Is Employee Favoritism Ruining Your Chances of Growth: Time to Deal With It

Sometimes because of favoritism playing ground at work is not a level field. A survey conducted states that almost 90% of the upper level executives have witnessed the effects of favoritism in employee promotions, delegation of work and the annual increments at their own organizations.

The reason is simple. You love your job, you are a hard worker and you look forward each day as an opportunity to give your best shot, but unfortunately your boss is unable to notice your performance.

Most of the times managers themselves don’t know that they are favouring someone over the other, because they are not doing it deliberately. This makes favoritism not just a problem for the employees but managers as well. They are in the danger of overlooking the valuable skill set offered by other employees.

From an employee’s end he or she may feel discouraged and unmotivated to perform at full potential. It hampers growth from both the ends. But there are things that an employee can do to deal with favoritism at work. Lets us see them one by one.

Maintain a Good Relation With the Favoured Co-worker

You may feel the brunt when someone else who is less talented is favoured more than you are. It may make you subconsciously hate that one person. This hate can develop into something big that will only hurt you in the long run. You may end up neglecting the good qualities the favoured employee possesses, and give up your chance to learn something from him or her.

Instead, you should try to keep the hate aside. You need to accept the fact that even though you are better than him when it comes to work, but he is better than you in building relationships. In this regard you need to have respect for him. It will also keep the jealousy out of your mind and you will be able to see that one thing your boss likes in him the most.

Market Your Achievements to Those Who Listen

If you are unable to market your achievements to your boss then you need to be appreciative of your achievements to those who are close to him or her. A way to do this is to feel happy about something that you achieved recently and discuss it with your co-workers.

At some point your boss will know that you are doing some work. When that happens your boss will feel positive about you. And this would be the most favorable time when you can make a move. You can try to initiate a friendly gesture and build up on it.

Build Connections Via Natural Gameplay

Every favoured person was at one time a new hire. Except when boss hires someone whom he or she already knows. Or your boss favours him for personal reasons. What I am trying to say is that you can emulate the same thing that he did. And let’s not forget that he did it by building connections.

Working all these years I have seen that building connections is always a give and take game. It may be your talent, your skill and even love or empathy involved in the give and take equation.

But we need to think of building connections by diverting our attention from this give and take equation. Think of it as something selfless, something that is natural. A natural gameplay is hard to play and it takes time to develop it. You need practice but trust me that it works wonders if done properly.

Talk About It With Colleagues

If everything fails and there is nothing that you can do then this favouritism must just not be affecting you only. I have seen many workplaces where favouritism is very obvious and people start living with it. This is bad for everyone who is not favoured. But the worse thing is overlooking or ignoring this fact.

Everyone needs to deal with the issue by taking a united stand, before the favoured employee becomes an apparent obligation. You can raise your voice by talking about the issue with those who are most affected or those who are close to you at work. People will definitely understand and then you can deal with the issue by talking with your boss about it. A smart boss will definitely value the voice of democracy.

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Vartika Kashyap currently runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. She is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.

Also follow our company page @ProofHub to get the recent updates about our tool, published articles, motivational quotes & presentations.

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Originally published at Huffington Post