3 Signs Your Office Politics Stock Is About To Crash

With all the news being on stock market crashes and declines recently, have you thought about how your own office politics stock is doing?

Have you ever wondered why some people who always seemed to have a halo around them have gradually lost their glow and previous stars have lost their shine despite the fact that their performance and levels of contribution have not diminished? The answer often lies with the fact that their corporate or office politics stock has crashed. And if this is about to happen to you, you better take notice because your career at your current firm is in serious jeopardy.

The three major signs that you must be on the lookout for to gauge if your stock is declining are:

1. Less “in the know”

You are noticing that you are often one of the last ones to hear about important changes coming up, whereas in the not so distant past, you were more “in the know” of future shifts in the organization.

2. Erosion of your informal network

The informal network that you took so long to cultivate has slowly diminished either due to lay-offs, resignations, or simply because people are aligning themselves with others.

3. Your advice is not sought

You are not being asked to participate in key decisions or strategic discussions and your supervisors and peers do not seek your advice as often as they used to.

In this Forbes article on office politics, the author points out that office politics are inevitable and provides several tactics to properly play the game. These include: build a broad coalition of support, avoid smear campaigns, stay true to your values, connect with your constituents, and play by the rules.

Your personal corporate stock is no different than any stock on the stock exchange, it must be managed. Just because your stock was flying high for awhile, it doesn’t mean that it will stay there. You must regularly tend to it.

Guillaume Hervé is a frequent blogger on leadership and intrapreneurship (corporate entrepreneurship) and the author of the book Winning at Intrapreneurship: 12 Labors to Overcome Corporate Culture and Achieve Startup Success, available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.