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Excerpts from: Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders 91, 97, 103, 104-05 (New York: Bantam Books, 1978)(1976) The modern gamesman is best defined as a person who loves change and wants to influence its course. He likes to take calculated risks and is fascinated by technique and new methods. He sees a developing project, human relations, and his own career in terms of options and possibilities, as if they were a game. His character is a collection of near paradoxes understood in terms of its adaptation to the organization requirements. He is cooperative but competitive; detached and playful but compulsively driven to succeed; a team player but a would-be superstar; a team leader but often a rebel against bureaucratic hierarchy; fair and unprejudiced but contemptuous of weakness; tough and dominating but not destructive. Unlike other business types, he is energized to compete not because he wants to build an empire, not for riches, but rather for fame, glory, the exhilaration of running his team and of gaining victories. His main goal is to be known as a winner, and his deepest fear is to be labeled a loser. The typical gamesman's mid-career crisis exposes the weaknesses in his character. His strengths are those of adolescence; he is playful, industrious, fair, enthusiastic, and open to new ideas. He has the adolescent's yearning for independence and ideals, but the problem of facing his limitations. More dependent on both others and the organization than he admits, the gamesman fears feeling trapped. He wants to maintain an illusion of limitless options, and that limits his capacity for personal intimacy and social commitment. This is one reason why imaginative gamesmen tend to create a new reality, less limiting than normal, everyday reality. Like many adolescents, they seem to crave a more romantic, fast-paced, semi-fantasy life, and this need puts them in danger of losing touch with reality and of unconsciously lying. The most successful gamesmen keep this need under control and are able to distinguish between the game and reality. . . . At their worst moments gamesmen are unrealistic, manipulative, and compulsive workaholics. Their hyped-up activity hides doubt about who they are and where they are going. Their ability to escape allows them to avoid unpleasant realities. When they let down, they are faced with feelings that make them feel powerless. The most compulsive players must be "turned on," energized by competitive pressures. Deprived of challenge at work, they are bored and slightly depressed. Life is meaningless outside the game, and they tend to sit around watching TV or drinking too much. Gamesmen . . . who have reached the very top, take pride in their problem-solving abilities and coolness under stress (control) rather than their power (machismo). They do not try to be glamorous. (In contrast to younger gamesmen on their way up. . . .) The more adolescent gamesman still fantasies power and glory. . . . The gamesman saves himself from the company man's surrender by emphasizing toughness and placing his primary value on fine-tuned self-control. By controlling himself so successfully and maintaining control over the organization, he begins to enjoy control for its own sake. The brain becomes the overwhelmingly dominant organ of potency. Others are judged also on their powers of control.
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