Are you sacrificing your career to keep the peace?
Posted: 19 September 2016 at 7:43 am | Author: Laura Morris
Is it best to look after number one or is it better to keep the peace in the team? Well the obvious answer is to do both, but we are all aware that we don’t live in a perfect world and this can’t always be achieved. So what’s the best way forward?
It’s all about internal communication. By all means, go after those projects that you want. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious and looking to achieve more for yourself, just limit the amount of trampling over other people required. Explain to your colleagues the reason you are going after what you want. Doing this and expressing how you require their support minimises the risk of confusion.
Disgruntled team members are not helpful for anyone and primarily occur because of rumours heard on the grapevine. If work colleagues are not supportive or are even obstructive this is where you have to make a choice. You either go after what you want or you back down. This is a difficult choice to make and is largely a personal one.
If you are truly going after what you want for the right reasons i.e. not to spite someone else or prove a point then it may be worth pursuing. Try to identify why other people don’t support your goals. Perhaps it is insecurity or perhaps they would like the opportunity for themselves. Whatever the reasoning, if you can understand it then it may help your decision as to what to put first – your own ambition or the team’s level of cohesiveness.
Both your own ambition and the team ethos aspects will be intertwined to a degree at least. After all, disrupting the workplace around you is not likely to give you an advantage if you end up uniting everyone else against you! Therefore it is important to nurture both to an appropriate level. Without the required nurturing either the team or your ambition will fail to survive.
Want to learn more about how to manage a team effectively? Check out CAW Business ILM Leadership and Management courses or call 01480 422060 for more information