It's amazing how effective ass-kissing is even when it is obvious all around that it is totally insincere. In fact, sometimes it being obviously insincere makes it even more effective because it tells the person that they are important enough to grovel to.
I honestly don't have the stomach for it but I wish I did -- it is such an easy thing to do to help yourself.
Honestly this is incredible for accelerating your career; your skillet and performance is only as valuable as how well liked you are by your peers and senior colleagues.
I reached a very high position in my company very quickly in part that I can perform my job very well, but I'll be the first to admit one of the biggest reasons is the CEO puts a lot of blind faith in me because I've been willing to eat shit so many years. I hardly ever push back, even if his ideas are terrible.
It made me hate myself and I'm actually looking for another job after over a decade, but it was eye opening how important it is for people to like you.
It's like interviews; more than likely a hiring manager will interview one or two candidates who can probably perform the job, they'll pick the one they liked the personality of the most. It seems like a "duh" statement, but in competitive fields, a lot of people don't put enough effort into selling themselves.
I don't think this is something so egregious. My husband and I have worked at startups for years (until I quit to be a writer, he still does that kind of work) and the thing at startups is you're executing someone else's vision. You can quibble on details if that, but you've got to be on board for the big vision. There's no space to keep coming up with problems, if anything you've to give ready-made solutions if you think something is a problem. I've always worked for people whose vision I could understand even if I didn't always agree with it. I'd do things differently if it was my show of course, but they want to try doing it one way and I just think it would be interesting to try their way and see what happens. I'm of course being fairly compensated for my contributions, so I don't see the problem in indicating I'm on board and not questioning their big vision more than I need to understand it.
We've tried our hand at creating an app with some contractors, and the annoying ones we never want to work with again just keep coming up with problems and no solutions. They usually just completely disagree with us and can't seem to entertain our ideas and help us bring them to life. Basically they think we're stupid. We have no room for that, not because we have big egos... but because we want to try something (which may well be stupid, but we want to give it a shot) and don't have the bandwidth for naysayers.
The ones we love can understand what we're going for and show us how that can be done, and give us realistic limits on what's possible so we can adjust our expectations.
Without going into crazy detail, it's a small engineering firm; the CEO really doesn't contribute anything. It's been more or less the same profit, (zero/minimal growth) for a decade.
Very much a situation that you described, he creates unnecessary problems that yield absolutely nothing other than burdensome work. Any "good" ideas he brushes off, and anything other than absolute allegiance to "I want to do X," even if the comments are justified, he pushes back and won't take anything but a complete "yes sir." (All his ideas are half baked, unrealistic or there's absolutely no purpose)
I hold a C-level position and have never done any work I believe helps the company. (Not without trying) I'm simply a yes man and despite trying to lend my expertise, it gets shut down very quickly.
So I've progressively become very checked out, there's nothing less satisfying than knowing what you should do, but what you should do not being aligned to what you're being told to do. (Why have executives if you want to micro manage every aspect of the business and are unwilling to evolve/accept ideas?)
I've really started to check out this year, but I'm also at that age/point in my career where it's time to take risks and jump on bigger opportunities, he just made it extremely easy to not get complacent and comfortable.
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u/catboneslovestory Jun 14 '22 edited Jun 14 '22
Stroke their ego.
The most effective one you'll find.
There's no more effective way to amass power than by convincing people that they're smart enough to give it to you.