The Workplace Game: Playing the Game and Surviving Workplace Politics

By Shawn P. McCann

Whether it's to survive horrible bosses, executive politics, you name it, The Workplace Game, teaches employees the rules of this very real game being played in the workplace, and then shows them how to play it better than anyone else.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Feb 2, 2022

Book preview

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE – MISUSE OF POWER IN THE WORKPLACE: HOW WE GOT HERE

Chapter 1: A PLACE IN SEARCH OF FEAR

Chapter 2: THE RISE OF POWER IN THE WORKPLACE

Chapter 3: THE MONEY EMPHASIS

PART TWO – THE CONSEQUENCES OF PRIVILEGE IN THE WORKPLACE

Chapter 4: A FISH EAT FISH WORKPLACE

Chapter 5: THE TRAGIC WORKPLACE

Chapter 6: THE LOST SOUL

PART THREE – WHY SO MUCH POLITICS EXISTS IN THE WORKPLACE

Chapter 7: A SYSTEMATIC PROBLEM

Chapter 8: WHERE ARE THE REGULATORS

Chapter 9: #WTF (What The F*ck)

PART FOUR – A SHIFT IN UNDERSTANDING: MOVING FORWARD IN THE WORKPLACE – HOW TO SURVIVE

Chapter 10: PLAYING THE GAME AT WORK, REAL TALK

Chapter 11: CHANGE YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS

Chapter 12: DO WHAT YOU WERE BORN TO DO

AFTER THOUGHTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank the Universe for always delivering!

INTRODUCTION

THE GAME: What is it? What does it mean for those in the workplace? How do you play this game? Why is this game necessary for workers at every level? How is corporate privilege tied to all this? This book will answer these, and many other workplace survival questions. For now, let’s focus on the obvious.

Many industrial and organizational experts alike have spent countless hours examining issues related to the effects of workplace stratification; but have not tackled the cause of such issues head on. To determine an organization’s climate (beliefs, feelings, and attitudes) or to see if concerns exist within the workplace, many executives hire experts to spend time with their employees gathering all sorts of data through surveys, investigations, and interviews only to present vague or sometimes superficial findings from their research.

The results from these types of analyses are sometimes superficial, because in many organizations, employees do not trust upper management. As a result, employees are not always sincere in their responses to survey questions and interviews about the state of the organizations in which they work.

Human Resource professionals also examine the workplace; for example, because of complaints from employees; they address issues and sometimes provide reports (quantitative feedback)—such as dashboards and metrics—to upper management, with no real impact or without addressing the core concerns that many employees report. Despite resolving some of the issues in the workplace, they too sometimes (due to limited influence) miss the connection between the negative climate in the workplace and those who are in leadership roles altogether.

In my experience, corporate privilege is the catalyst for workplace games, and is characterized by excessive power, money, prestige, and other perquisites that come with being in charge. Unlike social privilege, corporate privilege doesn’t always take race, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, and class into account, but rather it focuses on specific elements such as greed, power, financial mobility, material access and other advantages that come with having this type of influence. Also, unlike social privilege, where people may sometimes carry on behind facades because of their belonging to a certain group, those with corporate privilege acknowledge their privilege in the workplace via excessive salaries, influence, luxurious office suites, personal elevators, personal drivers, and high-end country club memberships, just to name a few perks—usually without regard to their race or sex.

Corporate privilege is not to be confused with those who work diligently in their crafts and have obtained financial success by legitimately helping others in the world. Rather, corporate privilege is a superiority role within the executive structure of many organizations, and often starts with the person in charge—the President and CEO, whose focus is primarily on making money—at any cost. Sadly, many people desire corporate privilege but are unsure and frequently unaware of its real harm.

The mantra that I’ve come to live by is simple: Never take more in cash value than you are giving back to someone in use value. This doesn’t mean that you should be against making money or becoming wealthy. That would be a ridiculous notion. However, what this statement is really conveying, is that whatever product or service you provide to someone; they should receive more value from the product or service than you are charging them for it. For example, the benefits that one can receive from this book, far outweighs the price paid for it. In the reverse, corporate privilege is not concerned with the value given to someone for a service or product, but rather, the end result—the profit margin.

The desires of corporate privilege are often fleeting, and usually come and go with changing circumstances—relative to the perceptions of grandeur for those in the workplace that are striving to be in the executive suite. Desiring this type of privilege is very stressful and sometimes takes a person from an easygoing state and turns them into a warlord—a tyrant, metaphorically crushing everyone in their pathway to the corporate suite. For these people, life at work sometimes seems more complicated. Work-life balance is more problematic and relationships, both professional and personal are often strained.

THE CONSEQUENCES: When we think that we have it all, due to the false sense of security that comes with corporate privilege, our priorities and focus on work become the corporate suite. We lose a certain touch with reality and begin to distance ourselves farther and farther away from the things that really matter: our health, mental well-being, family, friends, and anything else that is truly supportive in our lives. Corporate privilege is a system and not a person, and if you’re not careful, it will pull you in, eat you up, and spit you out.

