# NTs, how you deal with office politics?



## noname42 (Mar 8, 2013)

I have just joined the corporate world 4 months ago and I’m really having a hard time trying to adapt. I work with a team that is full of sensors. The department head is a messed up ESFJ who tries to act like an ENTJ (I will leave that for your imagination).My direct manger and the coworkers are both ESTPs, and an ESFP girl.

Our ESFJ boss is giving us all a hard time, he is a liar, doesn't have a vision and extremely shallow and superficial. For e.g he makes useless meetings every day at 8 o'clock. He wants things that he doesn't know how its done and when we do it, he changes it all over again. I think he is trying to use Ti & Ne to be more intellectual and shit, but he can’t use them properly.

Problem here is that my boss and direct manger hate each other, and both mangers can't confront each other and I can’t confront him because I've been only working for 4 months. As a result there are a lot of gossip, conspiracies and fake sucking up.

As an INTP I'm having a very hard time dealing with all of this crap, after work I get really drained and tired. I just want to learn and excel and go home at 5. But at the same time I must take a side and action towards what's going on.

I don’t think NTs are not much into office politics, we are known to be direct, honest and somewhat confrontational. So NTs, how you deal with office politics ,and what do you think I should do in my situation.


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## WhiteIris (Nov 8, 2013)

For the most part I try to do my job to the best of my ability and ignore the rest of the BS. However, I still find it really pains me to deal with this especially when I can't just walk away because a person of that nature is either my boss or on a project with me.

A few things I do to cope:

Gossip, if anyone tries to gossip to me I just look at them and say something rational. End of story. They don't usually attempt it more than twice. This is not how to win friends, it is how to save yourself from irritation.

Suck ups, I let them do their thing. I don't need to suck up to anyone. Unless someone has a huge ego they like fed they don't usually respect this type of behavior. If they do well I would rather they didn't respect me. I like to let my work do the talking.

Speak your mind. If you have an idea or a way things could be done say so. If nobody responds oh well.

Temper your ego, we all have one, yeah maybe I am right... correction I am right . Realize being right is sometimes more about popular belief than logically right. How long did it take for people to believe the world was round? Use your brains to determine when to fight for what is right and when to let go because they are popular belief right.

You hit it right on the head, "I just want to learn and excel and go home at 5". Try to do that.

In the meantime, as a way to just get through the day:



> Originally Posted by lilysocks
> 
> he's the kind of guy who appoints himself Boss Of All Paperclips if there's nothing else going for him to put his seal of 'authority' on.
> 
> i use this mantra a lot, to myself: "god, i'm so glad i'm not you"





> Laughs, boss of all paperclips... I'm stealing your mantra... and possibly giving it a clever hilarious nickname.


Make light of it.


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## Thomas60 (Aug 7, 2011)

When I was an employee, I tended not to be involved, much more robotic in meeting expectations. If my boss is having office politics problems, I lean towards being open towards them and helping reconcile existing issues; this can blow up in my face if the boss can't treat our conversations with confidence... at that point, I lose respect for the company.

Have you considered contacting the HR department?


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

Plow through them. I am literally in the middle of the daily operations of a large enterprise environment. I work as a Systems Administrator in a large clinic with 2000+ servers and I am the sole guy on the front lines to it. I don't have time for office politics because we are stretched so thin. I will tell people how it is and be insanely blunt about it. When someone points something out if I'm wrong on it or need to adjust, I adjust. I'm also very aggressive in a lot of cases and for the most part I don't pick my battles, I fight them all. That's why I have a reputation for getting things done and basically being the sole guy on the front lines to a multi-million dollar environment (I was told that if everything went down, it would cost $1 million an hour in just lost productivity).


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## noname42 (Mar 8, 2013)

WhiteIris said:


> For the most part I try to do my job to the best of my ability and ignore the rest of the BS. However, I still find it really pains me to deal with this especially when I can't just walk away because a person of that nature is either my boss or on a project with me.
> 
> A few things I do to cope:
> 
> ...


Problem here, is that both mangers and co-workers are very passive and lack time-management.

As a result we tend to be simply lost in this hectic environment, and nobody listens to my advice.

I tend to know problems long before they happen, or sometimes I have some troubles with other departments and nobody helps me.

Kinda sucks

Above all that, I really hate my job, I work in a bank and I have a very SJ job. Boring as fuck, this is why, I wanna leave and do something I really enjoy.

Anyways, Ive been doing most of what you said and you seem to have some good advice, Thanks


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## noname42 (Mar 8, 2013)

Thomas60 said:


> When I was an employee, I tended not to be involved, much more robotic in meeting expectations. If my boss is having office politics problems, I lean towards being open towards them and helping reconcile existing issues; this can blow up in my face if the boss can't treat our conversations with confidence... at that point, I lose respect for the company.
> 
> Have you considered contacting the HR department?


