Here’s an odd question:
Which one would you pick?
- Double your income but be humiliated daily, get publicly ridiculed by your boss at least once a week, and never be taken seriously by anyone
- Lose all your vacation days and bonuses, get a 20% pay cut, but be treated with massive respect and reverence by everyone
Play along with this thought experiment, and I promise, it’s going to bring valuable revelations…
Well…
Which one would you pick?
If you are like most people you would pick the second option.
And that makes sense…
Most people care more about people than money.
In fact, underneath that tough, all business, and somewhat “sharkish” attitude most modern day professionals try to project, the vast majority of people are actually “people people”.
Humans care about their professional relationships and social status, a LOT more than they care about the green paper.
Regardless of what most say, people are…
Hard and tough on the outside. Soft and squishy on the inside…
Make no mistake: It may not be “cool” to say this in the business world, but we like being around people, especially when they like us back.
We like talking, interacting, and collaborating with others…
We even occasionally like conflict – the resolution of conflict often builds stronger bonds and better teams.
Keep in mind, this (people being people people) is not something we choose or do consciously. Humans are very social beings, and the success of our civilization is entirely predicated on our ability to work together. Therefore, it is only natural and normal for us to evolve to be the type of beings that seek relationships.
And as far as our brains are concerned, there is zero difference between the semi-random sample of coworkers you interact with from a city of millions, or the tribe you would have been born into and depended on for your day to day survival 100,000 years ago.
Our coworkers become our tribe.
That means, the same biological and psychological mechanisms that guided your emotions, behaviors and relationships in our tribes – that which determined tribal outcomes in our past are also determining our professional outcomes.
In simpler terms: Our careers are largely influenced, if not outright determined, by our evolutionary baggage.
THAT is a tough pill to swallow…
When my students ask for evidence about this assertion, by the way, I usually cite studies that demonstrate “the minimal group paradigm” or that correlate every inch of height to greater income – all artifacts of our evolutionary path influencing or determining career outcomes.
But today, I’m going to take a different route…
And instead of going over the basics, I’m going to assume that you either have already been exposed to these fundamental ideas, or you’ll learn about them from some of our other works.
Today, rather than teaching you how biology affects our careers, I’m going to show you how to…
Use Biology to Your Advantage
You see… Just like you don’t need to know the thermodynamics of combustion engines or the electronics of an ignition system to drive a car, you don’t need to understand all the technical details of evolution and its impact on neurology, endocrinology and subsequent human behavior – in order to leverage them in growing your career.
What you DO need to understand is, however, that in the professional world of career competition, many layers of games are being played, like those nested Russian dolls. And it is advantageous to get to the inner most layer…
For instance, some weird drama you have with your co-workers about “how you broke the copier when they really need to use it” isn’t just a drama about you breaking the copier: There is something else going on underneath the immediate layer…
Inside the corporate drama of you breaking the copier, you may find a story about how fixing it is going to take long and be costly, inside which you find the story of how that particular expensive copier was purchased because the last manager was buddies with the vendor, inside which you find the story of petty corporate corruption, inside which you get the overall culture of unaccountable corporate spending, inside which you get the story of neoliberal capitalism, inside which you find the narratives of human hierarchies, inside which you see the biological game of survival and replication, and how in that deepest layer – power determines the rules.
In other words, you breaking the copier isn’t just about you breaking the copier. It is also an event that is part of all the greater stories, which give it meaning. And the deepest layer of the meaning is biological power struggle.
Now… Here, the crucial – and practical – thing to understand is that, when it comes to respect, the same thing is going on!
When you keep on peeking inside each doll, a new one comes out, until you are left with the single doll inside the rest of them: power.
Why does this matter?
It matters because, you can get disproportionate results if you can manage to influence the drama at the innermost level, and affect change on the greater story – by understanding and leveraging the nature of power.
Leveraging The Nature of Power
For instance: let’s say in the copier story, you happen to know a little bit about how copiers work and you manage to repair it. That repair ability is a form of power. And that power, in turn, can earn you respect from the team who depends on the copier – you become the hero of their story.
Not bad…
But what if… Instead of fixing that copier, you call up the vendor who sold the copier to your company, and you negotiate a way to return that copier and replace it with a better, newer version without spending a single extra dime?
Then you would not only be playing at the level of “technician fixing the copier”, but also at the level of “the resourceful negotiator” – which is a greater form of power expression. As a result, that story would go further and wider in the company, and you would get greater respect.
In fact, if you have that kind of power, you would likely be able to blame the copier for breaking, or at the very least, designate a fall guy. But… I digress.
Are you getting the picture? The bigger and higher level of narrative you can impact – the more power you can express – the greater amount of credit and respect you are going to get. Incidentally: this is called “scope” in manager speak, and finding ways to increase your scope is a good strategy to increase your paygrade.
Why Your Scope Matters
Your scope is a good proxy for the amount of power you have in an organization. It’s not always 1:1, but it’s generally close.
Of course, increasing your scope is easier said than done. You will often be blocked by red tape, or useless middle managers who stand in your way, and HR frustrations – there are a lot of people in the corporate world whose full time job is to justify their job, and one way they do that is by becoming obstacles to action.
Another important point regarding scope is to avoid becoming a complainer. There are many useless individuals who constantly complain about higher scope problems, instead of fixing the immediate lower scope problem at hand. That’s a trap!
The only way you get to higher scope operation is by proving yourself in lower scope, less risky activities. That’s why, complaining about corporate spending isn’t going to get your copier fixed, and using that complaint to avoid fixing the copier is a losing game.
Don’t just complain about higher scope problems without fixing the lower scope ones. You should either take action to fix the higher scope problem in a way that fixes the lower scope issue (i.e. call to get the copier replaced), or you should fix the lower scope problem (i.e. fix the copier yourself) BEFORE tackling the higher scope issue (i.e. start a discussion about why we use such expensive copiers in the first place).
In simpler terms: Fix first, complain later while taking credit.
Follow that pattern of action and your respect, your scope, and your salary will inevitably grow beyond what you can currently imagine.
Ignore the nested nature of stories and how scope operates, and you will be sandboxed into narratives other people create, where your actions will serve them more than they serve you.
After all, the respect equation is extremely simple: Your respect grows in direct proportion to the number of people you help. And the higher scope narrative you operate in, the higher the number of people you help through the problems you solve.
One Final Word…
It is worth noting that, when it comes to earning respect – power isn’t enough. Power does not equal respect.
The amount of power you have enables you to have a bigger scope, which lets you help more people, solve bigger problems, and thus, earn more respect. But just because you have and exercise power will not mean you’ll automatically earn more respect.
Respect cannot be coerced. The appearance of it can… But actual respect is developed and earned by being a force of good in the world.
Two things can be true at the same time: social games are predicated on power relations and respect is a function of how many people you’ve helped (btw – solving business problems is helping people).
Keep your awareness on both, and you’ll rise fast.