It sounds trite, and quite from a story, but the best experience and training for a highly competive environemnt (which, to be honest, I am in at the moment) or just regular academia that i have is roleplaying games and board games. Especially
Diplomacy (board game) and
Vampire the Masquerade (roleplaying game and LARP). I played both of these quite a lot as a grad student, and undergraduate and as a teen, before I moved to the States.
The main gist of the games? Well, for Diplomacy it is two-fold. Be trustworthy and know when to stab your ally. Or be trustworthy and know when they are going to stab you and anticipate it (either tell them or block it). Stab is what it sounds like, "
I'm wanting to be with you- alas when the orders are turned in you realize that my mouth didn't copy exactly what I wrote on the order". Therefore, your troop got killed/moved/bounced.
My biggest wins were always when I established trust with someone and then told them exactly, "
if you were to stab, this is the round you would do it, so therefore I need us to make provisions for that" and most often that not, it resulted in a known bounce (negated move) or nothing bad at all. I called it "b
eing honest with people and letting them know that more were gained to play with me, rather than against me". Of course, in real life it helps if you know dirt on people or prove that you are worth more to them ON their side than not. Either way though, it's not really a fun game with real people. However, it's a reality in the games of academia/high stakes institutions.
The dirt on people and trying to control them that way would be the VtM game experience. It's when you play non-ethical, narcissistic vampire trying to gain control and power in a town (usually) with forming alliances with the Prince of the city (gender neutral title) or the Archbishop (depending on if you play the Camarilla (read old-school-Borgia-set-up with families/clans in charge, or Sabbat where the packs are constituted by individuals who chose to stay tied to each other in family packs rather than clans/families). There was a TV series in the 90ies called "Kindred-the Embraced" if you are curious on the Hollywood take on the Camarilla game. Or the book series "Clan novels"; good examples of the various clans Ventrue (blue blood
Camarilla) and
Lasombra (shadow masters of Sabbat)
Long story short, the strategic part of these games have proven to be quite useful, although sad, part of work politics. It's always important to remember to keep contact with people who are in power above you. Someone who will root for you. Either you tie your destiny to theirs, or them to yours, or you prove that they will lose something important if you go.
Of course, in real life it isn't as simple as in the games. In the game environment you often have a set pick of valuables/things that count. In real life that can vary. It can be grants (money), positions (career ladders), influence (who you know and can influence decision making), papers (pride and money) etc.
However, I will say - and I know this sounds silly - the best training for this scheming and plotting on power or simply "keeping my job" has come from these games. Not from my graduate professor, nor my mentor in post-docing, but from playing these fairly simple games. I guess if I was more of a chess person I could have used the allegory of chess. Although, I think chess is too simple since it is only two players and if life was only about two people (you and the other one) then chess would be great. However, playing work politics is more about "their allegiances" and "their alliances" than just them.
If anything I try and tell post-docs and graduate students who seek advice about their career and present position the same things.
1) don't keep all eggs in one basket (practically: have more than one mentor and get to know more than one person above you)
2) try to keep an eye on the environment around your lab (the department and the overall goal of the institute, your place will depend on what's deemed important on that level)
3) remember to keep track, how ever sad this is, on things you do that benefit your mentor/boss since baseline is that they will grade their people based on how valuable you were to them)
4) always have a plan B, C and D. If the first choice doesn't work, go with second, then third (practically: keep an updated CV, keep looking around for jobs even if you aren't actively looking, and always say yes to connections that are in a field you might be interested in the future)
5) never forget that unless things are iron-clad and signed (which they seldom are) never presume they are a done deal (practically: keep email trail of all verbal agreements for example on publications etc. They might not be legally binding, but it makes it enough of a mess usually, that people will decide to go with what was written and not make a mess)
6) depending on where you are - most often people are more likely to go with "what's easiest" (Practically: even if you aren't a screamer with drama tendencies, keep good relationship with HR/lawyer/dean of faculty since if push comes to shove, it's harder to do bad things against someone who has connections*. And there are a lot of people who work the system against you, when you don't "
scream the loudest". Also, most people don't like drama so if you can show them an easy way out - "win-win" situation, they will often take it.)
TLDR: Never trust people you work with/for. Keep an open mind of options that you can do. Always show what you bring to the table as worth. Make sure that your boss's boss knows this too (it's difficult, I know, I bank on papers or other obvious metrics for this). Never completely trust people you work with, apparently there are a lot of opportunistic people who won't hesitate to use you. Even if you don't want to use them (I recommend not doing that), be sure that you're not used for someone else's agenda.
*I think I've mentioned this before. During my graduate studies my professor and I had a disagreement as in he wanted me to halt my studies and leave. At the time I thought it was due to my lack of papers, it wasn't. However, long story short - since the Dean and I served on committees together it turned out that it was a little difficult pulling off that I was the lazy student that needed to go but rather the Dean had a chat with the Chair of the Dept and all of a sudden there was no issue. (it was all a money deal so nothing else really, but all would've been easy if I just left like a good girl)
