What you call "kissing butt" is also called office politics, networking, making connections, relationship building, sucking up, etc.
No, that's not what I meant. That is actually a mistake most people make. You need to kiss your manager's ass, the one with hiring/firing/promotion capacity. Take interest in his likes and hobbies, inform yourself and build a common-personality perception. Most managers are too busy with the day-to-day bullshit to notice who is truly excelling. They depend solely on someone else's feedback, and more often than not, the low rank managers (team leads without hiring capacity) will notice your intent and shut you down. So you skip a level and sweet talk the big boss' ego. If you're lucky you get to go to a golf outing or out for drinks, and that's their way of telling you that you're in the goombah circle of trust. If you don't do it well, they will let you know soon enough because you will be shut down immediately. Notice that this not networking. Networking is for the "low lying fruit".
Some people are really good at it. In traditional corporate organizations this is what gets people ahead (as long as they can also do the job adequately).
That's not true. In today's corporate world, the way CEOs got around hiring people for jobs that were beyond their skill set was by creating a new layer of "work ants" called SME (subject matter experts) that feed the managerial levels with the information they need in order to make "decisions" (which is bullshit because it isn't a decision, it a process of elimination exercise). In the old days, knowing your job 360º was MANDATORY. Your manager knew A LOT MORE than you about your job. Not anymore.
Yes, as you said, some people devote all their energy to their job. This is traditional 1950-1960s corporate America with the husband putting all his focus on his job and the stay-at-home wife raises the kids. It still goes on in many companies and is expected for advancement to higher levels. Total devotion to the job.
The ones that become professionally successful are the ones that focus on the job, not on the family. Goldman Sachs used to tell its new hires "now we're your family". Nonetheless, the kind of life that is required to be solely devoted to the job is the opposite of family life. Some people are able to do it.
Some people are born leaders and people eagerly follow them. Religious leaders are examples. Other people are put in positions of authority as in business or military for various reasons. You have to do what they tell you or you get fired or disciplined.
Dude, this is so not true it ain't even funny. The immense majority of "leaders" in today's society are imposed by someone else. The politicians that you elect into office, the captain of the soccer club your and my kids play in, the priest at the local church, my office manager, et cetera.
Don't get me wrong, there are people who just want to show up to work and pass paper around, people who would rather rescind all their responsibilities to someone else, but they are either in the minority or victims of a huge political scheme.
