How to Get Ahead in the Corporate Jungle
by Kate Pavao, June 2007
Richard Conniff, an author, National Magazine Award-winning journalist, and former publishing executive, believes that we workers can learn a thing or two from the apes. Mostly: Spend less time beating your own chest, and more time learning to get along.
His book The Ape in the Corner Office, now available in paperback, analyzes both animal behavior and workplace politics through studies and anecdotes—offering advice that's often surprising.
Profit magazine spoke to Conniff about how executives can survive—and succeed—in the corporate jungle without going bananas.
OK, so we may be primates, but getting ahead isn't about being brutal, is it?
Conniff: What I suggest in the book is that when you are a social animal, as we are, a whole lot of energy goes into being cooperative rather than always trying to get your own way. We see this in nature: When you look at monkeys and apes, they seem to be fighting all the time; but when biologists sit down and actually do the numbers and analyze how they're spending their time, mostly they are grooming one another.
PROFIT Online: You actually say there is a specific ratio of positive to negative comments that successful groups follow.
Conniff: There have been these studies, starting with married people, that found couples were most likely to stay together if they had five positive interactions for every negative interaction They've done the same studies with strategic planning groups at EDS, Electronic Data Systems. The groups that were most successful also had that five-to-one ratio of positives to negatives.
Of course, you can't simply give praise when praise isn't due because people aren't stupid; they won't believe it. You have to be realistic. You can also look for ways to steer people in a positive direction. If you say, 'That's the dumbest idea I ever heard,' you'll see the person physically clam up right in front of you and stop contributing ideas. Instead, you can say, 'That's an interesting idea; let's play around with it a little.'
PROFIT Online: You also talk in the book about facial expressions, which can betray people's true thoughts. Should managers actually work on learning to read them?
Conniff: Absolutely, I think they should. First of all, 85 percent of communication is nonverbal. Often people will say one thing while their faces and their voices and their body language will say something different. What I suggest people do is to try watching television with the sound off and see if you can read the faces, see the expressions and what they mean.
If you start to pay attention to people's faces, you can pick up an awful lot of signals that can be useful to you. There are a lot of times when you will say something at a meeting, and everybody will nod and agree; but if you look at their faces, you can tell that they don't agree.
A good manager will stop and say, 'I get the feeling that you guys still have some questions here or that you have reservations. Maybe we should talk about that now.' And if you do that ahead of time, before you spend US$100,000 on a project, you can change the whole direction of the project in a way that's really going to work.
PROFIT Online: There are some pretty surprising revelations in the book. You say that gossip is good because it strengthens bonds. You also say that hierarchy can be good. Why is that?
Conniff: I think egalitarian tendencies are okay, but hierarchy is also extremely useful, or it wouldn't be so universal. When primates and chimpanzees don't know who the alpha is, they fight five times as often.
Having a hierarchy and knowing who's in charge help people do their work more productively. So, don't pretend otherwise. If you're the boss, OK, say that you're the boss. That doesn't mean you want to rub people's faces in it; but really, there should be someplace where the buck stops.
