we'll say the gossip that's going around the office.

The next thing you want to do with that information is you want to share information wisely. What I mean is share information strategically in a way that's going to build alliances and gain trust. If you gain some relevant industry insights from attending a webinar or a conference, let's just say, for example, you want to share those insights with your team to demonstrate your expertise and your support.

That doesn't stop there, you want to continue gathering intel. Another way to do this is by paying attention to informal networks and conversations that are going on throughout your company. Walk the halls slowly, I like to say. Take your time walking through the halls when you're going from your office to the bathroom or to the break room or to someone else's office. Walk the halls slowly and just casually listen to the conversations that are going on. Listen to the informal chats, you're eavesdropping in a sense, but you want to do this to stay aware of the vibe that's going on in the office. What are people talking about and what are the potential challenges people are talking about? What are the issues people are talking about?

A lot of times when we work in a toxic environment, there's this desire to just put your head in the sand and kind of ignore it and just stick to yourself and try to block it all out. I think if that works for you, great. Don't let me convince you otherwise, if you're able to effectively navigate the office politics environment by just sticking your head in the sand, great, good for you. But most people, you get dumped on when you do that, when you're blinded to it, cause you don't see things coming. So I think it's important to listen to those gossip conversations that are going on throughout the company and pay attention to what are people talking about? What are people concerned about? Then you can start to intuitively prepare in advance for situations that might be coming your way.

After you've gathered all this information, whether it's gossip or whether it's industry trends that you've picked up from a networking event or from a webinar or something like that, you want to use this information to influence. Use all this information you're learning to present well researched data to support your proposals. This could be when you're proposing innovation ideas to your boss. If you're doing that, you want to say, Hey I attended this event and I learned this. I think this would really help set us up, on a good path to get ahead of this thing that's coming our way.

Leveraging information strategically can enhance your influence and credibility in the workplace, which is only going to help you navigate office politics more effectively. Now I want to take a look at how do we turn a toxic work environment into your advantage.

Turning a Toxic Work Into Your Advantage

The first thing you need to do is you need to develop a high level of emotional intelligence. You need to improve your ability to understand and manage your own emotions and the emotions of the people around you.

The best way to do this is by practicing empathy and putting yourself in the shoes of your colleagues and figuring out how to respond with understanding versus responding with what your initial thoughts are. Use self awareness to recognize your emotional triggers and to manage your responses. This works because emotional intelligence is going to help you navigate interpersonal dynamics more effectively, and it's going to help you build stronger relationships. Building up your emotional intelligence is also going to help you stay calm under pressure.

As you're building your emotional intelligence up, here's a few considerations. One of your main goals that you should be working towards is finding ways to stay calm under pressure. A couple of ways to do that are, simple breathing exercises, taking some deep breaths when you're in a pressure situation.

Or going into a situation and anticipating it, hey, I know this is going to be a difficult situation, and just mentally rehearsing how that situation is going to go. What is this person going to say? How are they going to react when I say this and just walking through those steps in your head, because if you do that in advance to prepare yourself, then you won't feel that same level of shock that makes you feel that overwhelm in the moment when it happens, and that way you have a playbook for how to handle these pressure situations.

If you have a toxic boss or a toxic teammate who is always triggering you and always getting you upset or always doing things that get you mad or angry or whatever. Something that triggers an emotional response in you, instead of just following that emotional response, go into your next situations, being aware of that. Hey, every time I work with this guy, he always upsets me. Or every time I work with that lady, she always snaps on me. Call that out in advance in your head, then figure out, okay, how can I stay calm when that happens? A lot of times it's just a simple matter of knowing that they're going to do it and when it happens, call it on your head. That happened because I knew it was going to happen. This person always does this. Sometimes just labeling it like that is enough by itself to help you stay calm in the moment versus feeling like something is unpredictable and something's out of your control.

The next way to leverage a toxic work environment to your advantage is by enhancing your problem solving skills. What you want to do is you want to use toxic work situations as opportunities for you to practice and improve your problem solving abilities, because when you work in a toxic environment, there is no shortage of problems to solve.

Instead of, dwelling on those problems and letting them get you angry, You want to recognize it as okay, here's a problem. How can I learn from this? How can I learn from this adversity? When you intentionally use these difficult experiences, in this way to learn and to improve and to gain your self awareness, it's going to build resilience, and it's going to build adaptability in you. It's going to help you respond more productively and effectively and constructively in these situations as they continue coming up. Instead of feeling like the deer in the headlights, when you know, someone does something that's out of line to you, you're going to be prepared for it and you're going to know how to stay calm because you're going to build that muscle.

