I am Autistic and a paper that I am working on involves a “political mindset” to solve a problem. I am seeing ways to survive office politics but I am not sure ultimately what it is. Please help.
In: 34
Have a business degree, worked in offices for over a decade.
ELI5: You know when you go to a restaurant and you have a waiter. Of course you’ll place an order and get your food. But the waiter also wants a good tip, so the waiter might be nice and extra friendly, tell a joke maybe the tip will be really good. And if you’re friendly with the waiter, if the restaurant is really busy, maybe you will get your food quicker, or maybe a free dessert. There’s the basic service, but then you are “nice” in extra ways to try to get a little bit extra from each other.
Non-ELI5: This is surprisingly difficult to explain. But businesses are made up of people. And being nice to those people can get you additional benefits.
Here’s an easy example.
Making your boss think it was their idea. You buy and use a $10 pen once a month. That’s $120 a year. The pen store has a sale that if you buy 12 pens it’s only $100. You’ll save $20.
If you go to your boss and ask for $100 for pens, your boss might not be okay spending this much right away. But if you say to your boss “we always spend $10 a month on pens, I wonder if there was a way we could save money on pens… do you think if we bought a bunch of pens at once it could save money?” Boss says “yes look in to it and let me know what you find” Now you tell your boss about saving $20 and the boss can take credit for it.
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