How to deal with workplace peer pressure?

Every one of us has peers. Peers are no one but people we call friends. Not necessarily all your peers are of equal value with equal influence. Nonetheless, even when you don’t consider them your real friends, peers can still influence your life. 

 

Peers, when they pass positive results, push you towards a better edge, but at the same time, when you are surrounded by negative peers, it can pull you down drastically. And when that happens, you get really unlucky. It lowers your confidence level and increases the inferiority level to an extent where you start criticizing yourself more than others do from a specific stage. What’s worse is that when you are an employee in an organization, it leaves you in a state where you don’t think much about productivity. It thus ruins the organizational performance management as a whole, thus pulling down the business. 

How to deal with peer pressure in your workplace?

When you searched about how to deal with workplace peer pressure, the first thing that probably came to your mind was discussing with any senior guardian or superior you trust blindly. Although we can’t control what others say or behave, we can surely control our responses.

 

Especially when it’s about the office environment, peer pressure isn’t running away anywhere. It stays with you for a long time, and this blog is going to explain to you how to deal with workplace peer pressure. 

• Speak up directly and confidently

We’ve all been to this stage at some point of time. Especially for women employees, working in a male-dominated society is more prone to peer pressures and bullying. However, when working in a company, every staff member or employee must be treated equally. Therefore, when someone tries to bully you, you must answer them not rudely but patiently and CONFIDENTLY. For example, “I’m not sure about completing the task since I’m not used to such activity.” 

 

It is also the task of managers to create strategic business plans to maintain the healthy well-being of an organization.

• Learn to say NO

It is one thing to stay calm and ignore people’s taunts and useless orders. It is a major difference when you learn to say no to wrong things. Being upfront might not seem good at all times, but it does seem to show its effect on the rightful people who deserve to hear it.

 

When you are silent for too long, people start taking you for granted, and you can expect a pulling behavior that might not be good to survive at a workplace. Moreover, it is often difficult to speak against wrong things just to save your job or the position you have been waiting for. 

 

However, it is not the right thing to keep mum about things that might lose your self-respect in a brief period. Once you are firm in your appropriate actions, it will automatically lower your stress since you won’t be spending time and energy on something you don’t want hovering around you.

• Eliminating yourself from useless situations

There are still situations where people won’t take no for an answer. Instead, those people would go deeper to keep you engaged in useless time and activities. At times, they’ll ensure that you engage in their talks in a way where you need to turn against your ethics. 

 

There are staff who even deliberately do all the sweet talk and take you on the negative side where you face more problems. There are even instances where the grades of well-performing employees start decreasing for inattention and distractions. This undoubtedly ruins the organizational performance of even a well-established company.

 

Therefore, it is better to avoid such crowds that only seek your loss and detrimental—for example, turning offline in a useless chat, not receiving untimely calls, fruitless talks, etc. 

• Keep Good Company

All companies have good and bad employees, not from the work side but the personality side. So what and how must you make up your mind? Simple. Try staying mostly with the good employees who are more engaged in their office work than just dilly-dallying. It’s better to stay away from harsh office politics and maintain a universal behavior with everyone. 

 

Good colleagues can also be helpful even in unknown places. All you need to find are good companions who are with you through thick and thin. You can try choosing people who have similar views or interesting mindsets about modern-day changes, careers, and opportunities. 

 

You can be fickle-minded, but it’s always necessary to keep your eyes and nose open when dealing with such a negative friend circle. 

 

Expert Mind Solutions is a leading company consulting group in Malaysia that offers special HRD Corp training courses and helps people get stronger mentally and physically. Anyone dealing with low spirit or inferiority can consult their professional team for they are experienced with every business challenge.