The HR is a no go for me, I have only been there for 4 months.So I don't think I will have a say.

And Im afraid if I did so, it will be simply a suicide.Since most probably most of you coworkers will leave me on the.front line


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## Killionaire (Oct 13, 2009)

I hate the job world with a passion. I don't fit into companies or corporations at all. Jobs are damaging and stressful. That's why I'm self employed. That was my big dream and I was really ecstatic when I accomplished it. My way to deal with horrible people at work is to leave them all behind and be my own boss. I make all the decisions now and I'm much better at it than any of my former bosses. My future potential is unlimited with myself in charge. I find more money making opportunities for myself than my stupid bosses ever did. I create passive income for myself, which is impossible in a job. Quitting my last job ever was one of the happiest days of my life. Now I never have to work for other people again as long as I live. No more dealing with assholes to earn a living. That is priceless. The work I do is creative and challenging. I'm always formulating plans and strategies to rise to higher levels of income. If I ever work in a company again, it will be my _*own*_ company, where I'm the top boss.


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

noname42 said:


> Problem here, is that both mangers and co-workers are very passive and lack time-management.
> 
> As a result we tend to be simply lost in this hectic environment, and nobody listens to my advice.


I know how that goes. And also that lack of time management and lack of foresight makes everything an "emergency" then.


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## NerdilyDone (Nov 22, 2013)

Passive bosses, you say? That's a great opportunity to take initiative. Well, clearly I don't know the details of the goings on at your work, but my advice is to take charge of as much as is possible. Do your work well, and if something that was someone else's responsibility doesn't get done, then hell with it, you did what you could. Don't take on emotions for other people's failures. Do what is good, ignore politics, and if need be, tell others you don't care about politics. After all, it's not your company, and if it falls apart, it's the problem of the people that hired those questionable managers.

Hope that helped. I haven't had those kinds of work problems, but I did work under some drama queens. It's much easier to ignore them when you shelve books for a living.


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

NerdilyDone said:


> Passive bosses, you say? That's a great opportunity to take initiative. Well, clearly I don't know the details of the goings on at your work, but my advice is to take charge of as much as is possible.


Look up locus of control (concept from Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). Focus on what you can control in that and go with it. If you have passive managers that basically don't a flying f*ck and you need something beyond what you can do yourself, you will get burned.


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## Bahburah (Jul 25, 2013)

Your boss sounds like mine. 
Always changing things around but never for the better, or worse.

She likes to come out of her office and talk to everyone and cause shit.
You feel like you have to always be doing something when she is around because she will think you have time to spare but really you just finished your shit earlier than usual.
Even the more gossipy types are sick of her, she neglects her job and has now gotten in shit for it. 
I feel like I could be a better manager than her at times. 

But I just do my work and don't get involved and I've now got a reputation for being someone who shows up to work and gets to work instead of talking a bunch. 

That with a few examples of me being a good worker and she has basically left me alone. 

I call this a win.


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## iceblock (Sep 29, 2013)

Killionaire said:


> I hate the job world with a passion. I don't fit into companies or corporations at all. Jobs are damaging and stressful. That's why I'm self employed. That was my big dream and I was really ecstatic when I accomplished it. My way to deal with horrible people at work is to leave them all behind and be my own boss. I make all the decisions now and I'm much better at it than any of my former bosses. My future potential is unlimited with myself in charge. I find more money making opportunities for myself than my stupid bosses ever did. I create passive income for myself, which is impossible in a job. Quitting my last job ever was one of the happiest days of my life. Now I never have to work for other people again as long as I live. No more dealing with assholes to earn a living. That is priceless. The work I do is creative and challenging. I'm always formulating plans and strategies to rise to higher levels of income. If I ever work in a company again, it will be my _*own*_ company, where I'm the top boss.


I own my company, so office politics have never been a problem. For INTJs who run their own company, I would advise hiring an ENTJ manager to handle employees. It's worked great for me because he handles the employee element and client relations, which leaves me to focus on product development.


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

I tend to take the following approach:

1. If you're talking about your co-workers/bosses etc, never say anything that you wouldn't be comfortable saying to their face. 

2. I want to get my job done and if I need to engage in certain activities to do that I will. 

What gets on my nerves is when you have an environment of too many "creative" people or too many "operations" people. In this case, "creative" are people who have a ton of ideas, but generally lacks the ability to put them into a coherent strategy and get it done. "Operations" people are people who are very good at execution, but lacks both creativity and the ability to see beyond the day to day running of the company. 

