Identify the 4W’s!
Your office is a complex environment that takes time to understand. It consists of a group of people with very specific interests and different personalities. Each person will have a different approach to try to advance their career.
In addition, there is usually more than meets the eye. There are frequently alliances and rivalries that are not shared openly. So how do you make sense of this complex situation and set yourself for success?
I found a model that has been very useful to me, in the book “Warriors, Workers, Whiners, and Weasels: The 4 Personality Types in Business and How to Manage Them to Your Advantage” by entrepreneur Tim O’Leary.
The premise of the book is that essentially everyone fits into one of four personality archetypes: Warrior, Worker, Whiner, or Weasel. This is the way O’Leary defines each of them:
- Warriors confront change, see possibilities, innovate and manage to win. They are optimist and have a can-do attitude. They take responsibility for their successes and failures. They often win because they are willing to persevere longer than others. They are strong and energetic, but can also be self-centered, hot-tempered and highly critical.
- Workers deal with the ups, downs and challenges of everyday corporate life dependably, and can reliably implement the change and direction established by the Warriors. They are the backbone of the office. They take pride in what they do and strive to be the best they can be.
- Whiners go through life complaining about everything, they always have time to share their negativism and dissatisfaction with the past, present and future plans. They are never at fault, and blame others for their own shortcomings. Even though they are often talented, they don’t dare to be Warriors so they don’t have to take responsibility if they fail. They tend to be big gossipers.
- Weasels, use every sleazy tactic imaginable to advance their careers regardless of how it affects others. They have no regard for honesty, friendship or trustworthiness. They stand out not by being excellent at what they do, but by putting others down. They operate from a deep sense of insecurity, which drives them to try to destroy the success of others. They usually spread rumors and create confusion. They claim to be everybody’s friend, but do not follow through, and will always put their interests first.
The first step to use this model is to analyze ourselves to understand which category suits us best. It is obvious that it’s better to be a Warrior or a Worker than a Whiner or Weasel. But, do you catch yourself sometimes behaving like a Whiner or a Weasel? Or do you fall pray of these two characters and mimic their behavior? It is very easy to join the pity party. The model provides you with an easy way of deciding the role that you want to play in the whole system.
After you are clear about who you are and what behaviors you want to cultivate in your career, it’s a lot of fun to map all the people in your office in one of these categories. When you do that, it is so much easy to manage office politics. You will know how to deal with the negative characters so that they don’t impact your life negatively. O’Leary compares Whiners and Weasels to the common cold. You will not be able to eliminate them from your life, but you can take precautions to limit the frequency in which they enter in contact with you and the damage that they do.
