Karl Moore remembers the moment he fell out of favour with his boss.

He was working as a manager at IBM in Toronto when a new person joined his department. Up until then Moore had been part of his boss’s “favoured inside circle” — but suddenly everything changed. The transferred employee became his boss’s new right-hand person, the outcome of brutal office politics.

“Good news for the team but I was soon put on the bench,” said Moore, now a professor at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management in Montreal, Canada. It certainly wasn’t a fun experience — and it definitely made his job harder, he said.

If your boss plays favourites — but you’re not one of them — is there anything you can do about it? And should you even care if you're never flavour of the month? After all, nobody likes a sycophant.