How to cope up with the internal politics and biased mentality / behaviour of your superior / top bosses in Project Management Environment

Like Dinah, I have been both the "favored" and "not so favored" employee. In an ideal world, we would all be judged on how well we do what we do.

I used to make a joke at a prior employer, where I seemed to be favored, about how "it isn't what you know, it was how well you could convince others that you know it." (The actual phrasing I started using was - "It isn't what you know, it is what people think you know")

I started making that joke based on my belief that I was in a role that I was totally unqualified for, but they loved me and constantly praised my work, even asking for me over other people (those other people were the people I went to when I got stuck). I was, rather accidentally able to convince them that I knew stuff I had no clue about. As far as I could tell, that was what made them "favor" me.

Meanwhile, their smartest and most capable employee they dumped on and treated like trash. When he quit (thankfully after I did), they realized real quick how important he was to their organization. As it turned out, I wasn't the only one going to that guy for help when I got stuck, and I also wasn't the least knowledgeable one they had.

I think this is fairly common in a lot of places. Sometimes managers may just like a person and dislike someone else for no other reason than just their personality or false perceptions of their work.

Such counterproductive attitudes are more predominant in organizations where the employees are being picked up thru biased or unequal opportunity negotiations at the induction stage.

After a while, when the throughputs of all the employees are exposed and compared in a common platform, there are possibilities of development of intrinsic feelings that may be described as inferior, superior, insecure (and so on) irrespective of the position of the employee. Such feelings can be dormant so long as there are no triggers but erupts when the circumstances ripen. I think, Ms Banaja was referring to some of such spurts.

In my opinion, there are two ways for addressing such cases:-
1. Thought the employees are educated and experienced, all of them should be screened for their strenghts and weaknesses prior to assigning a new task. This would give them a platform to expose their capabilities and shortfalls and would rather get a chance to evaluate themselves. Such understandings would counter their own feelings to some extent.

2. There should be routine FORMAL quality improvement programs and INFORMAL team building sessions among the working groups so that all are given adequate chances to learn formally and interact informally.

I have tried similar approaches in a few of my projects where the employees were having different educational and demographic backgrounds.
On whatever grounds it may be, the lead/manager need to demonstrate a remarkable unbiased approach to make the exercise successful.

In think not treating everyone equally is like fostering a sense of resentment and separation that can demotivate employees and damage team unity.

In my experience this is common in organizations, and like Dinah mentioned I have been "not so favored" employee.

you should have 3 factor to succeed in anywhere
1- good personality
2- more knowledge and skills
3- great insight

Dinah, like you I have also experienced both the situations, may be for a very short period. but yes I know how it feels. Many years I have worked in neutral situations also. Those who are "favoured", can't find time for their own family, they have to be always on their toes, but they have other incentives also. They are always ahead of others in the yearly appraisal.

It is always better to work in an impartial environment. But this is too human tendency to indulge in some sort of biased behavior. It is okay till it harms some other person, that too unlawfully. We all try to find how to keep balance between these two.