Taking Credit

If you are known to be the passionate individual in your realm called "office", then you are in big trouble. For example, in the I.T. industry, passionate individuals are often the "it" in every team that will do every single "technically" related job. In the logistics department, the "it" will always be the one in-charge in doing the "logistically" related job. In the academe, the "it" will always be a substitute for every "academic" related job. Regardless of where the job is related, you will always remain to be an "it", but at the end of the day, it just proved that you are a reliable resource that can be counted on and will forever be tagged in the minds of the perpetrators to be an "it" of a lifetime.

Now, let's drill that down. Why are those perpetrators always making you do the dirty job? Basically, because it's dirty and those in the upper management would always want to have the cleanest hands - relatively, it's a major part of looking good. Once you are able to do the dirty job in covering all kinds of things that you've almost run the whole operation of your team, your boss will simply say, good job. The next thing you'll know, you will have again a humongous stack of work to do, while your boss is drinking coffee, eating donuts, playing solitaire, and having phone sex with the secretary. Or, if you have the greatest strategic boss, then your boss gets all of the credit for the work you've done.

Or, if you have a practical officemate, they could just simply steal the credit from you by saying.

"IN SUMMARY, we can cut the wages of the employees for lower budget costs"

"ON TOP OF THAT, we can reduce the lights so that the monitors will give an outer space ambience"

"GOOD JOB. The good thing here is that everybody now knows that the sun doesn't sleep when it's the evening."

Notice the emphasized keywords. These are strong keywords that make you look good even though you didn't do much of all the work, yet it appears that you've summarized everything and makes you look that you are on top of the food chain and that you are the invulnerable species in your team.

Make sure that when you mention such keywords that you will do this at almost the end of the meeting and you won't let anyone do the summary first. You do it first with a poker face and that would make the other summarizers worry that a person smarter than them has landed on earth. Once you've mastered this principle, you will feel the benefit of being on top of the food chain without too much effort and intervention.

Relax and take it easy.