The Climb – Part III: Understanding the Situation

Please Note: This Article is Part of the Series “The Climb: A Real-World, Comprehensive Guide to Workplace Success for Ambitious Young Professionals.” The series is designed to be read from the beginning, as the concepts build on themselves throughout the series.

Part I: Before You Read
Part II: Understanding Yourself

The reason that I spent an entire section on identity is that it provides insight into how they are going to react to a given situation. If you know how to interpret your identity, then you can infer how to interpret the identity of those around you. If you can interpret the identity of those around you, then then you can deduce what each person’s goals are, how they are seeking them, and how they play into the situation at hand.

A Closer Look: Disambiguating the “Situation”

I realized as I was writing this that it may not be immediately apparent what I am talking about when I refer to “the situation”, especially for those who are new to the site.

At any given time, there are two governance schemes that are being used within a company.:

• The Formal Hierarchy
• The Informal Hierarchy

The Formal Hierarchy is the corporate hierarchy that is enshrined on the organizational chart. In this hierarchy, there is a definite reporting structure in which power and influence are held in successive levels of the chart, hence the name: corporate ladder.

The Informal Hierarchy is the continuously changing social dynamic formed by the interactions that occur within the group of people that comprise the organization. This Informal hierarchy constitutes the real, “on-the-ground” hierarchy. The hierarchy here arises from a mixture of individual dominance displays within the group of employees in question and the use of bargaining arrangements (the employee who makes his boss look good in exchange for input on his decisions, for example.)

“The situation”, as described here, is the day-to-day occurrence that arises as a result of the informal hierarchy.

The informal hierarchy is the primary concern of the Social Hierarchy Mapping section of our Organizational Dynamics offerings because it is the only thing that actually matters when it comes to real decisions in the organization.

Recall our five types of identity attributes. Each of those attributes is based on a specific desire of the individual that possesses them:

• Their morals/values – The desire to feel superior and individualized from others
• Their personality traits – The desire to capture more of a certain response from their surroundings
• Their hobbies – The desire to adhere to a group, and use that group’s traits/status as their own
• Their accomplishments/experiences – The desire to share a more nuanced and refined version of their personality traits
• Their occupations – The desire to feel superior due to one’s position in their company’s hierarchy

An ambitious person wants the fear and respect of others. They want people to know that they are willing to put in substantial effort and do substantial things. A person who feels strongly about a certain value wants it to be known that their belief in that value is more important to them than any detriment that value may have to their reputation. 

Reframe this to the corporate setting, and the ambitious individual is willing to openly turn on others should it be advantageous for themselves; the value-holding individual will have little problem letting others know when they think they are wrong. Someone with a hobby that reeks of rebellion is likely to be more defiant, both covertly and overtly. A person who believes there is high value in their occupational status will closely align their actions with the expectation of that title. A person who expresses themselves with more sophistication and nuance will take the role of a chess player over a checkers player (more on this in the timing section).

Everybody has an angle, and everybody is working that angle to their benefit.

This might be a hard pill to swallow, but that is the game.

Let’s evaluate how that plays into the bigger picture of the company at large.

“Climbers are promoted as a result of manipulating the situation to their benefit.”
– Issac Hicks

Where Does It All Start?

One thing I have noticed is that many people get caught up in the formalities of a company, especially a large one. It is important to remember that all companies are started in the same way.

An ambitious individual who is tired of their standard job (or who decided he never wanted a standard job to begin with) comes up with an idea for a business. This idea is expressed to others, they gain feedback, test the market, and discover their idea has legitimate merit. This person becomes the de-facto CEO/President of the evolving company.

As they look to increase the reach of their business, they hire people to take on more specialized roles. In the early days, it is usually not possible to pay others a steady salary. Our newfound CEO must now use aspects of their personality to engage potential partners in their cause. These partners, entranced by the vision and personality of the CEO, agree to work without stable pay to help the CEO reach their goals. Instead, these initial people are usually offered ownership stake in the business.  This secondary group becomes an extension of the CEO’s personal work and vision, forming the governing executive body of the organization.

