Discover the Wildlife in Your Workplace!

One of the key things about work­place sur­vival is about sen­si­tive and aware­ness of the sur­round­ings.  In every work­place, there are dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics and clas­si­fi­ca­tion of human behav­iour that is sim­i­lar to the ani­mal king­dom. We must mas­ter the nat­ural sur­vival tech­niques in the work­place to last us through our entire career.  But before that, we must know who are the preda­tors and who are not… Do not panic, we’ve got a list of types of co-workers just for you that you may have in your orga­ni­za­tion to beguin with!

Two-headed Snakes – Who are these snakes?  They are the one that doesn’t honor what they com­mit­ted.  They are also the one that switch sides (on-the-spot) to another party when they see the sit­u­a­tion is favoru­able to them.  They can praise how good they are at man­ag­ing the man­age­ment and at the same time boot-lick the visionay the man­age­ment are in front of them.  At the bot­tom­line, they dis­played their true inten­tions imme­di­ately when they find the sit­u­a­tion favourable to them.  Most of us hate them and regard their exis­tence in the work­place as disgusting.

Fox – They are the sly co-workers lurk­ing in the work­place.  They tend to make plans in advance to cre­ate sit­u­a­tions that’s advan­ta­geous to them.  The best part is you may never even know who they are or if you were part of their cal­cu­lated plan.  They are smart and witty and may appear friendly in front of you.  How­ever, behind you, you may unknow­ingly fall into part of their schem­ing plans

Dog – Dogs are the ones that are obe­di­ent to their “mas­ters’ instruc­tions no mat­ter what.  They can be con­sid­ered loyal as they fol­low to poli­cies and guide­li­ness strictly.  Sim­ply put it, they just fol­low the rules.  They are not flex­i­ble in han­dling “gray” sit­u­a­tions.  At times, they are blinded by the organization’s pol­icy which annoys their co-workers as they lack flex­i­bil­ity and com­mit to unnec­ces­sary (unpro­duc­tive) pro­ce­dures.  Com­par­ing with the foxes, foxes strives to use poli­cies to their advan­tage while dogs pref­ered to fol­low them.

Mon­key – Work­ing with the mon­key can be annoy­ing at times.  Although they are witty and intel­li­gent.  They are com­pla­cent and reck­less, and often or not, they over­see details in the task.  Although, they do not pose much harm as the snakes, they can be some­what annoy­ing when they missed out the details which causes the need for re-work.

Sheeps – Sheeps are those that fol­low instruc­tions blindly.  They never ques­tion the author­ity.  They are very ami­able and at times too “soft“ to han­dle sit­u­a­tions or con­flicts.  They are eas­ily taken advan­tage of as any­thing goes for them.  With their soft and anything-goes per­son­al­ity, they tend to fol­low the chief’s order or become a vic­tim of the two-headed snakes.

Chiefs –They are the one that gather co-workers to sup­port their ide­al­ogy or deci­sions.  Usu­ally the ide­al­ogy defy his boss’s instruc­tions.   If you have sur­bo­d­i­nates of these nat­ural, you know they can be a pain in the neck.  They are con­sid­ered lead­ers of the group or the alpha co-worker where they can influ­ence the other co-workers to sup­port them.

Cruis­ers – These are the co-workers that ride along the achieve­ment of oth­ers or the organ­i­sa­tions.  They just hang around in the organ­i­sa­tion with­out any con­tirub­tion.  At times, you may won­der why these guys are doing in the organisation?

Which of these are pres­ence in your orga­ni­za­tion?  Are they giv­ing you hell or are they try­ing to find ways of sur­vival?  Do you feel any resem­blance with any of this characteristics?

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