Lessons in workplace politics
Insights from Dr Michelle P King on how to navigate the informal side of work
“What about how prejudice works? Or ableism works?” I heard someone next to me on the street say.
I turned my head to look around and realised it was just me and the woman with a funny haircut carrying a large backpack waiting to cross the road.
She must have been addressing me.
“Sorry, are you talking to me?” I said.
“Yeah I’m talking to you, sweetheart,” she retorted.
I got the feeling that she wasn’t using ‘sweetheart’ as a term of endearment. The lights changed and she crossed the street in a huff, leaving me momentarily bewildered.
Then, the penny dropped. I was carrying a book with the title How Work Works in bold lettering printed across the front.
I can only assume she thought the contents of the book would contain all the evil teachings on How Capitalism Works or How Corporate Greed Works.
I dread to think how she may have reacted if I told her I was just on my lunch break during a shift at the Daily Mail.
So, why was I reading How Work Works in the first place — and what dangerous ideology lay within?
I was reading it in preparation for an interview with the author, Dr Michelle P King, for a live talk at The Trouble Club.
I can confidently say the woman on the street had misjudged a book by its cover.
When I told Michelle — a researcher with five degrees and twenty years’ experience of studying the workplace and working in HR — she said she wished she could have met that woman and explained the motivation behind the book.
The purpose of the book, Michelle says, is to address all the issues of inequality in the workplace and reveal why CEOs need diverse employees for their business to do better.
This is based on her decades of research and a wide range of data. But the CEOs don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to be told that running a workplace where everyone looks the same and has the same background is bad for business.
One CEO brought Michelle in to have a look at his company, to study it, to interview individuals within it and answer his questions on why business wasn’t booming. When Michelle presented the data, he said she must be lying.
When Michelle approaches companies offering workshops and full programmes to help educate staff on how to have a more cohesive workplace, the top bosses that do accept her offer only want to send the women and minority groups to those workshops.
She has a course ready to go to be delivered only to men to make them aware of workplace inequality and what they can do to change it. So far, not a single company has bought this course from Michelle.
While How Work Works illustrates this problem, it doesn’t bang you over the head with it or make you feel at a loss about inequalities at work. It is more about guiding the reader in how to move forward in their career despite the structures that may work against them.
The Trust Exchange
Michelle writes that work is not just the contract between employee and employer that says how many hours you will work and how much you will be paid in exchange. Joining a workplace is to enter a reciprocal relationship built on trust, where the worker will give time and energy and the employer will meet their needs.
These needs do not involve a salary. Michelle writes that we have five key needs at work: 1) to feel physically and psychologically safe, 2) to connect with others and feel you belong, 3) to have access to opportunities to learn and grow, 4) to have the ability to contribute, and 5) for those contributions to be valued.
If less than four of them are met, we will likely feel disengaged, or like quitting. If that happens, Michelle says we need to reconsider how we approach work, rather than giving up on it. Is there anything we can do to ensure our needs are met?
The answer lies in navigating the informal aspects of work. It starts with building an informal network, which leads to informal information sharing, which can yield informal opportunities, and informal development. In other words, it starts with people and it starts with you.
In the book, Michelle explains in detail the different aspects of the informal at work and how to harness them to move forward in your career. The bottom line that I found most reassuring was that even as we are experiencing major changes with tech, AI, ChatGPT and so on, the world of work is, and will continue to be, made up of people.
Michelle writes that you are your workplace. It might change due to remote working and you might have to adapt to digital transformations, but the need for personal, human, emotional skills will not go away. In fact, all of our careers depend on it.
Recommendation of The Week
EDIT restaurant, 217 Mare St, London E8 3QE. I went there for an event and was delighted by a mixture of vegan canapés — one of which tricked my mouth into thinking it was eating salmon — and six different dishes all made with local seasonal produce and carefully selected wine pairings. There was only one of the six dishes I was less keen on which was a mushroom based dish but all of the others were delicious, especially the heritage tomatoes and the harlequin squash. Mmmm.