Business expands and the CEO begins to conduct the business in a matter they see fit, using their identity as a guide.  Cash flow stabilizes, and new employees beneath the glass ceiling are hired on a salary/compensation basis. In the interest of capturing the esteem of their leaders and defining themselves as a key part of the operation, this first wave of employees adheres to direction of the governing executive body.

When the business starts to expand, it becomes apparent to the newly formed executive body that they will need to create guiding principles by which those they will hire in the future will prescribe, a necessity for prosperous and predictable business. With these principles, the formal company culture is born. It is important to note here that these principles are designed specifically to promote a specific outcome; they are not necessarily born of the identities or desires of those within the governing body.

In the ongoing process of the evolving business, there arises situations in which following formal culture or ethical practices will be a detriment to the profit flow of the business, whether that be in terms of opportunity or otherwise. Company leadership then faces a decision on how to handle these situations, and their actions form the cornerstone of the informal company culture. This may or may not be at odds with their previous, formal cultural principles. Their response to arising situations in the context of their formal principles reverberate throughout the organization and define what the relationship will be between how the company works “on-paper”, and how it works in reality. This is the initial dissemination between the formal and informal hierarchy.

Why this matters is that company culture inherently starts with CEO and governing body. Regardless of what guiding principles they have enacted, the way that company leadership conducts themselves becomes the method by which those within the company interact with each other. In the construction of the company, unspoken rules arise that govern interpersonal communication.

Break this down to the day-to-day level and there is a logical progression as those within the company try to better their position in the corporate hierarchy. Everybody is seeking to impress their boss at every level of the hierarchy, all the way up to the top.  The paradigm is always the same:

Ambitious leadership deadset on a mission to change the world for the positive? The company will be full of people who believe in the company’s cause. Leadership is overly concerned with metrics? The company culture will be to put metric targets above all else, including actual performance. Leadership doesn’t actually adhere to the mission statement and company visions, prioritizing profit over all else? The underlying body becomes one that is full of deceit and facades as people prioritize rapid career development and acquisition of cash over all else.

 

Situational Awareness – Observation

Now we zoom into the micro-level to take a look at the interpersonal interactions of those within the company.

Here, we uncover the importance of observation as a primary tool for understanding the situation. Since we now have the context of identity to guide this observation, and how the executive culture progresses down the formal hierarchy of a company, we have a few basic rules that will constitute the framework that is needed to infer the context of the situation

• The culture of the company mimics the personality of its governance
• All individuals in a business setting are primarily driven by their own self-interests (whether in purposeful fulfillment, status preservation or advancement)
  • As an aside: all individuals in general are primarily driven by their own self-interests.
• An individual’s personality stems from their identity, which in turn stems from their personal desires.

Couple these guidelines with information about how individuals react within the corporate system, and we can pull sophisticated insights into the progression of situations that arise on the day-to-day.

Let’s begin by defining three explicit types of interpersonal communication within the company:

• Peer-to-Peer (PtP): Communication between two people at the same career altitude within the company. (ex: manager to fellow manager)
• Report-to-Supervisor (RtS): Communication between people of differing career altitudes originating from the person with lower career rank. This includes supervisors who are not directly responsible for the report, and those who may be several career levels above. (ex: manager to director, director to C-suite, manager to C-suite)
• Supervisor-to-Report (StR): The same as RtS, except the communication originates with the individual at the higher career level.

When observing these types of interactions, consider the following questions:

• Peer-to-Peer
  • Do peers tend to readily form friendships amongst each other?
  • Do peers readily cover for each other’s mistakes when they come-up?
  • How do peers resolve conflict with each other?
  • What peers seems to be “leaders” among the group, and how do they keep that position?
  • How much conversation happens between coworkers that is unrelated to the work at hand?
    • Talking about similar interests
    • Flirtation, joking, or other more intimate interactions
  • Report-to-Supervisor
    • Are reports routinely nervous when approaching supervisors? Which reports tend to be more nervous and which tend to be less nervous?
    • What is the tone of a report’s correspondence to a supervisor, and what is the tone of the response?
      • Does is vary among different RtS pairs?
      • Does it vary between written and spoken communication?
    • How much fear do reports have when addressing their supervisors?
    • How much respect do reports have for their supervisors?
      • When addressing them?
      • When talking about them to others?
    • Supervisor-to-Report
      • How well do Supervisors treat their reports?
        • Do they act as if they are inherently better than them?
        • Do they act as if their reports aren’t worth their time?
      • What is the tone of a Supervisor when addressing a report directly?
        • Is it different than the tone when responding to an RtS interaction?
      • How reliant does a supervisor appear to be on their reports?
        • Is the appearance they create in-line with the actual situation?

