Learn English – What does “Lose the Drama” mean as one of 7 ways for women at work to negotiate

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In an interview of co-host of NBS Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski by Erin Skarda of Time magazine, Brzezinski gave 7 tips for women to take into their next career generation starting “Don’t act like a man,” “Be authentic” to “Be ready to walk,” and “Shoot for respect first, friendship later.”
http://ideas.time.com/2013/03/08/women-at-work-seven-ways-to-negotiate/

In the interview, she used the word, “Drama” three times seemingly in different meanings in the no.5 and 6 tips.

V. Lose the drama

Knowing your value means knowing when your stock is low. You have to
go into at a high-value moment in your career. Don’t play the drama
card unless you’re ready to follow the next step.

VI. Be ready to walk

Suze Orman said that women should save up for eight months before
they think about leaving a job. Be ready to walk in some way, shape or
form. If you’re not, it’s just drama, and nobody’s going to buy it.

I don’t understand what “Lose the drama” does mean.

Though OALED provides definitions of ‘lose’ under 12 different headings, my understanding of the verb “lose” basically means ‘to fail to win, fail to keep stg.” Can you tell me what’s good for ‘losing drama’ as a tip for successful deal?

To me “drama” of “Lose the drama” and “drama” of “It’s just drama” seems to have different meanings.

Additionally;

Is ‘drama card’ an alias of trump as a terminology of card-playing?

What does '“walk in shape or form” mean?

Best Answer

There are lots of things going on here.

  • 'playing the X card' means to bring up or use X as an issue in your own favor (yes as a metaphor for any kind of game situation like cards, where you have strategy or fact hidden or unannounced and you 'play' it). For example, for two people in a debate, one may make an ad hominem attack about the other person's religion, it can be said the first person 'played the religion card'.

Here, I interpret 'to play the drama card' means to bring up the drama of threatening to quit (a dramatic threat) so that the other person (one's employer) would recoil from that and not fire the person.

'lose the X' means don't use X, don't let X be involved, which is not synonymous but implies the 'don't play the drama card'

  • to 'trump' someone in informal language means to 'do one better than someone'. This is related to 'play the X card' if the X card played does in fact do one better.

  • 'Be ready to walk in some way, shape or form' the phrase of interest is 'way, shape, or form' which is a quasi-legalistic way of listing all the manners of walking away. Rhetorically it is just filler that sound legalistic (there is no really difference among way, shape, or form here).

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