Who's Your Workplace Princess?

Nearly 50% of all workplaces have at least one workplace princess. These princesses are demanding, require people to move out of their way, want special concessions and often require other people to do their work. 75% of all workplace princesses are females while 25% are males. If you don't know who the workplace princess is in your office there is a good chance it might be you!

Most of us who have had careers for sometime know that there is always a person, or a few people, who expect to be treated better than anyone else. They seem to cater to bosses but treat other employees, including their subordinates, subhuman. They want the best vacation times, the raises, the special assignments, etc. For some reason their bosses comply.

Let me give you an example of an Alpha princess that worked at an automotive vender. She was a new sales person who didn't have much experience and was hired within the firm. The owner took a liking to her because of beauty and soon she was promised to be promoted to a director with less than a year's experience. Other employees were disgruntled by having to deal with her attitude and were unloading to the company's competitors. The amount of disgruntled employees rose dramatically.

Workplace princesses are damaging to the overall work environment. People feel slighted by the special treatment and begin to undermine each other to get special concessions as well. Politics become rampant and playing the politics becomes more important than completing the actual work. Productivity is reduced because people aren't focusing on their tasks because they have to deal with all the "drama".

Teams don't develop well in the castle where princesses reside. It is difficult to get people to work together is someone else is going to take the credit and blame other people when things go bad. To many workers they simply can't stand the injustice of working for the betterment of the princess.

Promoting a princess to a higher position will exacerbate the problem. The more power you give him or her bigger the forum for them to create mischief. In other words, the more compounded the problem becomes throughout the organization and the more negative impact it has.

Despite the negatives of the princess many organizations seem to adopt problem workers as their special workers. In frustration the other workers watch while they do the work but the princess gets the concessions. Developing a workplace where favoritism is minimized has the most beneficial impact.