No matter where you go, whichever organisation or whichever country and whichever culture, the dynamics of work are all the same. Office politics don’t disappear, they simply change colour, mood, topic. They metamorphose similar destructive and unresourceful behaviours that take their toll, both on the organisation and the individual.
I have been coming to the Middle East now for twenty or more years and,especially in the United Arab Emirates(UAE), I’ve seen tremendous changes – both positive and negative. No other country has undergone such dramatic change in the region in this time, only to find itself down on its knees and down on its luck in the past year due to the uncontrolled excesses over this period. Nothing can change so dramatically without having a counter-effect, again on the organisations and the employees.
Job Satisfaction
Gulf News, a UAE newspaper publishes today the results of an online survey into Job Satisfaction, which concludes that twenty seven percent of readers polled are unhappy with their jobs, creating unhappiness and disinterest. The main culprits are office politics, colleagues playing games and of course the recession, impacting enormously on job satisfaction and consequently on performance. Readers cited how understanding and co-operative colleagues can make a difference, how positive attitudes and cross-cultural understanding from colleagues and management can improve performance. Yet several readers stressed how important it was for people to help create their own job satisfaction, how problems can also become opportunities and how employee empowerment can have a positive effect.
Change Strategies
But all this needs a ‘kick-start’ and especially when times are tough. That’s when it’s time to think about using proven psychological and behavioural strategies to bring about, not only change in behaviours, but long-term change in beliefs. Change strategies never succeed unless we change our ‘take’ on our behaviour and lasting change will only happen when we ‘Psych-Up’ to unresourceful attitudes and behaviours.
Give a man a fish and he’ll survive a meal. Give him a fishing-rod and he’ll survive a lifetime. Paradise indeed.