Four hundred years before LinkedIn influencers started dispensing career advice, a Spanish Jesuit priest had already written most of it. I encountered them while reading Penguin Little Black Classics 12 – How to Use Your Enemies.

Baltasar Gracián (1601–1658) wrote The Art of Worldly Wisdom, a collection of three hundred aphorisms on ambition, reputation, influence and human nature. Penguin Little Black Classics published a selection of these under the title How to Use Your Enemies.

Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that Gracián would have felt remarkably at home in a modern corporate office.

Here are sixteen rules of office politics that in my view have survived four centuries.

1. Make people depend on you.

“An image is made sacred, not by its creator, but by its worshipper.”

Gracián’s advice is simple: become so valuable that your absence creates a problem. The most secure position in an organisation isn’t the one with the grandest title; it’s the one occupied by the person everyone relies on.

2. Never outshine your superior.

“All triumphs are despised, and triumphing over your superior is either stupid or fatal.”

Some leaders celebrate talent. Others see it as competition. If you have had a long career, the chances are you have had an insecure Boss for sometime. So, before deciding how brightly to shine, first understand who is holding the lamp.

3. Find everyone’s weak spot.

“This is the art of moving people’s wills… Everyone’s will has its own particular predilection.”

Not everyone is persuaded by the same things. Some seek recognition, others security, influence or simply peace. Understanding motivations is often more useful than winning arguments.

4. Cultivate your outstanding gift.

“Know your outstanding gift. Cultivate it and improve the rest.”

Most successful careers are built on one unmistakable strength. Discover yours and become difficult to replace. I had encountered this idea first in Marcus Buckingham’s book – Now, Discover Your Strengths, and I believe it still is a good advice.

5. Never lose your composure.

“A prime aim of good sense: never lose your composure… Magnanimity is difficult to perturb.”

Pressure reveals character. When everyone else is reacting emotionally, the calm person quietly becomes the leader in the room. Your calmness sends an unmistakable signal of dependability.

6. Leave a good impression.

“In the house of fortune, if you enter through pleasure’s door, you will leave through sorrow’s—and vice versa.”

People remember how interactions end. Whether it’s a meeting, a presentation or your last day in a company, endings linger. While a lot of sources talk about the “first impression”; Gracian dwells on the impression with which you leave.

7. Know how to refuse.

“Not everything has to be granted, not to everyone.”

Every commitment occupies time that can never be recovered. Saying “no” is often how you protect the work that truly matters.

8. Get used to difficult temperaments.

“Like getting used to ugly faces.”

Every office has impossible personalities. Waiting for them to disappear is usually less productive than learning how to work with them.

9. Don’t be inaccessible.

“Nobody is so perfect that they don’t sometimes need advice… Someone who refuses to listen is an incurable fool.”

Experience should make us more approachable, not less. The day you stop listening is the day your growth stops too.

10. Know how to deflect trouble.

“Having a shield against ill will is a great trick of rulers. To have someone else who can be criticised for mistakes and chastised by gossipmongers is a sign of superior skill.”

This is probably Gracián’s most ruthless advice. Every organisation develops scapegoats. You don’t have to admire the tactic to recognise that it exists.

11. Take more care not to fail once than to succeed a hundred times.

“Nobody looks at the sun when it is shining. Everyone when it has eclipsed.”

People rarely recount your steady successes. They remember the one spectacular mistake. I think we have moved a bit from this maxim. We are after all in the era of “fail fast”. Though in some industries this maxim still holds true.

12. Know how to ask.

“There are some who don’t know how to refuse… With everyone, catch them when they are in good spirits.”

Timing matters. The same request made to the same person can receive two entirely different answers depending on the moment.

13. Don’t be completely dove-like.

“Let the craftiness of the snake alternate with the simplicity of the dove.”

Trust is admirable. Blind trust is expensive. Kindness and judgment are stronger together than either is alone.

14. Show yourself.

“Display causes great satisfaction… especially when grounded in reality.”

Excellent work hidden from view often goes unnoticed. Visibility isn’t vanity when it’s backed by genuine contribution.

15. Combine esteem with affection.

“Fondness and veneration don’t sit well together… Love leads to familiarity, and esteem departs.”

Being respected and being liked are not always the same thing. The strongest professional relationships usually contain both.

16. Act as though always on view.

“Even when alone, he acts as though seen by everyone, knowing that everything will eventually be known.”

In today’s world of emails, screenshots and forwarded messages, Gracián’s advice feels almost prophetic. Conduct yourself as though every action may one day become public.

Four centuries have passed since Gracián wrote these aphorisms.

The workplace has changed. We have emails instead of letters, Teams instead of royal courts, PowerPoint instead of parchment. Yet ambition, insecurity, reputation, influence and human nature seem to have remained remarkably constant.

Perhaps that’s why a seventeenth-century Jesuit priest still sounds uncannily like the colleague who has seen everything.