Now this is a lot to consider. Remember that we want to achieve a full understanding of what is going on. The reason we consider all these questions is that they allow us to gain enough insight into the situation to fully understand it. Given the observed facts regarding the people involved, deductive reasoning can be used to create a narrative that explains the situation.

Consider the following simple example:

• My co-worker, Anna is rather upset because yesterday her boss flamed her about missing her sales target for Q4. She is usually very happy, upbeat, and personable, but she has regressed to a quiet, sullen figure that has only responded to me today in 1 or 2 words at a time, a behavior which has been noticed by her boss and given no sympathy. Another co-worker from the same boss who missed her targets seems to be relatively unaffected by her failure. Their boss offered to mentor them on proper sales strategy, and expressed the importance of perseverance in the face of adversity. I could tell he was a little upset from the emails that they both showed me, but overall his town was empathetic and understanding. Among his peers, the boss is seen as shining star of an employee.

From this, I can gather the following insights into the situation:

• A significant part of Anna’s identity is tied to her personal work performance.
  • Aiding her in a friendly way may be something she’d greatly appreciate.
• The company in general values the well-being of its employees over hitting metrics
  • While the employees were notified of their poor performance, they were not disciplined for it
  • A proper strategy in gaining a promotion here is less about the targets and more about forming the proper social appearance.
• There isn’t a regard of fear toward leaders in the company.
• Happy/Bubbly personalities will not make-up for lack of work performance – the formal hierarchy reigns supreme if metrics are not hit
  • While failure to hit metrics is not punished, it is also not ignored.

This means that a proper narrative could be defined as such:

• In this company, is it apparent that milestones are important and that failure to hit these milestones will gain attention. Those who fail to meet expectations will not be coddled, however, the company values their investment in their employees and seeks to promote a culture in which employees are treated well. It also appears that the company’s focus on employee well-being above hard metrics may be the cause of lessened concern about hitting metric targets for some employees.

We can note from the above that this small narrative didn’t give too much insight on the situation on its own. However, given more information on the individuals involved, we would be able to gain insight into their personalities, and how those personalities combine in the context of the workplace to lead to a given situation. In combining insights that are gained from an observational perspective of the workplace and the individuals within, you will be able to infer how people will act in certain situations as they arise.

There is a specific moment after paying attention like this for long enough where the corporate façade breaks. You go from seeing those within the organization as employees in a company to seeing them as individuals with individual goals, beliefs, and strategies. This is the point you want to arrive at in properly understanding the situation.

It should also be briefly noted here that you should be sure to pay attention to the actions of the people involved, and not their words. Asking a person directly why they are doing what they are doing allows for them to deceive you, while a person’s actions are a much more reliable gauge of their intent.

 

Situational Awareness – Introduction to Corporate Politics

Now that we have covered how to deconstruct your situation in order to understand it, let’s dive into how these insights get applied to one’s benefit.

There are several resources that point to a triad of classifications in reference to the standard corporate employee[6][7][8][9]. Although they are defined slightly differently among sources, the key attributes of each type are clearly recognizable.

• The Climber: An ambitious, aggressive individual who quickly learns and adapts to the current workplace culture. They are very observational, quick to blend into the workplace social scene and express strong work ethic. They get their motivation directly from a deep sense of fulfillment at their work, the pursuit of heightened career altitude or both. Climbers are at the top of the informal hierarchy
• The Unaware: This person is one who is either unaware of the proper way to climb the ladder, or willing to continue in their current role with little thought of upward momentum. The motivations of this individual stem from a deep sense of satisfaction with their work, a strong need for external validation, or a simple lack of desire to push the past their comfort zone. The Unaware are in the middle of the informal hierarchy
• The Standby: This employee prefers to blend into the background of the workplace environment. They do the bare minimum required to uphold their position and are completely aware of their underperformance. They live for the opportunity to get paid and move on with their life, paying as little attention to their job as they can while they seek satisfaction away from their jobs. The Standbys are at the bottom of the informal hierarchy.

