Some thoughts on 'social skills' and office politics.

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About mishaps with social skills between the management there are various examples. The following example is the most brilliant!

It took weeks to get a copying machine at the new working location. When it arrived it was too slow, 20 copies in a minute. My colleagues and I myself started to complain. Then my previous boss noticed that that was the wrong machine and he wanted to replace it. But he didn't say anything about the computer technician that had to add printer functionality to the machine.

Later on the machine was finally arrived so the old machine got replaced with the newer machine. Of course the printer function was on the old one but not on the new one. The technician came again and had to install the printer function again on the copying machine. He was evidently not amused. I had a chat with him. My old boss told to his boss that he wanted to have a copy machine. He got one but after complaying of the colleagues he asked his boss to replace it. But various persons are involved with that management glitch.

In short:
- First we had to wait weeks for a copying machine;
- The printer functionality was added by a computer technician;
- Then the machine had to be replaced but in the meantime we had been using the copying machine for several weeks;
- The technician had to come back and was clearly pissed off.

Oh, and the technician said: "If the management comes with a new copying machine each week, on which I have to add the printer functionality, it will be quite a bit tedious." I know he is a bit exaggerating, but I fully understand his irritation.

I know I can be very blunt and clumsy with people - "brutally honest" is how my husband describes it - but I have the same experience, that I can function as a diplomat because I often see the bigger picture.

I find I generally spend a lot of time getting to know someone and understanding how they see the world. I can often pinpoint exactly where communication breaks down, for ex. how people are using the same expression but understanding it differently. I think I am good at asking the right questions to get people thinking about their situation and not just reacting. However, my ability to interact with people is hugely dependent on how I feel that day.

Because I've had a lot of temporary jobs replacing people on sick leave or maternity leave, I've tried a lot of different businesses and types of organizations, so I have some idea of what settings are conducive to me functioning socially. It has to

- be a private business or a bureaucracy that actually has to provide a service. These are measured on output, which means they have to focus on tasks.

- not be too large, or a least divided into independent sections. I seriously believe that large corporations are indistinguishable from communist planned economies. The bizarre micromanagement is detrimental to everyone involved.

- have at least decent management. When management isn't functioning, everybody is insecure, which brings out their worst traits, and the circus starts.

The interesting thing is that I often have a very hard time being accepted into an established group, but on a few occasions I've ended up being a sort of unofficial leader figure in settings where everyone was new together. Possibly because I am not shy in structured social settings, and I am good at introducing people to each other and getting them started on communicating. Also, people appreciate it when someone focuses on constructive problem solving while keeping a civil tone.

Does anyone else have a similar experience?

Generally it is adviced to stay out of office politics if you have autism (spectrum disorder), but I may soon get completely involved into this, till my neck.

The problem is my previous boss and my current boss. Previous boss thinks that I have an intellectual retardation (and I discussed this in a separate topic) and my current boss thinks highly about me. "I thought that you are pretty smart!" (seriously said, definitely not in a mocking way; for that I know her well enough). She invited the supporting personel (I am part of that team) and asked to us what our curricula vitae are, and what our wishes are about tasks and acquiring new skills. The next week I will have a talk about that with her.

The problems are:
- my previous boss thinks that I am not able to learn;
- my previous boss is my new boss's boss.

My old boss wants to keep me but in an underemployment state. So it will be a difficult situation. Imagine, she assigns different tasks to me, and she allows to acquire new skills by following courses. What will my old boss (=her boss) do? Will he overrule her decisions? I am really afraid that he will do so.

With my new boss I want to discuss about myself, how I am behaving social, how I organize my tasks, how I complete them, what my shortcomings are, what can be done about it to tackle those shortcomings, in the finest possible details. If following a course is necessary, then so be it. I will gladly following courses.

My old boss may want to tell her: "Hmk can follow courses, but he has to pay for it. No working times will be spent. Nor will we use his intelligence."

When diplomacy can get things done it's great.

My nightmare scenario that happened both when I first started out after college and has happened to me on the job I'm at right now is pretty much a 'your screwed' scenario; ie. when there's so much conflict within the department, immediately over that department, with the integral departments, that even if you can get some amount of training you're decisions are stifled so badly by complexities and caveats of how they've mismanaged things that you're almost paralyzed and useless at your job.

A more homey synonym is if you have a dad, uncle, or someone else close in the family whose an absent-minded handyman, has asked you to help on a task, and no matter how well-pointed the questions you ask them are you can get absolutely no vision or description of what they're trying to do, so through the whole event you're stuck functioning quite a bit like an 8 year-old because of the other person's either inability to communicate or refusal to do so.

The present job actually has had me wondering if I have the gumption to be an accountant - if I should just go back to the service industry somewhere. I wasn't quick enough or clever enough to manage a boss who wouldn't read my emails or gave responses that showed she barely skimmed them, if I wasn't clever enough to babysit a department who was actively rebelling against a new system implementation to have buyers process the invoices, if I wasn't able to navigate being told specifically not to call for POD's or credit memos and that the manager of finance felt like it was work we shouldn't have to do but then again we were supposed to break those rules to show that we were on top of problem solving (as well as we're not supposed to email the buying team on invoices we've already noted....but we are... and I can't get a 'when is it okay?') - if that's a standard story everywhere I literally might be too mentally straight-laced to survive. If people create multiple canopies of complexities and caveats to keep their own food and can make rocket-science of the simplest things it means that to the extent that my autism shows at all in my facial or body-language (really where it hurts me the most) that's blood in the water.

The problem with that idea is the same problem that applies to politics in general: If you don't take an interest in politics, politics will take an interest in you. At least it is important to know somebody who can tell you what is going on. Really, most of the time, you don't have a choice.

