Humility

This may be over simplifying things a bit, but I am beginning to think that the single most important thing for dealing with the workplace environment may be humility. Now humility is not meant to imply a lack of a back-bone or even a lack of confidence, but rather a lack of prideful anger.

This does not mean that you should not get angry, it simply means that you need to maintain a perspective that is grounded in humility (ie. no matter how right you may be you have to consider the possibility that you are in the wrong). Even if you are definitely in the right, you have to work with the people around you and being right is not going to make that environment any less hostile. In fact if you are constantly right (and not humble about it) you will likely find yourself dealing with a very hostile environment.

Just some food for thought.