The strongest influence on the situation comes from The Climbers and serves as the only influence that is of significant force and purposefully directed. The Unaware can influence from time to time, but it is usually of minor significance and occurs on accident. The Standbys exert little to no appreciable influence over the situation, nor do they care to.

Climbers are promoted as a result of manipulating the situation to their benefit. The Unaware and Standbys are promoted as a result of their tenure with the company. Above a certain level (usually the title “manager”), only Climbers continue to ascend the corporate ladder.

What about you?

If you have followed this series to this point, you are clearly in Climber territory. As a Climber, it is very beneficial to understand where you are at and where you are trying to go.

So how do you assess position in the hierarchy? Remember, we aren’t talking about formal, org-chart position here. Luckily enough, the org chart does serve as a nice tool for identifying a given person’s current position in the informal hierarchy (yourself included). Evaluating this is as simple as looking down, looking sideways, and looking up.

The weight of each of these attributes is directly proportional to the level of the group that possesses it. For example, disrespect from a report has much less impact on your position than disregard from an executive. The contents of this chart can be applied to yourself, or any other person you wish to observe. Take a moment next time you are at work to think about how different people in your peer group stack up on this chart, it will provide great insight into who to watch more closely as they play their individual games. 

It should also be noted that it is expected for treatment to become more negative as you look higher in the formal hierarchy. Regardless of your work to elevate your position in the informal hierarchy, the formal hierarchy will limit how high you are able to go without a change of title. Your true competition in terms of getting a promotion will be your peers, thus it is more advantageous to concern yourself with your position in comparison to theirs, as opposed to your overall position.

 

Taking Control of the Situation:

Let’s talk about the beautiful concept known as “leverage”. This word is used all the time in the corporate world as a vague term meaning “use this to get that”, but very few are truly aware of what this actually means.

Leverage is any power held over another individual or group as a result of previous events. The strength of this power is relative to the formal importance of the event. Let me give you a few examples:

• You find your coworker attractive and they figured it out: They have a small amount of leverage over you
• You helped your coworker finish work they needed to complete before a deadline they had: you have significant leverage over them
• You covered for the management team by covertly working unpaid overtime in order to hit metrics: you have incredible leverage over the person who asked you to do so.
• You are seen as a leader among your peers, and your weak boss assigns unnecessary work to your team:
  • Your teammates each have significant leverage over you if you don’t express your concerns. You were the leader and failed to take action.
  • You have minor leverage over each of your teammates if you do. You have reinforced your position as leader.

Leverage stems naturally from fear of loss and human reciprocity. People do not want to lose their current position in the hierarchy, and people feel obligated to return favor to those who provide favor to them. If you find that you could expose a damaging fact about another person, or that you have provided them help in some way without getting helped back, you have them in a leveraged position.

Think of leverage in terms of  “social currency”. If someone has you in a leveraged position, you are in social debt to them, and they can call for repayment of the debt when it benefits them. The reverse is also true: you can entice people into leveraged situations, from which you can later “call their debt” when you need them to do something for your benefit. The transaction of leverage between multiple parties is the basis upon which the informal hierarchy is built.

The state of existing in a leveraged position is called being “exposed”. Exposure is a necessity in some situations (such as having real conversations), but should generally be avoided unless it is used as a tool to gain more leverage. 

Proper use of leverage while avoiding unnecessary exposure is the key to getting to Climbing the Corporate Ladder.

