4 Big Lies You Need to Stop Believing If You Grew Up Lower or Middle Class and Want to Succeed — #3 Politics Are Beneath You

How many of you out there hate office politics? I’m willing to bet most of you gave a mental nod yes to that question. Yet, office politics are exactly what get things done.

This is post number 3, continuing my series on the lies we internalize growing up lower or middle class that prevent us from achieving success. Lie #1 was People Owe You. Lie #2 was You Need to Look for a Job Rather Than Opportunity.

Want a promotion? You best get on your boss’s good side. Need to finish that project on time? You better learn how to work with those two co-workers you really dislike, but are key to the project.

Growing up lower and middle class, we’re taught that playing politics to get ahead is beneath us. It’s what people that lack serious ethics or morals do. Or, it’s just the cheap way to get ahead without really doing the work.

Disparage Politics and Stay Poor

So what happens? Those who put their heads down and focus on getting things done get left behind. Those that focus on making the right connections and building relationships get ahead, often regardless of the caliber of their work.

We have names for these people, “kiss-ass”, “brown-noser”, “bootlicker”. These names help us feel morally superior while we stay behind in the trenches.

The reality is that nothing gets done without people. Relationships are the lynchpins that drive results. Do you want to get anything done? You need to work with the right people. Maybe others have the skills you need, the influence you need, or just the right status.

And, guess what, that often requires working with people you disagree with or don’t like.

Politics, as it’s used by lower and middle class individuals in reference to the work place, is a derogatory term. However, those that truly succeed in life know that it is the grease that turns the wheels of success.

Relationships Are Everything When It Comes to Success

This was just one more thing that took me a long time to learn. Let’s say you’re low down on the food chain in your corporation, but there are a number of things you want to change to make your life easier and to achieve betters results for the organization as well.

If you don’t have your manager’s ear or the respect of the person above them, what do you think the chances are of you getting your voice heard? Next to none. Maybe you even have one of those inept or unprofessional managers that don’t exemplify a good leader as we understand it today.

Well, if you want to see even a slim chance of making improvements and affecting change, you better become best friends with that manager so that they will support you in moving your idea through the corporate bureaucracy. That’s right. You need to befriend and support the manager that you dislike.

Most Serious Decisions Are Made in the Gray

This is another piece of the lie we were taught growing up. We were always taught that things were black and white. There was a high road that was always the clearest option.

However, when you get into real leadership, there is no such thing. Decisions are gray far more often than not.

Real World Problems

Let’s take a case that came up several times for me as a school director. You hire a new teacher into the class, but they’re not working out. In fact, you’re pretty positive they’re actually having a negative impact on the kids.

What do you do? You could immediately terminate the teacher. But then who’s going to teach the class? You’re already helping out with other classes, so aren’t available. And, even if you were, putting all your effort into one class completely detracts from your ability to support every other teacher and student in the building, thereby harming them at the expense of one class.

You could combine classes with another teacher’s. But that’s illegal in a daycare setting due to ratios, and in another setting, would be detrimental to all the students involved as the teacher couldn’t give adequate attention.

So maybe you hang on to the poor-performing teacher until you find another qualified teacher and they complete training, which could be at least a month.

What’s the right course of action here? There isn’t one. You have a serious of choices, each with their own pros and cons. And, as is often the case, there is no clear answer as to which course of action is the best for all involved. You simply do your best to make the decision you think and hope is the right one.

Let’s look at another even more challenging example. You’re a non-profit that delivers clean water and medical supplies to children in a war-torn country. However, to get your life-saving supplies into the country, you have to bribes to the very military and warlords that have created the problem.

What do you do? Do you refuse to support the military ravaging the country by not paying the bribes and let the children die? Or do you pay the bribes in the hope that the aid you’re brining will offset any harm done in that direction?

Or, to provide a super easy example that most readers are probably personally familiar with these days, you’re the CEO of a medium-sized company that just lost ten million dollars last year due to bad business decisions. You can either start laying people off now and save as many jobs as you can, or hope for a miracle and keep everyone on at the risk of having to shut down the company if you fail, at which point everyone loses their job.

Relationships, Tough Choices, and Results

Those are real leadership choices. There often is no black and white path, simply a series of extremely difficult choices, each with their own negative consequences that you have to shoulder as you forge alliances, lead others, and work to achieve your dreams.

Getting things done and achieving results through relationships mean that we often have to work with people we’d rather not. We may have to work with someone with even violently disagree with if it means the positives of the end result we achieve are greater than the cons of working with a specific individual or group.

Of course, there are many relationships that are easy to make and are with people that you fully support or agree with. But those are the easy ones.

Playing the Game Is Never Easy, but It’s Almost Always Necessary to Achieve Your Goals

Those in the upper-class and those who learn to be really successful are the ones that also understand that tough choices and strange bedfellows are also part of the game. Or, at least, a part that you need to understand and be able to navigate well if you’re ever going to be anything but a front-line employee or, if you’re real lucky, a middle manager.

So the next time you see someone kissing ass, maybe ask yourself if they’re really just good at building relationships and ask yourself if it’s a skill you should probably start developing, too.

Along the same lines, when you end up in a situation where you need to work with someone you don’t agree with, remember that thinking in black and white terms won’t get you anywhere and that such easy choices rarely exist the higher up you go.

If you really want to know how to start, market, and grow a business, then you need to join my private Facebook Group. This group is for those focused on building something larger than themselves. We’re a bunch of bootstrappers that are going to change the world through tried and true business principals, not gimmicks. We’re just getting started, so now’s the time to get in. Click on the picture to join.

Nick Jaworski is the Owner and Chief Digital Community Builder for Circle Social Inc., a Strategic Social Media Marketing & Web Development Agency in Indianapolis. He writes on the future trends and shifting landscape of our digital world. He is also devoted father of a beautiful little girl that speaks Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, and English. Twitter & Snapchat: @NBJaworski