Dil Se Poochein — Reflection #12

Career & Money • Mind & Self

A note before we begin: this Reflection is written for the new employee, but if you’re the manager or senior reading this, jump straight to the note for you if you’re short on time.

The Smile in the Meeting

It is your first week. In the team meeting, a colleague smiles, nods at your suggestion and says, “That’s a great idea.” You feel a small glow of belonging. Ten minutes later, in the corridor, you overhear the same colleague telling someone else that the idea was “a bit naive, but he’ll learn.” Nothing dramatic has happened.

No one raised a voice. And yet you now know that what is said in the room and what is said outside it can be two very different things. This is the office politics no one warns you about, and it usually announces itself in a moment this small. It arrives quietly, wearing a friendly face, in the first week of a job you were so excited to begin.

The Politics Nobody Teaches

College prepares you for the work. It teaches you the subject, the tools, the deadlines and the exams. What it never teaches is the unwritten layer on top: who gets heard in a meeting, who gets credit for a result, and whose opinion quietly decides the outcome before anyone speaks.

The office politics no one warns you about is missing from every syllabus and every offer letter. Nobody hands you a guide to it on the first day. Most people learn it the hard way, by getting it wrong once or twice and then adjusting. That is the real gap in corporate life after college. You arrive trained for the tasks and unprepared for the people, and the people turn out to matter at least as much as the tasks.

What Office Politics Actually Looks Like

The office politics no one warns you about rarely looks dramatic. There are no villains twirling moustaches. It looks like credit taken quietly: a colleague presenting your analysis as “our work” in front of the senior team. It looks like information shared selectively, so that some people hear about a change early and others find out when it is too late to respond. It looks like groups that form over lunch and shape opinions long before a formal meeting begins.

It looks like decisions that are already made by the time the meeting is called, with the meeting itself a formality. None of this is announced. It is simply how a workplace behaves when people are competing for limited attention, limited promotions and limited trust, and it happens in almost every organisation, large or small.

Why It Feels Personal When It Isn’t

When you are the one on the receiving end, it feels deeply personal. You ask yourself what you did wrong, what you missed, why this person seems to dislike you. But most of the office politics no one warns you about isn’t about you at all. It is about competition for a limited supply of attention, recognition and promotion.

A colleague who takes credit isn’t thinking about you. They are thinking about their own appraisal. A senior who excludes you from a conversation may simply be protecting their own position. Dealing with toxic colleagues becomes easier once you stop reading each incident as a verdict on your worth. It is usually a reflection of their pressure, their insecurity or their ambition. That doesn’t make the behaviour acceptable. It just stops it from becoming your identity.

The Two Traps

New employees usually fall into one of two traps. The first is to ignore the office politics no one warns you about completely, to believe that good work alone will speak for itself. It is a noble idea, and it leaves you blindsided when someone else collects the credit for your effort. The second trap is the opposite: joining in. You start gossiping, collecting allies, speaking differently in the corridor than in the room, and slowly you lose the integrity you walked in with.

Both traps feel like solutions at the time. Ignoring it feels honest. Joining it feels practical. The harder truth is that how to survive office politics lies in the narrow path between them: aware enough to protect yourself, principled enough not to play the same game.

Why Freshers Are the Easiest Target

Office politics for freshers is a particular problem because everything about being new makes you easy to overlook or use. You are eager to please, so you say yes to everything. You don’t yet know the history behind people’s relationships, so you can’t tell who is trusted and who is not.

You haven’t built a record of achievements, so your contribution is easy to absorb into someone else’s. And you badly want to be liked, which makes a friendly face feel like a safe one. The office politics no one warns you about falls hardest on freshers precisely because they are open, willing and unguarded. None of those qualities is a weakness. But early on, they need to be paired with a little quiet observation.

From My Own Table

Wah, kya baat hai. That is the office politics no one warns you about: in a corporate life, you never really know who people are until you have worked beside them for years.

I worked for more than 21 years under a senior whom my father had already served for 25. Whenever this man was in trouble, over a promotion or a complaint about his own boss, he came to my father for help. Yet behind my father’s back, he told the top boss that my father was not doing his work, while my father was working directly with that boss on a very big project. My father spent his working life under that tension and was never once praised for it.