A Closer Look: The Game of Leverage – A Few considerations

In order to to be able to use leverage, people have to respect the fact that you have them in a leveraged position. While this may seem obvious, there are a few things that serve as the price of admission for playing the game of leverage:

• You must be good at your formal job.
  • The game of leverage is primarily played by the Climbers. That said, if you are struggling to perform well in your formal position, there is absolutely no way you will be able to compete in this sphere. While promotions are decided within the bounds of the informal hierarchy, only those who are performing their jobs to a point where they are essentially “in the background” are able to play on this stage. If you become so caught-up in the political game that you can’t do your formal job, your performance will slip and you will not uphold the formal façade. This will have you quickly labeled as Unaware and treated as such.
• You must have a social workplace presence
  • People have to know you and be aware of the fact that you are part of the game of leverage before they will respect your attempts to play it. This happens naturally as conversation arises between workers in various settings. All you need to do is show up, go along with the conversation, and splash your personality into the mix a little bit. This will position you on the “radar” of those around you. If you are a loner that doesn’t exhibit prosocial behavior, you can’t expect people to know they can come to you with things. Realistically, you will be seen as weak amongst your peers, relegating you to either the Unaware or Standby zone.
• You must break the façade in 1-on-1 conversations
  • While this will be explained more a little further down, sprinkling a little bit of your “outside of work” persona is how you let people know that you aren’t just another kool-aid drinker. Climbers know that kool-aid is a tool that is used to promote the formal hierarchy and drive worker productivity and treat it as such. They pretend to be addicted to it when necessary and reveal that they aren’t when given the opportunity. You will need to let the other Climbers know that you are in on the game in order to play. The socially tactful way to do this is through 1-on-1 or small group conversations, lest you be labelled Unaware.
    • For Reference: “kool-aid” is the mission statements, values, and other “What We Believe In” type of messaging that a company directs internally. While it is a necessary part of establishing control and cooperation amongst employees, individuals about the Glass Ceiling very seldomly actually act in line with their company’s prescribed value system.

Leverage should also be used in a tactful way wherever possible. A positive, continuous exchange of leverage between two people constitutes an alliance. An aggressive use of leverage between two people usually devolves into a situation where both people lose. Remember that every time you use leverage, the other Climbers will watch how you did it and try to evaluate what you are doing. If you are seen as a threat, they will look to label whatever moves you make in a negative light. Using leverage in a way that plays to the eventual benefit of all parties involved is the ideal (but not always possible) scenario.

 

Catering Your Persona

We haven’t talked about identity in a while right? Let’s cut to the chase of why it matters so much:

People like people who are like them.

On a deep psychological level, people evaluate each other to determine whether they are part of their “us” group, or part of the “them” group.[10] In terms of one’s own thoughts, you are either “like me” or you are “other than me” Those within the “like me” group are the ones that we readily become close friends and form deep connections with, while those in the “other than me” group are those which we have polite, meaningless conversations with when necessary but otherwise entirely disregard. In other words, if I see you as “other”, you don’t really matter to me.

In order to gain access to the attributes that somebody has, they need to see you as “like me”. Reverting to our previous desire vs. identity mapping, we can take those desires and use them to understand how people form into groups in the workplace. It isn’t about the identity, it’s about the desires behind the identity.

• Moral/Value Based Attributes
  • People who are passionate LIKE others who are also passionate, even if their passion is about something else. They OTHER apathy.
• Personality Based Attributes
  • People LIKE others who either share their personality traits, or the reasoning behind the traits. They OTHER those who take opposing viewpoints
• Hobby Based Attributes
  • People LIKE those who either have the same hobby, or have a hobby that has similar group characteristics (i.e: creative hobbies). They OTHER people who have hobbies that have dissimilar characteristics (Mental hobbies – reading/writing vs. Physical hobbies – playing sports)
• Accomplishment/Experience Based Attributes
  • People LIKE others who have similar stories to theirs and have the same views with regards to goals and lifetime desires. They OTHER people who do not.
• Occupational Based Attributes
  • People LIKE those who view their relationship with their occupation in the same way that they do. They OTHER people who do not.

Someone who is passionate about global warming isn’t going to respect someone who responds to their plight with “I don’t follow politics”. An ambitious person isn’t going to want anything to do with a couch potato. Someone who plays sports all the time isn’t going to think a writer is “cool”, and the writer isn’t going to think that the sports player is smart enough to bother with. A person who is passionate about travelling the world is bored by someone who hasn’t and has no wanderlust.

When I was a consultant, it blew me away to see people become best friends over seemingly meaningless conversations. They would talk about sports, the beer they like to drink, their taste in women/men, and suddenly they would be planning trips to see each other after the project was over. I didn’t get it. There was even one time I heard one of them say: “I don’t know, I just really don’t like talking about anything that matters.”

