Workplace Poker

Are You Playing the Game, or Just Getting Played?

HarperBusiness, 2016

15 min read

10 take-aways

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Learn to read your business associates the way a poker champion sizes up other players.

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Navigating your career is like playing a life-sized game of poker where each player has different goals, cheaters can triumph, and the rules are unclear and change constantly. To win, cultivate an understanding of your co-workers, treat everyone with respect, graciously accept your flaws, and approach every challenge with energy and optimism. Career coach Dan Rust reveals strategies for playing office politics – the “game under the game.” Most people claim to dislike office politics because they aren’t any good at it, reports Rust, who sees politics as a natural, inevitable element of human interaction. He insists that you must master its rudiments to advance in your career. Rust’s prototypical winner combines the Buddha’s insights, US General George S. Patton’s brashness, Sherlock Holmes’s observational skills and Mr. Spock’s objectivity. This is a fun and funny strategy manual, full of illuminating anecdotes and tactics you can apply immediately. getAbstract recommends Rust’s advice to anyone searching for a new job or hoping to make a bigger splash at work.

Summary

Office Politics

Mention office politics, and you evoke images of a Machiavellian world of power plays, whisper campaigns and backstabbing. Most people claim to dislike office politics and prefer to avoid the intrigue. But everyone plays politics in business, because politics pervades all human activities. Most political maneuvers are behaviors that a decent person does anyway, such as taking a sincere interest in your co-workers or offering a colleague unexpected help or praise. Office politics is an unavoidable game, and it is most dangerous when you play badly.

As in poker, the key to winning is the ability to “read” other people and pick up the subtle cues that reveal the “game under the game.” But “workplace poker” is more difficult than the card game because the rules aren’t always clear. However, with a few new skills, you can master a strategic approach to your career. And, as you improve at the game, you might even come to like it.

Pay Attention

The most essential skill in workplace poker is the ability to understand your co-workers on a deeper level. Focusing on doing a good job may seem easier, and it’s less confusing than decoding messy...

About the Author

Founder of Frontline Learning, a corporate-training publisher, Dan Rust runs workshops on career management and blogs on career issues at danrust.com.

Dan Rust

Workplace Poker

Are You Playing the Game, or Just Getting Played?

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Office Politics

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