Here's how to do this. When you encounter these types of situations, instead of feeling like the victim or why is this happening to me, you want to take a problem solving mode and you want to analyze the problem. Then after defining and analyzing the problem, you want to brainstorm potential solutions. How could I handle this? Why would that work? Why is that person doing it this way? How can I understand their perspective? Brainstorm it from every different angle, then evaluate the pros and the cons of each potential solution you come up with from there. Take a step back, figure out what the best course of action is from all the ideas you came up with, and then implement it.

You're not going to get it right the first time. You might make a mistake. That's why it's important to continuously reflect on the outcomes when you do this, and then learn from that outcome and improve on it.

Taking this approach is important and it works, because problem solving skills is going to help you address challenges proactively, and it's going to help you find effective solutions, versus feeling like something's out of your control.

A few more considerations on this. You want to stay open minded, you want to be creative, and you want to make sure you're collaborating with others to find the best solutions. For example, when you're faced with a difficult colleague, someone that really gets under your skin, develop creative solutions that you can use to work around the issues that other person creates.

The next strategy I want to take a look at is building a strong network. I've been basically talking about this on and off throughout this episode about building alliances and building your network and your support network, because that's one of the best things you can do. Then you're not on an island. You're not alone. You want to use your experiences to connect with others who have faced similar challenges, because then they're going to be able to offer you their support and advice. I strongly recommend that you aim to build relationships with colleagues who share your values and your goals, and then look to identify and connect with colleagues who are also navigating toxic environments like you.

You can do this by attending professional events, joining industry groups. You can also do this by engaging in networking activities. You can also do this by offering your help and sharing your experiences with other people. This works because a strong network is going to provide you with support, advice, and opportunities for collaboration.

When you're doing this, when you're reaching out and trying to build these relationships, it's important that you make sure you're genuine. You don't want to be lying or being inauthentic because then you're contributing to the toxic work environment culture and you're making it cyclical. So you want to make sure that you're being genuine. You want to make sure you're maintaining regular contact with the people that you build relationships with. You don't want to make it one way or transactional where you got what you needed from them and now you're moving on. You want to make sure you're there to support them too and keep that relationship going. You want to make sure that you're providing value to your network. It's not just one way. It's not take. It's give and take.

The next strategy for utilizing a toxic work environment to your advantage is making sure you maintain your own personal integrity. I can't stress this enough. I want to make sure I didn't give you a mixed message here throughout this video. A lot of things I'm saying, you might be misinterpreting it as lying or anything like that. When you're building relationships with people or your boss, I don't want you manipulating people. I don't want you, going against your core values because maintaining your integrity is crucial for long term success and your reputation. So here's how to do this the right way.

Make sure you're staying true to your values. Never compromise your principles for short term gains, so don't cooperate with the toxic culture in a sense. If people are pointing fingers at someone don't jump in on that just because you think it'll feel more comfortable in the moment. You want to make sure that your actions are aligning with your words and your values at all times. It's a slippery slope when you don't stick to that. This means you want to refuse to participate in gossip or unethical behavior, even if that means missing out on a potential advantage for you.

This also means being transparent. You want to communicate openly and honestly. This means instead of hiding from conflict or disagreement, you want to have respectful disagreement. If you disagree with someone's stance on something, you want to disagree respectfully and constructively. You want to say things like, Hey, I see your point, but I have a different perspective. Let's explore both options to find the best solution. In situations where you're in the wrong and where you made a mistake, you want to just admit it and discuss how you'll fix it instead of dwelling on it or defending your mistake and why it was okay. Just admit it, own it, and call out how you're going to fix it.

Last but not least, you want to make sure you're holding yourself accountable. This means owning your mistakes and learning from them. For example, if you were late on a project, take full ownership and responsibility for that delay, and also propose a plan to get that project back on track.

By maintaining your own personal integrity, it's going to ensure that you build a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness, which is invaluable in navigating office politics.

Transforming toxic situations to your advantage involves developing resilience, enhancing problem solving skills, and building a supportive network, all of which can help you thrive despite the challenges of working in a toxic environment.

But navigating office politics also involves understanding the dynamics at play and identifying toxic situations when they're happening, building strategic alliances, communicating effectively, leveraging information and maintaining integrity. By applying these strategies, you can turn a toxic situation to your advantage and advance your career.

One of the key things that I discussed here is knowing how to control your emotions, because this is critical to effectively applying all the techniques and strategies we've discussed today. If you want to master emotional control in the workplace, you should check out my episode called How To Control Your Emotions At Work. This video is going to provide you with essential tools to manage your emotions and stay composed under pressure.

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