Running the Rat Race without Being a Rat

The world is a competitive place, not just for businesses, but for you and me and all the other people who work in business as well. The very expression "getting ahead" is a description of competitive success. Who do you actually "get ahead" of? Someone else, that’s who – someone who hasn't competed as successfully as you have.

Being first and being smarter are two obvious ways to get ahead faster than others, and these qualities will also help you secure others' cooperation and support. So yes, you should always strive to be well informed, knowledgeable, and open-minded. Never stop learning about new technologies or acquiring different perspectives. 

But no matter how hard you strive to be first or to be smarter, there’s one other career discipline each of us has available, and it is a very personal choice. We have to decide whether to play by the rules or not. Whether to be honest or to cheat.

Face it, cheaters will always be with us, no matter how trustworthy our society is. All living organisms support a fair number of parasites and free riders that make their living simply by taking advantage of the others. Tapeworms, tsetse flies, ticks, lice – the natural world is full of parasites, and so is the business world.

Ironically, in fact, the more ethical and trustworthy any society is, the greater the opportunity cheaters have to do well.

It's definitely possible to get ahead in today’s business rat race by stealing others’ ideas, or by taking credit where credit isn’t due, or by foisting the blame for errors onto someone else. We've all seen this kind of thing happen, haven't we? Many of us have been victimized by it personally, and some of you reading this may have done it to others.

In Jeffrey Pfeffer's new book Leadership BS, in fact, he makes a strong argument that cheaters make up a disproportionate share of the most “successful” senior executives in business today, despite all the hoopla about authentic leadership espoused by various leadership gurus. According to Pfeffer,

“immodesty in all of its manifestations—narcissism, self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, unwarranted self-confidence—helps people attain leadership positions in the first place and then, once in them, positively affects their ability to hold on to those positions, extract more resources (salary), and even helps in some, although not all, aspects of their performance on the job.”

Still, cheaters lead mean and unsatisfying personal lives, in general. You can accumulate wealth or status by cheating, but the only satisfaction you will likely have is the wealth or status itself, because achieving it will give you little sense of accomplishment or mastery. 

Moreover, in today's hyper-connected, highly transparent world, the risk of getting caught and the penalty for being exposed are more severe than before. Transparency raises both the cost and risk of keeping secrets. If you regularly resort to cheating it will be virtually impossible to hide your less-than-honest approach from friends and colleagues, who will soon come to suspect your motives and to “count their change” whenever they have to deal with you. Think about your own circle of friends. Can’t you name someone now whose motives always seem to be a bit more selfish?

You don’t have to be a rat to get ahead in the rat race, however. In conflict situations, start your thought process by assuming first that other people’s intentions are basically good (and remember that even cheaters have good intentions in many situations). Put yourself in their shoes, and now think how much influence and credibility you will have once you develop a reputation for always acting in your coworker’s interest, never taking advantage of a colleague’s mistake or lack of knowledge, and proactively helping colleagues to achieve their own success.

If this is the way you come to be seen by others, you'll soon find that other people (including even some of your own rivals) will want you to succeed. Partly this will be because your success now furthers their own self-interest. But I think the stronger, less appreciated reason for this is that it's a natural human instinct to return good will with good will. This social instinct is so strong that it is virtually irresistible for all but the psychopaths among us.

Whatever the reason, the simple fact is that the more others see their interests to be aligned with yours, the more support you'll receive from them, and the more competitively successful you will be in your own career.

You don’t have to be a rat to get ahead in the rat race. Being trustable (or “proactively trustworthy”) is a competitive strategy for career success, every bit as powerful as it is a competitive strategy for success with customers.

And unlike cheating, being trustable as a person will pay dividends not just in terms of your professional advancement, but your happiness as well.