{"id":8487,"date":"2011-07-13T13:55:01","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T17:55:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/hr\/2011\/07\/the-pissing-contest-and-other-time-wasters.html"},"modified":"2011-07-13T13:55:01","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T17:55:01","slug":"the-pissing-contest-and-other-time-wasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/hr\/2011\/07\/the-pissing-contest-and-other-time-wasters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pissing Contest and Other Time Wasters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve enjoyed working with a few bosses who bring up the term &#8220;pissing contest&#8221; when people fight over silly things at work.<\/p>\n<p>Workplace crisis can develop when too many &#8220;pissing contests&#8221; take place and when trust is at a low. It&#8217;s up to leaders to not focus so much energy on the &#8220;pissing&#8221; and more on developing better ways of recognizing and rewarding hard work and effort.<\/p>\n<p>The oneupmanship that can occur at work often happens because not enough attention is given to the people doing the work. It&#8217;s not solved by micromanaging; instead, the good old MBWA (managing by walking around) to just make your presence felt on a regular (but non-predictable) frequency can make all of the difference.<\/p>\n<p>One of my favorite tricks was to walk out for a few minutes onto a sales floor, spend about 15 minutes out there interacting with each staff member, and then heading to the back. Then, within about 5 minutes of going to the back, I&#8217;d come back out and just observe.<\/p>\n<p>Think about ways you can be better at stopping the pissing contests that can happen at work. I&#8217;m looking forward to hearing some of your comments (which I will post next week).<\/p>\n<p>&#x72;&#x6f;&#x62;&#x65;&#x72;&#x74;&#x40;&#x67;&#x61;&#x6c;&#x61;&#99;&#111;&#110;&#99;&#105;&#101;&#114;ge&#46;com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve enjoyed working with a few bosses who bring up the term &#8220;pissing contest&#8221; when people fight over silly things at work. Workplace crisis can develop when too many &#8220;pissing contests&#8221; take place and when trust is at a low&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,13,16,28,30,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-customer-relations","category-employee-relations","category-feedback","category-hospitality","category-management","category-motivation","category-time-management"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>The Pissing Contest and Other Time Wasters - Robert Braathe&#039;s HR &amp; Albany Jobs Blog<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.albany.com\/hr\/2011\/07\/the-pissing-contest-and-other-time-wasters\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pissing Contest and Other Time Wasters - Robert Braathe&#039;s HR &amp; Albany Jobs Blog\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#039;ve enjoyed working with a few bosses who bring up the term &quot;pissing contest&quot; when people fight over silly things at work. 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