What are you talking about? You like gabbing aimlessly about surface-level bullshit all the time? You have to be kidding me. How does this guy even have friends? I racked my brain about this for several weeks. One day I was sitting at the bar with the team, listening to everyone recite sports stats to each other when it hit me.

These people don’t care to listen to each other’s sports talk, it’s just a placeholder. They care that the other person is as invested in being a sports fan as they are. They have the same desire to adhere to the “tribe” that is whatever sports team they follow. Two people who like opposing sports teams are much more likely to have a friendship than a person who likes sports and one who does not, even though the teams are opposed!

In the above situation, I was the OTHER, and they were LIKE each other.

Now this is very important, because knowledge of how somebody’s identity stems from their desires allows you to show them certain aspects of your personality ahead of others. This is something that people do naturally already. The way you treat your mother is different than the way you treat your best friend, and both of these are different than the way you would treat a stranger in a bar. This is not being a “non-genuine” person, this is just how it works.

That said, taking conscious control of this process allows you to cater your persona to certain individuals in order to build the relationship you want t
o build. You can consciously choose which people you want to LIKE you, and which you want to OTHER you. Keep in mind that you will subconsciously do this too, so you’ll need to decide whether or not the situation calls for forcing a LIKE or an OTHER against your natural instincts.

• Let’s say that you are relatively new to a company and the “all-star” of your peers is a 27 year-old passionate movie enthusiast who married his first girlfriend at age 20 and has 4 kids. You, conversely, are a 30-year old fitness enthusiast who has no kids and finds many of the all-star’s decisions questionable and unwise. You’re gut instinct is to OTHER him, but you know it would be advantageous to promote a friendship with him.
• You talk to him for a while and learn that his passion for movies is about related to the dream of being a filmmaker later on in life. While you seriously doubt he will be able to get there, you also dream of future entrepreneurial pursuits. You ask questions about his future desires and relate yours. An organic conversation stems from this interaction and you are LIKED
• In the future, you speak at length about the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurship, relate to each other’s experiences, and he becomes a good workplace friend of yours. Anytime a conversation stems that you can’t find common ground on, you quickly and tactfully revert the conversation back to your common ground.
• Since your differences are never explored in great detail, you form a strong 1-on-1 connection, even though your basic instinct was to OTHER him. You now have access to his attributes, and can use your position as his ally to gain significant leverage

Another important aspect of LIKE vs. OTHER is that being LIKED allows you to have “real” conversations with people in your company. A real conversation is just that: an actual, genuine exchange of ideas between individuals.

Real conversations are what allow you to hear people’s perspectives and workplace strategy “straight from the horse’s mouth.” The interesting piece of this is just how willing people are to tell you exactly what they think once they are comfortable. You see, everybody promotes the corporate facade because they understand that it is a requirement of the job, but very few people actually like the fact that they have

to do that. People want to be real. Giving them the opportunity to allows you to securely position yourself strongly in their LIKE territory while gaining further knowledge into the situation at hand.

In the same way that there is a formal and informal hierarchy, you have a formal and informal corporate identity. A real conversation is one in which the inner workings of this informal identity are shared with others in a covert setting.

These conversations are also the birthplace of many key moments – seemingly small interactions that act as major defining factors on one’s future. More content on exactly how key moments work is coming in the near future.

 

A Closer Look: The Power of Real Conversation

Let’s say that you are a rebellious but ambitious individual looking to climb the ladder in an IT company. Your technical skill set is solid and you easily perform the work well, but you can’t bring yourself to actively participate in the technical conversations that drum up naturally during lunch.

If you’re being honest, you just don’t really care about it. Software is just a skillset that you found easily acquirable. Due to your lack of social presence in the workplace, you aren’t able to adequately play the game of leverage.

You have a long sigh as you sit down at the end of the lunch table and start your meal. You overhear someone make a someone repeat some horrible software joke you heard a thousand times. A quick few comments later, and you and him have a nice 1-on-1 conversation about their music and the different shows you’ve been to. Over the course of the next couple days, he helps you with a few tasks and vice versa while you continue to talk and find mutual interests. The next week, during a real conversation, you comment that you don’t like or really understand why everyone else always talks about technical software over lunch, and he blows your mind.

