I was comparing Netflix queues with my friend, Sadie, and the law of averages is working for both of us. There are plenty of wins like The Gentlemen. But there have also been several misses, where we won’t be back.
Unfortunately, Sadie’s streaming choices weren’t the only crossroads she faced. Her career situation has had all the misses of The Golden Bachelor—shenanigans, half-truths, and well-intentioned promises that went nowhere. She’s spent the last six months in limbo, waffling between Bare Minimum Monday and Quiet Quitting.
But detaching had its place because rumors about an acquisition had hit the media. On the one hand, she would be joining a famous fashion house. However, the lay-off odds were equally high.
The upside was that the 1-2 punch of office politics and chaos made Sadie settle in for a thought exercise. After serious deliberation, she realized that signing up for another round of the same old game sounded draining. She’s decided to pursue a role at a start-up. It’s a gamble, but she feels like she’s finally playing for the win.
Are you like the case study, where office politics has you at a turning point? Are you landing somewhere between Groundhog Day and feeling stuck in a Kobayashi Maru, the famous unwinnable game on Star Trek? Here’s a radical idea: Maybe your superpower is to withdraw and decide you won’t be back for more.
The old way of playing office politics FTW meant manipulating, people pleasing, or chasing attention from someone with a big title. However, you can use people skills to give playing FTW a whole new meaning.
For instance, you win and set yourself up for big things when you:
* Pursue roles where you can put your natural creativity to work, even if that role doesn’t seem glamorous or make sense to others.
* Have the self-respect to know an environment no longer matches your values.
* Use compassion and share your lived experience. Your network and stature naturally expand when you encourage others during tough times. Connecting can be as simple and powerful as saying, “You’ll get through it,” or “Let me tell you what worked for me.”
Looking for greener pastures isn’t a fail. Instead, it can be a demonstration of critical thinking and personal reflection. So, use people skills for your personal benefit and skip playing unwinnable games.
In the April series, Slay the Game of Office Politics, we’ve discussed three ways to re-engineer office politics. Reframe office politics like a foreign land in a new game on your phone. Leveling up doesn’t happen by making haphazard moves. It happens by getting oriented and understanding how to avoid the potential hazards and monsters in your way.
Likewise, you can’t win in your career by ignoring the environment. Instead, the goal is to use your best moves to slay the dragons of office politics—like people pleasing, being inauthentic, and clout chasing. Because when you know how to architect for those problems, you’ll not only slay the dragon, you’ll slay the game.
Let’s recap what we’ve learned:
Here’s the bottom line on office politics: They are a way to understand the dynamics around you. But you can still slay the career game by playing it your way: Act as the creative, wise CEO of your life—a Soul Boss—who demonstrates character, ethics, integrity, and soul in all that you do.
Have you enjoyed this series? Keep the goodness going by discovering a new approach to skilling up. Check out my new book, Soft Skills Basics in a Flash.