Insofar as you exclude stuff like career choice from personal opinions I think the best way is to act like you share the opinions of whoever you’re talking to (or the most powerful person in a group) while never committing to anything publicly. This is probably different in fields where your opinions ARE your career, like politics or art criticism, but I think schmoozing is probably more effective than trying to pick the most generally appealing to everyone opinions.
Insofar as you exclude stuff like career choice from personal opinions I think the best way is to act like you share the opinions of whoever you’re talking to (or the most powerful person in a group) while never committing to anything publicly.
The words “yes-man”, “hanger-on”, and “riding on coat-tails” come to mind. These are failure modes of status-seeking.
Are they? They seem to always be attached to rising star or second in command and so on. Also you forgot brown-noser and the one I think most illustrative: teachers pet. The teachers’ or bosses esteem is exactly whose you should care about if you want to rise high, not jealous or anti-elite drones.
Eg “he only got the job by sucking up to the boss” is used pejoratively but guess who has the job? It’s not the complainer.
Insofar as you exclude stuff like career choice from personal opinions I think the best way is to act like you share the opinions of whoever you’re talking to (or the most powerful person in a group) while never committing to anything publicly. This is probably different in fields where your opinions ARE your career, like politics or art criticism, but I think schmoozing is probably more effective than trying to pick the most generally appealing to everyone opinions.
The words “yes-man”, “hanger-on”, and “riding on coat-tails” come to mind. These are failure modes of status-seeking.
Are they? They seem to always be attached to rising star or second in command and so on. Also you forgot brown-noser and the one I think most illustrative: teachers pet. The teachers’ or bosses esteem is exactly whose you should care about if you want to rise high, not jealous or anti-elite drones.
Eg “he only got the job by sucking up to the boss” is used pejoratively but guess who has the job? It’s not the complainer.