Every office has a wide range of personalities working in it. Which category do you fall into?
1) Brown-noser:
Every office has one of these. These shameless sycophants suck up to management in the hope of promotion. Have you ever commented on your boss’ appearance or do you stick your head round their office door each afternoon and offer to get them lunch?
If you have then you definitely fall into the brown nose category and you should start to think very carefully about your behaviour. Not only will this alienate your colleagues, more often than not management can see right through it. Trying to get a promotion through brown nosing rather than hard work is, to all intents and purposes cheating, and remember, cheats never prosper!
2) Lazy Git:
Nothing annoys office workers more than having someone in their team who doesn’t pull their weight. Whether it is not doing their fair share of the work or relying on others to carry them through, lazy gits are generally more preoccupied about checking their Facebook than the task in hand.
If you have developed ways which waste time but make you look busy, such as tidying your inbox or organising your desk, then you probably fall into this category.
3) Stress Pot:
Stress pots are highly volatile people. From the moment they wake up until they go to bed they are worrying about something.
For them, the tiniest set back can mean the end of the world as they know it and result in a nuclear explosion emanating from their desk.
It is fairly easy to spot if you are seen as the office powder keg. If you would describe yourself as a ‘control freak’ then alarm bells should start to ring now.
Whilst you may see yourself as obsessed with the detail, others will see you as a ticking time bomb ready to blow up in their face over the smallest error.
4) Mug:
You couldn’t do me a huge favour could you?
If you are confronted with this question on a regular basis, then I’m afraid you are the office mug.
Every office has a mug – someone who will always say yes to any task you give them regardless of the job, tasks which are often mind numbingly boring such as photocopying, binding reports etc.
Inevitably, there is a fine line between giving your fellow colleagues a hand and being used. Many mugs delude themselves by thinking that they are just being helpful or that their assistance will be reciprocated, but they are wrong.
When you are doing someone else’s work you are not doing your own and this has a direct impact on both yours and your team’s productivity. In business the ability to say no is just as important as the ability to say yes.
5) Skiver:
Is there someone in your office who pulls just one to many ‘sickies’ for it to be believable? If yes then you have a skiver in your midst.
Skivers are arguably worse than lazy gits as at least the latter bother to turn up for work, however both are weak links in the office chain and their behaviour needs to be nipped in the bud.
How do you know if you fall into this category? Well, ask yourself how many times you have passed a hangover off as flu – if the answer is more than once then you are a skiver.
6) Chatterbox:
If you would describe yourself as having a bubbly personality who gets on with everybody and enjoys a good gossip, then you are quite possibly the office chatterbox.
There is nothing wrong with chatting about what was on TV last night or if the right person got kicked off X-Factor, but don’t let it happen to the detriment of yours and your colleague’s productivity.
Everyone enjoys a good natter but every now and again people would actually like to get some work done. Understand when the conversation has ended and shut up.
7) Credit Hogger:
Credit hogging can take many forms. These range from not congratulating a colleague for a good idea all the way to passing off someone’s idea as your own.
Hogging the credit for a successful task will win you no friends in the office, and I’m afraid to say middle management is often guilty of this.
Remember a workplace is a team, and for a team to work successfully praise needs to be distributed evenly. Credit hoggers are greedy and will come to regret it the next time they ask their colleagues for help.
8) Worker Bee:
You are the first to arrive at work and the last to leave. You eat lunch at your desk and have so few toilet breaks people think your bladder is made of stone. Conversation between colleagues is limited strictly to business and going for a drink after work is completely off the cards.
Routine is everything for the worker bee – their day is planned to the minute and there is very little room for anything else.
Perhaps due to their reputation for being unspeakable dull, worker bee’s never feel fully part of the office team and as such can be seen as an outsider.
9) Joker:
Humour is essential for any office environment. If you can’t have a laugh with your colleagues then office moral is seriously affected.
However, when it comes to humour it is essential to know the lines not to cross and more importantly when to stop. The office joker is someone who is oblivious to these points.
Do you always feel the need to be funny? Do you equate making people laugh with them liking you? If so, you are in danger of becoming the office joker. You try and turn everything into a joke even when it is not funny.
If this sounds like you then be very careful because one day you may say something that could backfire on you badly and land you out of a job.
10) Machiavelli:
Has your ambition to succeed made you ruthless? Are you prepared to leave bodies in your wake to achieve success? If so then you are a Machiavellian.
The Machiavellian is extremely cunning, they know where they want to get and will stop at nothing to achieve this.
There is nothing wrong with ambition, for some it’s what gets them out of bed in the morning and what motivates them to work hard, however, this determination can turn to ruthlessness.
They will tend to be very quiet about their ambitions however, their aim will ultimately be to build people up for a fall, then stand back and wait to take their place.
To those Machiavellis out there remember this: “He who wields the dagger never wears the crown.”
Author: Michael Davies from LondonOffices.com
