Many organizations are in a vicious cycle.
Employees feel overworked and under stress.
When stressed, we react using our amygdala, not our pre-frontal cortex.
This means we are making decisions driven by fear and emotions, not rational thinking.
When business decisions are made in this way, negative performance can often follow.
Causing more stress.
Continuing the cycle.
My Perspective
As companies are faced with more and more change, stress can increase.
With increased stress, I believe office politics increase.
Individuals may become concerned about their position in the organization.
So, they might posture for roles and positions.
They can fear they might be let go.
Continuing to feed the cycle.
We need to find ways to recognize what is happening and push against the amygdala.
Recently, I’ve found some interesting resources that provide insight we can leverage.
Chantal Donnelly has written a book called Settled: How to Find Calm in a Stress-Inducing World. In addition to ideas on how to reduce stress, she identifies five “stress languages” that you can learn more about in this article.
Several years ago, Forbes did a series on office politics. The first article in the series focused on how people aren’t logical and rational.
This article from Nulab provides an overview of 6 different types of office politics. Knowing what these are could help us identify if they start to creep into our organization.
Finally, there are two articles from Harvard business review. The first article talks about how the different parts of our brain engage in decision-making and includes this quote:
“Not a second goes by that our ancient dog brain aren’t conferring with our modern cortexes to influence their choices.”
– Harvard Business Review
The second article focuses on the underlying psychology driving office politics.
Your Turn
Do you see increased stress levels impacting office politics and performance?
Are you personally feeling stress driving your decisions?
How could these resources provide insights and ideas to help support you and your organization?