Don’t Play Corporate Politics
Corporate politics are a waste of time. Instead, people must let their work performance speak for itself. Trying to knock down people on your team is in bad taste, even if you feel they deserve it. If you are spending too much time thinking or talking about others on your team, then more than likely you are not properly focused.
You are on the same team as your co-workers and employees, and when combined, the results are all that matter. Your profits are not dependent on your title, the titles of your coworkers, or one’s ability to direct another. As a technicality, or for practical management purposes, it may be necessary to have a hierarchy and titles, but this should not be an excuse for internal power plays. Delivering results is a team responsibility; certainly bureaucratic, political nonsense will not be helpful in your pursuit for success.
If someone is poisoned by corporate politics, then you can’t tell if they are transmitting genuine information or useless, tainted information, which if relied upon, will be counterproductive. This is similar to how government politics ruins citizens’ ability to rely on information being spit out of the spin machine. So get focused and get out of the corporate politics game, which is only meant for your competitors to destroy themselves.
Constructive criticism is necessary for all managers. Even still, employees will often be overly sensitive and in denial of any negative comments coming from employment reviews, or even casual discussions. There is rarely a reasonable cause for an employee lower in the organization to criticize his supervisor; instead, the two should discuss any issues proactively and constructively. In the end, however, the boss is always right. And if you don’t believe this to be true, he may show you the door. (This is yet another good reason to be the boss.)
Firing someone is the hardest task you will have to undertake in business. If you can get past that professionally, everything else will be relatively easy.
The object is to hire much more often than you fire in order to continue building your winning team and allowing your business to grow. If you have to fire a lot of people, then you are probably making too many hiring mistakes.
