The Politics of Promotion summary

You perform well at work. Your projects all receive high praise from your boss. Yet, when your next promotion opportunity comes along, you’re left empty handed. Why?

Workplaces are highly political environments, not meritocracies. Advancement in the business world requires not only skill and competence, but also political savvy.

Politically savvy people know how to subtly work the system. They are conscious of their surroundings, and can easily identify which stakeholders and relationships are important for their success, using this knowledge strategically in order to get ahead.

It all starts with building good relationships with those in power, that is, the ones who have influence over the decisions that will affect your career trajectory.

Without this political savvy, you can deliver great results time and time again and still be passed over for promotion. It could be that your colleague, who, despite being less competent, still got the promotion you think you deserved, simply bonded with the people who had influence over the decision of who to promote.

The need to bond with important stakeholders is clear enough. But that’s easier said than done for women in the workplace, as company culture and politics today are still biased against them.

Even if a company has made it clear in its guidelines that all employees are to be treated equally, women still face challenges when it comes to building workplace relationships.

For example, a woman in a team mostly comprising men probably won’t get invited to weekend fishing trips or Monday night ball games. It won’t necessarily be out of malice, but simply because she is a woman, and her colleagues assume that she wouldn’t be interested in these activities or wouldn’t fit in.

But if she’s excluded from theses outings, she’s also excluded from the important conversations and bonding opportunities that come with them. As a woman, you have to be creative in forging bonds with the men in these networks, even though they might not make an effort to do the same.