Crystal's Notes 8 March

A reader reached out this week with a frustrating situation. Her colleague was manipulating their boss to push extra work onto her while reserving the high-visibility, career-boosting projects for herself. How do we protect our time and energy without getting caught up in petty office games?

What To Do With Toxic Colleagues Who Play Politics

1. Strengthen your own status and influence so these situations don’t happen in the first place. Spend time building social capital and forming strategic alliances with high-level colleagues and bosses. If you're seen as a high-value person, your leaders will want you working on meaningful projects, and not bog you down with low-impact tasks.

   To do this, focus on:

   • Career visibility: Work on initiatives that are high-visibility and high-priority.

   • Speaking up in meetings: Position yourself as a thought leader in your domain.

   • Building authentic relationships: Cultivate authentic relationships that are non-transactional, so that you’re not only interfacing with people whenever you have a problem.

   Having worked overseas, I’ve seen how foreigners place a much greater emphasis on social skills, relationship building and emotional intelligence much more than we do. Many Singaporeans seem to struggle with these aspects because we were raised to prioritise academic excellence over social intelligence and personal growth.

2. Learn how to handle and block moves in the moment by speaking up assertively and skillfully. Some ways to respond:

   “I’d love to help, but I’m currently focused on X priority, which is driving Y outcome.”

   “I understand this is urgent. How can we fairly distribute these tasks among the team?”

   “Let’s step back and create a system for this workflow so we’re more strategic.”

3. Be proactive about alignment and updating your boss so you have clarity on your top priorities. This helps to constantly create buy-in from your boss about what you should be working on. A simple weekly update outlining the top three priorities you’re working on in order of importance, what your plan is for the next week, and how and what sort of outcomes or success metrics you are looking at makes it easier to push back when work is unfairly assigned.

New Course on Career Visibility & Influence

I am putting together an online course, and it’d be great for those who are not in Singapore, or who want an affordable, self-paced way to learn all this stuff that is so crucial to your success but nobody ever teaches.

If you’ve ever struggled with:

• Navigating difficult workplace dynamics

• Advocating for yourself in a way that feels authentic

• Building the right relationships for long-term success

Then this course is for you.

Join the waitlist here to be the first to know when it launches!

Much love

Crystal