I think the cause of a lot of problems in corporate environments is that people are given responsibilities that are not suited to their abilities. The concept of promoting people who are great technically away from the technical aspects of the job, and into management, or putting people who are great at day to day execution to long term planning.


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

Scelerat said:


> What gets on my nerves is when you have an environment of too many "creative" people or too many "operations" people. In this case, "creative" are people who have a ton of ideas, but generally lacks the ability to put them into a coherent strategy and get it done. "Operations" people are people who are very good at execution, but lacks both creativity and the ability to see beyond the day to day running of the company.


Change that from creative to project and you have exactly what I have where I am. There's a huge operations (which I'm in) and project divide. There's only me during the day to front 2000+ servers and a whole team of like 8-10 people to whip out more "solutions" out there. Needless to say they frequently miss the boat and then it's solely my job to clean up their crap when it blows up in the production environment.


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## Judson Joist (Oct 25, 2013)

noname42 said:


> I don’t think NTs are not much into office politics


Double negative. What you mean to say is: "I don't think NTs are much into office politics." Btw, I used to proofread Yellow Page ads for a living. I worked in an environment that resembled the movie _Office Space._ This was back in 2002-03. Office politics made life unnecessarily lame. I didn't "deal with it" so much as I tolerated it. Since 2006, I've been working blue-collar jobs. The factory environment doesn't have "office" politics, per se, but personality clashes happen everywhere.


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

Judson Joist said:


> The factory environment doesn't have "office" politics, per se, but personality clashes happen everywhere.


Depending on the environment, most of the guys would prefer to duke it out out back versus playing stupid passive-aggressive games that their neutered white collar counterparts have to play.


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## Judson Joist (Oct 25, 2013)

PowerShell said:


> Depending on the environment, most of the guys would prefer to duke it out out back versus playing stupid passive-aggressive games that their neutered white collar counterparts have to play.


That would be awesome if we could actually do that, but if we did, we'd get fired. If you ask me, all workplaces should have some sort of Thunderdome where two people enter and fight with pugil sticks for the sake of catharsis.
:kitteh:


Scelerat said:


> the cause of a lot of problems in corporate environments is that people are given responsibilities that are not suited to their abilities.


Hit the nail on the head right there.


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

Judson Joist said:


> That would be awesome if we could actually do that, but if we did, we'd get fired. If you ask me, all workplaces should have some sort of Thunderdome where two people enter and fight with pugil sticks for the sake of catharsis.
> :kitteh:


For the most part you'd get fired but in those environments men tend to be a bit more aggressive and will get in someone's face and confront them. Not so much in an office environment. Now if this was 40-50+ years ago, yeah there'd be fist fights in the parking lot.


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## Judson Joist (Oct 25, 2013)

PowerShell said:


> there'd be fist fights in the parking lot.


Preferably to the tune of Amok Time.
:laughing:





Imagine how awesome it would be if people actually could have that kind of cathartic release. Imagine a virtual reality gameshow that was like _The Running Man_ or _Smash TV._ That sort of thing could potentially diffuse the psychologically crippling effects of office politics, liberalism, and pacifism.

*Note:*​ R. P. MacMurphy rules!


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

PowerShell said:


> Change that from creative to project and you have exactly what I have where I am. There's a huge operations (which I'm in) and project divide. There's only me during the day to front 2000+ servers and a whole team of like 8-10 people to whip out more "solutions" out there. Needless to say they frequently miss the boat and then it's solely my job to clean up their crap when it blows up in the production environment.


In this case project would be a more "creative" aspect of what you do. 




Judson Joist said:


> Hit the nail on the head right there.


I think it has to do with how corporations often work, in that they think "this guy knows everything there is to know about our product, therefore he would be perfect to decide our future direction" not realizing that a lot of the time the two require different skillsets. 

A few years back I worked for a company that had a rule about internal promotions, with the result that in the end the people who were great with the day to day, being put into positions where they had to do anything but the day to day. The result was that instead of doing a great job at day to day, they turned their new position into day to day. 

As one of my strategy professors said "If you sit 10 pig farmers down and have them design a strategy, odds are that at some point, a pig farm will be involved" Usually when you let "day to day operations" create a strategy or plan, you end up something that is so deeply sunk into day to day that there is no big picture view in it. 

If you let the "creatives" run "operations" or "strategy" you either end up with bad operations or changing your strategy every time someone has an idea. 

If you let "strategy" run either of the other two, you end up with shoddy operations or predictable ideas.

To be honest, it's the great failing of human resources within companies, to not ensure that in addition to having the credentials and experience for a job, an applicant has to have the right mindset and fit the overall strategy.


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