8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Office Survival Guide -- Very, Very Helpful Advice, January 10, 2006
This review is from: The Office Survival Guide (Paperback)
This book is filled with the kind of insights and advice that anyone who is trying to thrive -- not just survive -- in a 21st-century office environment can begin putting to use immediately. The suggestions and ideas contained within are real-world, nuts-and-bolts tools that help avoid problems, resolve issues, and build the kind of consensus that will allow you and your whole team to move forward. Today, more than ever, interpersonal skills are an essential component of business success. Without them, your career can be over before it begins. Ironically, however, we all seem to get less training and less preparation in this vital area than ever before. This book can help close that gap. Put it on the bookshelf where you keep the essential volumes that you come back to over and over again.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
She nails it, March 5, 2006
This review is from: The Office Survival Guide (Paperback)
This isn't just about the "other" people in business that you & I need to get along with. It's also about "us," why we respond as we do to particular other personalities and situations, plus practical guidelines to increase the chances of success. An easy & engaging read. Don't keep this book on your shelf: buy it, read it, and keep it under your pillow.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Examines Internal and External Drivers of Office Politics, and How to Proceed, November 8, 2009
This review is from: The Office Survival Guide (Paperback)
I found this book extremely helpful. I'm a programmer who tends to be very results-oriented and not always concerned with the soft side of business. This book helped me to understand how to approach various sticky office situations. More importantly, the book greatly emphasized the importance of those soft skills as they relate to overall success in my career.
The book really has two strengths in my opinion. The first is that it emphasizes both internal and external analysis of the given office political situations. The author guides you through the process of stepping back from the situation and exploring first the internal factors that drove you to arrive at your initial emotional reaction. The author spends a lot of time encouraging you to think about your past, how you were raised, and your relationships with your siblings. That line of thinking makes sense, as many of those behaviors will often determine how we deal with the rest of life.
The author then forces you to examine external factors in the given situation. For example, is the super-competitive coworker really out to ruin your career, or is he secretly insecure and afraid that he'll lose his job? Is your boss really a good guy who's under a lot of stress and therefore acting a little irrationally, or is he a destructive narcissist who doesn't care who he hurts on his way to the top? Examining these external drivers for office politics helps you remove yourself from the visceral emotions of the moment.
The second thing I really like is the explanation that once you've graduated past the lower levels of your chosen profession, how well you "play politics" is just as important to the success of your career as your technical proficiency. It's an unfortunate truth, but the author explains how corporate America has moved away from the meritocratic promotion system of the past to the more politics-driven companies that we know and work for. Being starkly confronted with this fact, I can now look and realize places in the past where I may have stunted my career growth by caring more about my programming ability than my ability to comfortably socialize with my boss and coworkers.
What's really nice about this book is that the author gives real, practical advice on how to handle these situations. I was afraid that this would be a book whose answer to every problem is to hold hands with your boss/coworker/subordinate and sing Kumbaya, but thankfully, the author gives frank advice on how to deal with the various scenarios. Oftentimes, when internal and external examination reveals a truly toxic situation and not just temporary office stress, the author gives you real advice on how to notify HR (if you even should), cover your back, and extricate yourself from the situation, should you think it's time to move on to another department or company.
The tips in this book are golden. To me, the true testament of any book is when I read it and think, "I wish someone had given me this book years ago." That's exactly what I thought after reading this book.
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