“I don’t like it either, none of us do. That is just how we compete with each other.”

You thought they were just boring, but they were actually playing a sophisticated social game, jockeying for position in the informal hierarchy. You pay attention a little more the next day at and notice that the conversation is actually full of miniature, passive arguments. You interject with a valid point and the entire table stops their conversation to turn and hear your point. One of the more senior members of the group attacks the validity of your assertion, and you successfully defend it. After that lunch, people start casually stopping by your office to chat about all sorts of things. You have proven yourself to be in the know, and are thus invited into the circle of Climbers.

You have officially entered the game. This is the power of real conversations.

The nice part about real conversations is they usually arise as a natural progression of a mutually beneficial relationship. You can begin to make the transition from workplace small talk to real conversations by dropping small non-sequiturs into a already casual conversation. Observe:

• Joe: “So, I was running as hard as I could, and when I crossed that finish-line the feeling of relief was incredible!”
• Tonya: “I bet! I remember my first 5k. I thought: ‘it’s only 3 miles, I don’t really need to train’ but wow was I wrong.
• Joe: “No kidding, that distance really sneaks up on you.” (Dropping Non-sequitur) “By the way, what did you think about that email we got earlier from Chad?”
• Tonya: (Following the natural conversation) “I thought it was a little ridiculous. I mean, I know our team is behind and everything but that wasn’t the way to handle it.”
• Joe: “I agree, it was a little silly. What would you have done in his position?”
• Tonya: “Well, for starters, it’s obvious to me that he doesn’t have much control over the situation given how Sarah talks back to him in meetings right? You have to take care of that before you can expect the rest of the team to respect you.” ← Whoa, that was some seriously valuable information.

These non-sequiturs blend so well into average conversation that anyone with basic social awareness can use them with ease. If you ever see two people or a small group chatting quietly or walking away from the group to talk covertly and you have previously observed them chatting as friends before, chances are they have removed themselves to have a real conversation.

This isn’t “gossiping”, gossip doesn’t matter. This is gathering intel to inform your next moves.

An important part of having real conversations is that you must be sure to remain authentic in every interaction of this kind that you have. A real conversation is very vulnerable situation: the people who are involved are explicitly breaking the façade of the corporate hierarchy in order to form a connection that transcends the bounds of the company. There is an unspoken trust that neither person will take advantage of the other’s significantly exposed position. Above all else, people just want to connect with other people. It is assumed that any real conversation that is had is a private one. If you turn around and exercise that exposure for leverage, especially if you simply snitch out someone for saying something that goes against the formal hierarchy, you will earn a reputation as a backstabber. What are backstabbers? Unaware.

As for identity, a reputation of transparency and detachment from the work around you can help people to have real conversations with you more readily, but you need to make sure that such a reputation doesn’t reach your superiors.  Even if they want to, a superior cannot be seen promoting someone who is known to be openly detached from the formal purpose of the company.

At the end of the day, the company is just a place. People within that place are making moves for their own benefit, and “comparing notes” about the moves that are being made proves to be a valuable interaction for those involved.

 

Looking Upward

So what about your boss, and other superiors? What relationship should you have them?

Remember that these are the people that you eventually have to coerce into giving you that promotion.

Before anything else, in order to get a promotion, your boss needs to see you as a “peer” in the position that you would be promoted to. The way you talk, they way you act, the way you address them, these all must align to form the picture in your boss’ head. You must be now what you are hoping to become. You cannot “happily occupy” the position you are currently in. It has to be apparent that you are ready to move on to something bigger.

This has ties to the whole “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” thing. This paradigm comes from the fact that you want your boss to see you in the position you are trying to get into. When they look at you, you want to paint the picture in their mind that you already occupy the position you are looking to get.

Another showstopping mistake is putting too much merit on your boss’s title and paying little attention to your boss’s persona. Things look a little a different when you see your boss as just another person instead of some supreme overlord that holds power over your employment.