Is it possible to work for a smaller company? I feel that this reduces the number of vectors that I have to keep track of.

It's possible just that truthfully I'd have to personally know the people running it to know that it was a safe option. Mom-and-pop firms and companies can be either be great places to work or some of the absolute worst (my first and worst job out of college was for a family CPA firm). Larger companies seem like the worst they can be is a fast-average of both polarities, just because it's much more difficult for fifty to one hundred people to unanimously have no bearing on reality than a handful who happen to be blood relatives.

I'm generally not a fan of family companies. You want a bit of formal distance at work. However, I remember working in a company that was in a slightly low status business. I swear, half the company must have been neurodiverse. Never worked with a better team, never had so much fun at work.

I've been in good places, I've been in bad places.

The best thing is to make sure your work is done.

That presupposes that someone actually told you what your job is. In a chaotic job environment where no one feels responsible for you, tasks can go unmentioned; when they are not done, you're the one with egg on your face even though you had no way of knowing that this was part of your duties. I had that happen to me, and it was a total shock. It's not enough to do the rest of your job well.

The longer I visit this forum (part of this board), the more examples of communication (or clumsynication) mishaps I remember.

Previous school year (from August 2014 to July 2015) I was asked to make labels for the internal mailboxes (each colleague has a small mailbox, in which he receives internal physical post (that is not sent by e-mail using the school computer network)). The labels had to be alphabetically sorted on the family name. So I thought to be smart, went to the online school administration system and downloaded the personnel list. The personnel list was not up-to-date. I saw names of colleagues that left the workplace months - even some years - ago, and I didn't see names of new colleagues. I went to my former boss and asked who was responsible for keeping the list up-to-date. He was not responsible, he said. Nor are the application manager, nor the administrative personnel, nor the school managers. But who is? Obviously a procedure is missing when a new colleague has been accepted after an application process, or when an old colleague left the workplace (or was fired, but firing colleagues is very rare). But it is sure that there is a mishap.

There's a lot of good companies out there just that it's tough to research and find them out and even if you find a good company your profession can still land in a bad department.

Part of why I decided to go with recruiters and headhunters was the client/vendor relationship propping me up where the idea was that the headhunter or temp service would want to keep me in hospitable work environments otherwise risk losing me and would also want to keep me there to keep making money themselves, even if they have some incentive to keep me contract longer than otherwise would happen.

With the last two jobs, somehow, it just so happened that the temp services found me temp to hires at places that were imploding. I know at both places I worked with people who'd been there for years and are still there, there seems to be a LIFO policy (last-in first-out) that I'd need to get past in order to stay with a company for a healthy enough length of time to really get an intuitive grip on how it all works. I'm hoping better luck comes my way somewhere down the road because I figure once i can get extensive experience in a non-nitch position I'll be in a much more secure place regardless of whether shareholders throw out a spendthrift CEO and have to groom the company to be sold by cutting like crazy or whether someone's playing departmental musical chairs in a way that impacts me, after a certain point I have to figure that the experience and length of time at a place would get me past whatever organizational psychosis I saw at the next place.

Yuck.

The more I hear about this kind of thing the more a theory of mine that I've had is starting to grow. A lot of people, by quantity NT's, grew up in chaotic home conditions, were inherently good at managing chaos, found out that it didn't get them real far with academics but they found out that if they could weave all kinds of complexities into the work world that they could bend the playing field to themselves. Essentially once a supervisor shows weakness and starts letting someone, especially someone with some degree of organizational power, start doing whatever they want, putting things where they aren't supposed to go, creating exceptions on top of exceptions, that person starts creating an environment where only people like themselves can thrive. From there good workers start leaving, more people like the first mention start coming on board, and eventually the company either tanks or goes through a major blood-letting and all too often the isht rolls downhill on someone who wasn't the cause of it just because the person who started weaving the labrynth knew how to shield themselves from it with good-ol-fashion experience.

It's a waste of energy to panic about stuff that hasn't yet happened.






That sounds like an excellent idea - you should put the development plan in writing, develop mini-milestones (to measure your progress) and ask to meet with the new boss regularly (monthly or every 2-3 weekly) to ensure that you stay on track. It's also provides your new boss with tangible evidence to tell her superiors that you are doing a good job, take direction well and take the initiative to improve in the areas that require improvement.



What is your office's formal policy on reimbursement for training costs and personal development activities? If it includes paying for relevant course work and/or time at work for improvement activities, you should note that in your written development plan.

For instance, my employer's policies include paying for coursework to maintain certification if the position requires that certification -- so taking the continuing education classes required to maintain CPA, lawyer, etc. certification are covered. If your company has no such policy, refusing to pay for your CPA coursework isn't discrimination -- it's simply policy, since nobody's CPA courses are automatically covered.

That is my idea indeed. I am not sure whether that will work. The coming Friday I am sure, but I am pessimistic. When he ignores my achievements related to work (learning to program in Visual Basic for Applications to automatize some of my tasks) and private live (living independently, handling work location as well as other colleagues), when he ignores my diplomas that I achieved in the past, it is likely as well, that he ignores my certificates and diplomas which I may have in the near future.

My new boss may admire what I am doing and plan to do, but I am not sure at all about her boss. With my autism he can nulify things if he so wishes.

If I have to study (on whatever area) I am willing to pay and in my free time (not let my boss pay and study in her/his time), but that must be appreciated. It is strange or outright stupid to accept certificates from others, but not from me.

That he thinks that I can't live independently or cannot handle work relocations is what he believes but that is definitely not true. My former group home staff, my parents and I myself think I have achieved a lot. Until now my old boss didn't ask what I really think of the work relocation, and I don't think he will, because I will tell him something which he doesn't believe.