Then came my turn. He took my progress report and emailed it upward, and it came back to me with a scolding. He was polite when he handed over a project. But when I asked for extra time, he said, “You should have said no when you accepted it.” He never gave me the chance to say no. Later, he complained about the big boss to me. The moment I joined in, he said, “No, no, the boss is very good.”

So I told him plainly: “Don’t complain about the boss to me. I am not your dustbin.”

My rule since then is simple. Never carry anyone’s complaints about the top boss, not even your immediate boss’s. If you want peace and smooth work, don’t be anyone’s dustbin.

The Gen-Z Layer

Workplace politics Gen-Z employees face has a layer earlier generations never had. The first job often begins on a hybrid or remote schedule, which means less time physically in the room. You miss the corridor conversations, the lunch-table opinions and the small signals that older colleagues picked up without trying.

So the office politics no one warns you about has moved into places that are harder to read: private chat groups, side threads, emails with a surprising list of people copied, and meetings where the real discussion happened in a message you were never part of. Silence in a group chat can be as loud as a raised voice. For someone starting corporate life after college, learning to read these digital signals is now part of the job, even though no one has described it as such.

“Most office politics isn’t about you. It is about what someone else is afraid of losing.”

How to Read the Room Without Joining the Game

Learning how to survive office politics begins with observation. Spend your first months watching more than speaking. Notice who is listened to, who is interrupted, and who seems to know things before the official announcement. Keep simple records of your own work: a short email summarising what you delivered and when, so that credit has a paper trail. Build a few honest allies, people who are fair, who share credit and who say the same thing in private that they say in public.

And hold one rule firmly: never say in private what you couldn’t say in public. That single habit protects your reputation better than any strategy. Reading the office politics no one warns you about isn’t about becoming political. It is about being aware enough that nobody can quietly use you, while staying someone people can trust.

“You can understand the game completely and still refuse to play it.”

A Note for the Manager or Senior Reading This

If you’ve stayed with us this far, thank you. If you manage a team or hold a senior seat, you decide, more than anyone else, whether the office politics no one warns you about grows or quietly stops. Praise in the open, so credit has a clear owner. Share information with the whole team, not only with favourites, so no one has to depend on whispers. Credit the person who did the work, even when it would be easier to present it as the team’s.

Notice when a new joiner is being talked over, and make space for them. Politics thrives wherever people feel that fairness is optional. A manager who makes it visible that fairness is expected can change the culture of a team without ever saying the word “politics” out loud.

Practice: Protecting Yourself as a New Employee

1. Observe for the first few weeks before taking sides. Watch who is trusted, who is respected and who spreads rumours. Be friendly with everyone, close to no one yet. You can always become closer later, but it is much harder to undo an early alliance.
2. Keep a simple record of your work. After a major task, send a short summary email to your manager: what you did, what was delivered, and when. It is not about proving anything. It simply makes sure the office politics no one warns you about can’t erase your contribution.
3. Build two or three honest allies. Look for colleagues who credit others, who say the same thing in private and in public, and who are fair even when no one is watching. A few such people will protect you more than a large circle of friendly acquaintances.
4. Respond to gossip with a polite exit. When someone starts speaking badly about a colleague, you don’t need to argue. Say, “I haven’t seen that side of them,” and change the subject. This keeps your integrity without making an enemy.

The office politics no one warns you about will meet you at some point in every job. It may arrive in your first week or in your fifth year, and it rarely announces itself. It is not a sign that you chose the wrong company, and it is not proof that you are not good enough. It is simply what happens when people compete for attention, credit and trust, and you will see it in almost every workplace you ever join.

You cannot remove it, but you can learn to read it, protect yourself from it and refuse to become part of it. Work honestly, even when nobody is watching. Speak the same way in every room. Keep a few good people close, and leave the whispers to those who need them. Some days, doing this will feel like swimming against the current. Other people may seem to move ahead faster by playing the game, and you may wonder if your principles are costing you. They are not. The workplace may stay political, but you don’t have to. That is the kind of professional people remember, and quietly trust, long after the politics has been forgotten.

If this is where you are right now, and you’d like to talk it through with someone who understands, we’re here. WhatsApp us at 1609.

Next week: “Can You Really Stay Friends With an Ex? What Has to Be True First”, for anyone who has ever wondered whether “let’s stay friends” was kindness or just a way of not letting go.