• What does your boss want?
  • Paying attention to the title: “He wants higher productivity in XYZ area and XXX for this metric. He also said in the last meeting he want to hear ideas on how to improve metrics and they better be good!”
  • Paying attention to the persona: “He seems to be a hardass and I know his boss only pays attention to metrics. Looks like he is trying to move up just like I am, either that or avoid hot water.”
• What do I say to my boss?
  • Paying attention to the title: “Hmmmm, I want to seem smart and educated. Maybe I’ll tell him about this new process I learned that will let me work better!”
  • Paying attention to the persona: “Wow, he looks like he could use a break. I know he likes to drink beer, I wonder if he has any good recommendations.”
• How should I regard my boss?
  • Paying attention to the title: “Well, I don’t want to offend him or anything. I need to make sure I’m extra careful to say only things he would want to hear, and to break bad news with the most positive spin I can.”
  • Paying attention to the persona: “Well, his job seems like it sucks much worse than mine, and he doesn’t seem to enjoy it all too much. I’ll just give everything to him straight, I’m sure he doesn’t want to waste time with unnecessary preambles.

The amazing thing is that many people forget that their boss is just a person. They go through their 9-5 living in fear that they are going to have a negative confrontation with their boss, as if their boss is some kind of demigod.  How often are you legitimately afraid you are going to offend another person? Chances are, if you did, you’d just say “sorry, didn’t mean it that way” and move on. Your boss is no different.

Do not cower to your boss if you want their respect. Don’t cower even if you receive negative feedback from them because of your refusal to cower to them and satisfy their ego. They are a just another person with a different job, that’s it.

I’d like to also touch on two common ways that people address their boss’s that are also quite flawed.

1. Sucking up to your boss
2. Keeping your relationship with your boss “strictly professional”

Your boss may like you if you suck-up to him, but you are just an ego feeder. The best case scenario is that they like their ego being stroked and they decide to keep you in good favor, but you definitely aren’t going anywhere. Why would they get rid of a perfectly good ego stroke? It always feels good.

The more likely scenario is that they secretly become increasingly resentful since every interaction they have with you reeks of inauthenticity. Think of it this way, would you like it if someone gave you compliments all the time but you knew it was only to ask you for money? What if they did that multiple days, weeks, or months in a row? You might eventually give them the money just to shut them up, but do you want that reputation amongst your new peers? Don’t suck up to your boss.

The strictly professional relationship is almost as bad as the sucking up relationship. In maintaining a strictly professional relationship with your boss, you never allow them to relax around you. Your boss isn’t your boss when they is away from the office, and they most likely enjoy their time away from the office more than they enjoy their time in it.

If you never bridge the gap beyond the strictly professional, you are forcing a cap on the level of enjoyment your boss will ever have in your presence. Even in careers where the professional appearance is of paramount importance, a small joke or situational comment when speaking with your boss will work wonders in boosting their esteem with you. Do this repeatedly with proper timing, and your boss may even LIKE you. Since your boss is just a person though, you can get them to LIKE you the same way you would anyone else.

In the same way that you are trying to impress your boss into giving you a promotion, they are likely just trying to impress their bosses into giving them a promotion. If you can recognize that your boss is just another person, and get them to LIKE you, then you really have nothing to worry about.

 They are much less concerned with you than you think.

[6] Rao, Venkatesh G. The Gervais Principle. Vol. 1, Ribbonfarm Roughs, 2009.

[7] Romero, Luis E. “The 3 Basic Types Of Employees: A Simple Guide For Leaders And HR Professionals.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 24 Feb. 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/luisromero/2016/02/23/the-3-basic-types-of-employees-a-simple-guide-for-leaders-hr-professionals/#7ac773c122cb.

[8] Kuratko, Donald F. “Developing an Intrapreneurial Assessment Instrument for an Effective Corporate Entrepreneurial Environment.” Strategic Management Journal, vol. 11, 1990, pp. 49–58.

[9] SCHEIN, EDGAR H. CORPORATE CULTURE SURVIVAL GUIDE. JOHN WILEY & Sons, 2017.

[10] Tracy, Karen, and Fred Dervin. “Discourses of Othering.” The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, Wiley Blackwell, 2015. 10.1057/978-1-137-54544-2_4