Greetings, readers! Now that Amazon has disabled its popular ebook lending feature, we're more committed than ever to helping you find the best ways to borrow FREE or save big on the Kindle books that you want to read. Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime Reading offer members free reading access to over 1 million titles, including Kindle books, magazines, and audiobooks. Beginning soon, each day in this space we will feature "Today's FREEbies and Top Deals for Our Favorite Readers" to share top 5-star titles that are available for KU and Prime members to read FREE, plus a link to a 30-day FREE trial for Kindle Unlimited!

Lendle

Lendle is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associates participant, we earn small amounts from qualifying purchases on the Amazon sites.

Most people cringe when they hear the words “Office Politics” and try to avoid them at all costs. The fact of the matter is, if you work in an office with other people, office politics is almost unavoidable, especially if you can’t identify with all the different variations of the game. I’ve dealt with office politics for many years and thought that I could avoid them. The more I tried to avoid office politics, the more I seemed to fail at avoiding them. “What was I doing wrong?” I wondered. I soon learned that the best way to avoid office politics was to arm myself with the rules of the game. Only then could I recognize the warning signs and steer clear of its negative impacts.

I started working in Corporate America in 1998, after almost ten years of working in the restaurant industry. The restaurant industry was very debilitating for me. I found myself working six, twelve hour days a week, with no vacation and no benefits. I soon came to a point in my life where I stepped back and took a real good look at what I was doing with my life. I had no social life and most importantly, nothing to show for all my hard work. After realizing this, I asked myself, “If I died and had the opportunity to look back at my life, would I be satisfied with all the hard work, blood, sweat and tears I gave to the working world?” Sadly, the answer was no. The obvious question that kept coming into mind was, “Why am I working my life away like this?” There had to be a better solution! I wanted to be able to look back at my life knowing that I made a difference in the world and that all my hard work was appreciated.

For years I prayed for the perfect job, hopefully one in Corporate America and had dreams of someday rising up the so-called corporate ladder and doing something different with my life. I had no experience what-so-ever when it came to how to survive in Corporate America, but I was young and desperate for a change.

In the beginning, I thought that I could take anything that the corporate world could dish out to me and was well aware of the gossipers and the brown-nosers that I might encounter, knowing well enough to stay clear of them. Needless to say, I really didn’t understand the dynamics of the office environment, when it came to climbing the corporate ladder—boy was I in for a treat! Years went by and I kept seeing everyone around me climbing the corporate ladder except me! “What was I doing wrong?” I wondered. Then I heard about this thing called, “Office Politics”. “Could it be that all my years of avoidance had something to do with the reason I was being left behind?” I asked myself. Intrigued with this new thing called Office Politics—new to me because I had never heard of it before, I researched all that I could on the topic and witnessed first hand how powerful it was in Corporate America. By the time I was able to identify it, I realized that climbing to the top had nothing to do with the job I was in it was all about Office Politics. Meanwhile, all my co-workers were ahead of me and I was sitting there amongst people new to the businesses which were also starting to get ahead of me. I felt like I was in grade school all over again and I was being held back, while all my other classmates were advancing to the next grade level. The worse part about it was, there was no teacher to help me with what I was doing wrong and guide my down the right path. Naïve as I was, I knew I had to do something and I had to do something quick! I had to learn the rules of the Office Politics game.

This book will teach you how to identify many of the political games that people play in the workplace so that you can become more politically savvy when dealing with them. It is a great book for anyone who is starting a new career, or simply looking for ways to improve their current job. It offers useful advice from having a successful job interview, to how to deal with people that do everything in their power to make you fail in the workplace.