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| Anayo Nwosu |
To Deola, I was the right person to pour her heart to. She
didn't even come to see me on appointment but had barged into my office and
wouldn't allow me to return her greetings when she burst into an embarrassing
cry. My neighbour colleague in the adjoining office or a passer-by would think
that I was responsible for such a spontaneous outburst. But I was innocent. I
was forced to cuddle her closely, holding her so tightly to my chest to feel
her pulse and to snuff off further shriek or loud cry.
Only a man that has ever consoled a beautiful lady would feel me
here. You would be so wicked a man to let her off your bosom or grip until she
on her own distangles herself. In the case of Deola, I was so touched by her
sorrows that I kept stroking her back with one hand while holding her firmly to
my cologned chest with the other hand that had become as tensile as a rope. The
force of my grip leveled her size 36 cupped and standing mammalian glands that
I began to feel what she was passing through without a word.
"Oga Anayo, I cannot cope any longer. What have I done to
deserve all these back biting, backstabbing and destructive gossip by Ajoke,
Tubosun and Adaobi?” Deola opened up as she narrated her catalogue of woes in the
hands of her other unit heads five months before the next yearly promotion
exercise.
In Banking, as in all other professions, office politics plays a
major role on how far a staff can ascend the management level. This is fiercer
in pyramidal departments like Operations, Audit, Internal Control, Information
Technology, Legal, Compliance and Admin. It is even much critical when the
competing officers possess the same requisite paper qualifications and years of
experience.
Any worker who desires to move to the top doesn't need only the
technical knowhow or to be technically sound to be promoted to management
level, the person needs to learn how to navigate his or her way through the
mocky waters of office politics orchestrated mainly by other colleagues who are
equally interested in the same top position. Therefore, when you’re supposed
friendly colleagues start plotting your downfall, don't be alarmed. They are
plotting how to rise in the organisation. All you need do is to adopt counter
measures to ensure that you mitigate the impacts of their actions or simply
insulate yourself.
The intensity of office politics increases as one gets closer to
middle management level. At this stage, only a few staff would be moved to
become supervisors or managers, the remainder of their mates are either
redeployed or eased out. To forestall early exit, the natural instincts of self-preservation
would trigger off survival mechanism that breeds distasteful office politics. Staff
who were not prepared or who couldn't adapt to the demands of office politics
are usually stagnated or eased out of the system. In institutions where staffs
are rarely sacked, the victims’ progressions to the next levels are stunted.
This makes them to form a choir of complainants or the less privileged.
I have studied many who not only survived office politics but
also survived successive administrations with minimal effects on their
movements up to the management ladder and hereby pen down a guide for young
employees or early victims to learn. It is like a discomforting pregnancy that
produces promotion. A staff who has an eye at the top of his or her profession
should from Day 1, find out what it takes to get to the top. He or she should
strive to obtain all the paper qualifications needed to be the head of the
department.
Many departments require specific qualifications like ACA or
ACCA for accounting functions, MBA or MSC in Economics or Finance or Public
Administration for managerial function, MSC in HR for Human Resources function.
Certifications in Information Technology are key to becoming the head of IT
dept.
Even with the requisite qualifications for your field, you would
be pole ahead of others if you have an MBA. It shows that you are ready to
become a manager. Just like "Passing 6 is not passing sense",
possession of a paper certificate does not cure character flaws, lack of self-confidence
or deficit in Emotional Intelligence which do not need the influence of office
politics to make someone a backbencher. An ambitious professional should avoid
scandals. He or she should never voice out any negative opinion or criticism
against members of the management or the direct boss. Supervisors have a
feedback mechanism to monitor subordinates or to gauge their temperature.
Any staff, except the son or the daughter of the company's
owner, who openly opposes his or her boss in a general meeting, has his or her
days numbered in the organisation. It's a no no. Bosses are corrected either
via proverbs or in private. I laugh as some young people make this mistake of
making their bosses look stupid in the public just to appear brilliant or to
impress their colleagues or his boss’ bosses. It's like taking rat poison.
It was early in my career, that I learned not to be seen with
any beautiful girl a senior colleague likes or is planning to like. And because
there is no way to ascertain which lady colleague is being liked or about to be
liked, I learned to mad my madness outside my organisation.
I had to at one point, denounce even my platonic relationship
with a female colleague once I noticed my Oga was looking at her "one
kind". Only a foolish male staff would always be seen with any girl Oga
pays pleasant compliments to. No me! The mistake of being seen to be farming or
planning to farm in Oga's marked farmland has earned some brilliant operations
staff a redeployment to marketing functions whereas cocks, they are asked to
lay big eggs or meet humongous deposit targets. This quickened their exit from
the system.
What about an only son who was punitively redeployed from
Operations function in Owerri to a Marketing function in Maiduguri? He did not
resume and nobody bothered to find out why he didn’t. He lost his job and the
girl.
Nobody, generally adjudged nice to subordinates or extremely
compassionate and generous is invited to the middle management via promotion.
It's very rare. You would be deemed too soft to handle the cane. You must learn
to take hard decisions like recommending your close friends for sack, issuing
queries and maintaining a track record of strictness. Executive Management
requires a managerial candidate to possess, among other skills, a slavedriver
skill to help them extract values from staff.
Deola's case was a bit complicated, she had all the paper
qualifications; she also knows her job by the tip of her fingers but she was a
straightforward person. Deola would always say it as she sees it. She was too
honest to a fault with no taint of eye service. Whatever opinion she
volunteered on the open floor was being relayed in a garnished form to her
general manager, Mr. Olanike the same general manager who continuously felt
deflated as Deola had not been able to decode his coded messages to her. Deola
was determined to resign.
She has had it up to the hilt. And I was encouraging her to tag
on. We were still discussing when her phone rang. The general manager wanted to
see her in his office.
Deola, a 29 years old beauty and a decent lady actually
resigned. She didn’t see the general manager until she returned to her desk,
typed and printed her resignation letter. Mr. Olanike was pleasantly surprised
at Deola's decision. This time around, nobody would accuse him of harassing his
subordinate. He accepted Deola's resignation letter. With the Deola's
resignation letter in one hand, Mr. Olanike went into unprepared speech. He
began to speak while standing until he bent and knelt down not to ask for
Deola's forgiveness; not for her frustrations on the job but his inability to
communicate what he was feeling for her.
He told Deola that she was his ideal wife and that he didn't
know how to approach her for the fear of her saying no. "No for
what?" Deola's was stunned by her unapproved response to the most eligible
bachelor in the bank. A man people mistake for a black Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mr.
Olanike, against the Igbo translation of his name, told Deola he loved her and
could bleach his dark colour if that was what it would take him to marry her.
Impossible! Possibilized! Deola's is now the real supervisor of
her former colleagues.
She is now Mrs Olanike. In a causal discuss in bed and in the
sitting room (the exact places her colleagues had been to service Oga Olanike
not for marriage but to please him for promotion, job protection or retention),
Deola told her husband the true nature of her former colleagues and your guess
as per their fate is as good as mine. In most organisations, the dangerous
players of office politics are the first casualties whenever there is a minor
or major management change. In life there is always cause and effect for
everything.
Therefore, the best way to compete in a managerial race is to
remain professional, ensure you have the requisite paper qualifications, don't
gossip about the boss or management, maintain a disciplined approach to work
and office relationships and pray for luck.
Reading the workers' Bible known as 48 Laws of Power would
administer onto you the required deliverance in correct measure.
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