Obtaining corporate privilege is no easy task. It is a grueling, pretentious, and sometimes lonely dictatorship that leaves a person feeling empty when all is said and done. The costs of privilege in the workplace, short of selling your soul—means that you may lose friends, make enemies, backstab, manipulate others, become vilified and do battle with colleagues your entire career—all in the name of being the chief shot caller. I have seen first-hand the people who have succumbed to the dark side of privilege and playing games in the workplace. Corporate privilege says, I am better than you, I have more than you, and you will do whatever I tell you to do, because I am the boss of you, and so on.

Corporate privilege is so wide and prevalent in organizations, because a lot of people desire to be the boss without knowing what that really means. People often focus on the money, power and authority that come with being the boss, rather than the sincerity it takes to lead employees. The term boss can have different meanings, depending on the context in which it is used and can have a positive connotation when describing people, places, and things. For example, if I were to say, My wife is the boss, L.A. is the boss, that car is the boss, and so forth. However, for the explanations in this book, the term boss has a pejorative meaning.

Let’s examine some key differences between being a boss and a leader. A boss, drives employees, depends on authority, inspires fear, says I, places blame for breakdowns in processes or projects, knows how it is done, uses people, takes credit, plays games, commands and so on. A leader, on the other hand, coaches’ employees, generates enthusiasm, says We, fixes the breakdown (even at the cost of taking the blame), shows how it is done, develops people, gives credit and so on. As you can see, there are very distinct differences between the two.

Also, let’s not confuse CEOs that are leadership focused, with CEOs that are boss focused. There are plenty of CEOs in the world who are rich, successful, and truly care about the employees that they serve. Again, there is nothing wrong with being financially successful; however, the emphasis of this book deals with games being played in organizations that are driven by success and power regardless of who gets hurt in the process. The trick is, if you are currently in, or aspire to become part of the corporate structure within an organization, it is important to consider the well-being of the workforce—without playing games.

The goal of this book is to detail the good, the bad, and the ugly, and show how average employees can play the game—to do things in an accepted way, or in the way that people who are in leadership expects you to—in the modern workplace. Whether you work in a non-management role or in a leadership capacity, this book is meant to be a guide to help you experience a better understanding of why workplaces throughout the world experience similar circumstances relative to the consequences of privilege, and to detail how that privilege might work for or against you at any given moment.

This book is divided into four parts, Misuse of Power in the Workplace, The Consequences of Privilege in the Workplace, Why So Much Politics Exists in the Workplace and A Shift in Understanding, all with equally important information to help you make better decisions amid challenges in the workplace. It is my sincere hope that all who read this book, whether you are a staff employee, a member of management, or someone trying to understand or maneuver through workplace games (politics), will receive some insight into becoming a better person in the workplace. Use this information as a navigational tool to help guide you through all the corporate repurposed bovine waste, or as it is often called, bullshit.

PART ONE

Misuse of Power in the Workplace:

HOW we got here

Life is a comedy for those who drink and a tragedy for those who spill it.

– Graham Furious

CHAPTER 1: A PLACE IN SEARCH OF FEAR

To understand how organizations got into this frenzy and misuse of power, and thus the establishment of corporate privilege, we must first trace back to some of the things that gave rise to this type of privilege. Until the mid-twentieth century, there were few laws in place to protect laborers or even to recognize and deal with concerns that workers might have experienced in the labor force.

During this timeframe, if you had money and owned a business, you pretty much had the power to do whatever you wanted to do, which included manipulation, abuse, and misconduct toward employees, along with many other things in the workplace that are now prohibited by law. Of note, the term organization is used loosely throughout this book and is intended to cover all business types such as, but not limited to, corporations, companies, agencies, institutions, networks and so on.

Fear is innate. It is part of a group of emotions that we all have as human beings, such as joy, anger, happiness, and so forth. Fear causes us to become anxious and live in a panic mode. But fear can also have many positive effects as well. Fear, in the objective sense, motivates us to do better.¹,² For example, when I was in college, I often feared that I would do poorly on a test, and this type of thinking prompted me to study more. This type of fear was self-inflicted and could only harm me.

However, organizations that instigate fear so that employees feel stressed or threatened, only benefit themselves in the long run, while employees hopelessly put in long hours and bend over backward with no guarantees of success, money, or other benefits.

Similarly, organizations have one or more people sitting at the helm, dangling the metaphorical strings of power and privilege, while poisoning the minds of their top brass. As a result, fear is instigated throughout the workplace. This type of fear in the workforce has a very specific purpose. It is to distract workers from understanding the peculiar institution of privilege and to systematically perpetuate a false sense of hope.

This false optimism that is conveyed to the general workforce by executive management includes, but is not limited to, more money, promotions, better benefits, less stress and so on. Now, this is not to say that employees will never receive some of these perks; however, for all intents and purposes, many times, executive management wants you to think that there is a shortage in the budget to support such benefits.

The reality is there’s typically more than enough in an organization’s asset pool or reserve fund to support all the above. If you don’t believe this statement, look around the next time that your organization has a reduction in force or layoff–I’ll bet they will also be hiring more executives. Nevertheless, instead of spreading the wealth fairly, management continues to overwork employees and propagate false narratives such as, "We’re growing, we’re making strides and positions are opening