Workplace Guides
Practical advice for the specific situations that are hardest to navigate.
When a Colleague Takes Credit for Your Work
You presented an idea in a meeting. A week later, your colleague is repeating it to senior leadership as their own. Or you did the work, and somehow their name is the one attached to it. Credit theft is one of the most common — and most damaging — workplace dynamics. Here's how to handle it without making it worse.
Read guide →How to Deal with a Difficult Manager
A difficult manager is one of the most common and most draining workplace situations. It's also one where most advice is too generic to be useful. "Have an honest conversation" doesn't tell you what to say when your manager avoids direct feedback. "Document everything" doesn't tell you how to rebuild a relationship that's already damaged. What works depends heavily on what type of difficult you're dealing with.
Read guide →How to Navigate Office Politics
Most people who say they hate office politics mean they hate the version where people are dishonest or self-serving at others' expense. That's a reasonable thing to dislike. But that's not what politics is. Politics — in the neutral sense — is just how decisions get made when reasonable people disagree, resources are limited, and not everyone can win. Organizations that have people have politics. The question isn't whether to engage, it's how.
Read guide →How Organizational Culture Shapes Power — and How to Read It
Most workplace navigation advice focuses on individuals — your manager, your peers, the executive who blocked your project. But individual behavior is downstream of something bigger: the culture of the organization. Culture determines which behaviors get rewarded and which get punished, who actually has influence regardless of their title, and what the unwritten rules are that everyone follows but nobody states. Understanding culture isn't a soft skill. It's the prerequisite for everything else working.
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