All About Politics

Abstract

Its all Politics in a world where hard work and talent in aren't enough in the workplace is a growing stronger everyday. This paper will examine the author's main points as too why hard work and talent are not enough, and it will also compare our Andrew Durbin and Kathleen Kelley Reardon, main points as well. In addition the paper will point out similarities and differences between the two author's main points.

Introduction

Political skills can determine career success. To show aspiring businesspeople how to reach higher levels within their organizations and master the highly complex skill set required to get ahead in business, management professor Kathleen Kelley Reardon offers a complete tutorial on the benefits of becoming political and more effective in It's All Politics. To help readers get in the loop, get their ideas heard, and manage outcomes before they are in sight, Reardon presents many insights about office politics and how they can make or break a career.

One of the lessons Reardon teaches in It's All Politics is how to develop an early warning system for detecting when something in the environment just isn't right. Her advice includes numerous tips on listening to gut instincts and ways to avoid pushing valuable impressions aside. Reardon shows readers how they can improve their political skills by listening to that nagging feeling that something is not quite right and making sense of various inputs. Offering brief scripts that describe dysfunctional communication patterns, she breaks down unproductive interactions to describe how communication could have been improved and where language could have been inserted into the conversation to make a point stronger. Throughout It's All Politics, Reardon provides a number of highlighted boxes that present specific words of advice that sum up the lesson discussed in a section. "Political Advantage #1," for example, is, "Political intuition is not uncanny clairvoyance but rather uncanny attentiveness to what others say and how they act." She explains that by developing a political early warning system and keeping political antennae on high alert, people can see political disasters approaching a mile away. Through lessons such as these, Reardon aims to make readers more politically skilled and able to advance their career goals. Being secure in a job requires being able to manage how you and your ideas are treated by others. The politically astute, Reardon writes, "stay in touch with what is going on around them and communicate with others in ways that align their goals with those in power or soon to be in power." By having an uncanny sense of their surroundings, effective politicians