What Games Do You Play?

We all play games. We play them for the promise of reward they hold. They function as a coping mechanism to help us to navigate uncertain and challenging settings. But they are self-serving and drain people of energy and commitment. “They lock people into routines and rituals that hamper flexibility and thwart change efforts.” They will never go away, but we can minimize both the frequency and their effect.

“A lack of knowledge about games allows them to thrive” say Mauricio Goldstein and Phillip Read in their book, Games At Work: How to Recognize and Reduce Office Politics. “The more you know the better able you’ll be to limit their damage and turn the energy of your people in more productive directions.”

You might have played or been involved in some of these common games they mention:

• Gotcha …where people act as if they receive points for identifying and communicating others’ mistakes.
• Gossip …the rumor mill is used to gain political advantage.
• Low Budget …where managers purposely low-ball budget requests as a negotiating ploy.
• Marginalize …effectively exile individuals from teams or groups because they challenge the status quo, or aren’t one of the boss’ people.
• Blame …individuals seek scapegoats in order to excuse failure.
• Gray Zone …deliberately fostering ambiguity or a lack of clarity about who should do what to avoid accountability
• Pecking Order …people play favorites and put others in the doghouse as an exercise of power
• Pessimism …people artificially inflate the difficulty of an assignment in order to create lower expectations
• Big Idea …suggesting visionary strategies and concepts to communicate one’s creativity and vision without regard for whether the ideas can be implemented.
• No Bad News …avoiding or suppressing negative data in relentless pursuit of a positive approach.

“Games meet powerful needs" they write, “whether for approval, promotion, camaraderie, or continued employment, and may seem to participants that they can’t get those needs met any other way. Therefore, even when their eyes are opened to the existence of games within their group, they do nothing. Even though they know that games are bad, the alternative seems worse.” So they can’t simply be eliminated by edict.

The authors give managers the tools to “diagnose” the games that people play in their company. Using a three step process entitled AIM—Awareness, Identification, Mitigation—with specific examples from global companies that illustrate both the games and their solutions, Goldstein and Read provide a clear outline for managers to address and end the games people play in organizations. They also present five principles to keep in mind:

To game is human. Your goal is to have fewer and less.

Games flourish during times of high anxiety. Companies need anxiety to fuel performance, however this anxiety and stress needs to be channeled into productive rather than manipulative behaviors.

Your company’s games are not comparable to another company’s games. Different organizations have different game ecologies.

Minimizing game playing starts at home. As soon as you deny that you play or facilitate games, you’ve limited your options for dealing with them. Recognizing this tendency in yourself helps you deal with these issues at a personal level.

Dialogue is a natural antidote to games. Don’t embark on a course of “gamocide” – that is. Don’t create programs and policies to punish game playing. This will serve only to create more games. Speaking openly and honestly discourages game playing.