Lessons from “The Office (US)” applied to work environment
I’ve always been a movie guy, but started to enjoy the satisfaction of binge watching some TV shows. I watch mostly comedies because, if I can find the time to watch TV, it means the days are not being funny.
Sometimes because an old show is back on TV and I can binge multiple episodes from last week. Sometimes because the streaming platform gives me a perfect suggestion. And rarely, because some trigger pulls me to such a show. Clients are not being ideal? Lets see “The IT Crowd”. I have to teach adults? Let’s watch “Community”. Everyone expects me to be perfect? “The Rookie” it is.
And the last one was, “I have to manage a team with more than a handful of people?” Let’s see how Michael Scott does it.
And by watching “The Office (US)” I started to notice how valuable for managers and employees each and every episode is. So here are some of those lessons.
You can be less than friends
It may be hard to admit, but not everyone at the workplace likes you. And you don’t have to like everyone. The question is if you can work together for something bigger than the individual. Of course you can still have friends there, and BFFs, and work spouses, and training partners, and drinking buddies, and all of those. And you can find the love of your life there. But it is also fine to clock out and forget them until the next workday.
Conflicts happen
It goes hand in hand with the previous lesson. People are different and sometimes it is hard to understand the other point of view and easy to assume they are incompetent, lazy, evil… Here I always follow Hanlon’s razor; “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Because malice you can’t do anything about, while stupidity, at least you can forgive.
My advice is not to ask others to take sides, but to recognize that there is an issue and talk about it. You can work on it or, if the team is big enough, just never work together again.
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