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Managing the Boss

Five Questions to Keep Your Job from Driving You Nuts

October 3, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Five Questions to Keep Your Job from Driving You Nuts When work is actually decent, everything else starts to click. A good job challenges you just enough, pays the bills, surrounds you with coworkers who aren’t jerks, includes a boss who gets you, and offers a commute that doesn’t crush your soul. If you’ve got one, hold onto it. But if your job feels more “meh” than meaningful, it might be time to rethink how you’re showing up to it.

You don’t need a promotion or some life-changing pivot. Sometimes, a small mindset tweak is enough. Instead of chasing the ideal job or measuring your current one against outdated standards, ask better questions. You may find the spark isn’t gone—it’s just buried under routine and autopilot. Start with these:

  1. What parts of your day actually feel good—and how can you create more of them? Significance: Small joys matter. They keep you grounded.
  2. Who around you genuinely seems to like their job—and what are they doing differently? Significance: Pay attention. Borrow smart habits. Experiment.
  3. What small responsibilities can you quietly take on—even if no one notices yet? Significance: Leadership doesn’t wait for permission. It starts with initiative.
  4. What skill could you start building today that nudges you toward the next role? Significance: Make your potential visible. Show your growth in action.
  5. Does your calendar reflect your values—or just what others expect of you? Significance: Time speaks louder than intentions. Spend it wisely.

Bonus: What tough issue are you avoiding that needs a name before it grows teeth Significance: Ignoring problems doesn’t shrink them. It sharpens them.

Idea for Impact: Careers don’t reset in a day. But your rhythm can—one step at a time, starting now.

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Filed Under: Career Development, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Career Planning, Job Search, Job Transitions, Managing the Boss, Mentoring, Motivation, Personal Growth, Winning on the Job, Work-Life

Time to Speak Up, Not Suck Up, to an Overbearing Boss

March 20, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Time to Speak Up, Not Suck Up, to an Overbearing Boss When your boss starts offloading personal tasks—like running errands or booking his next vacation—it can really blur the lines between work and personal life. It feels like your time and effort aren’t being respected, and you might not want to keep doing these things.

Sure, helping out now and then, like picking up his dry cleaning or grabbing his morning Starbucks, is fine if it helps you stay in his good graces. But let’s be real—there’s a limit. If he starts piling on excessive or downright demeaning requests, like managing his personal complaints or apologizing on his behalf, it’s time to set some boundaries.

People who constantly accommodate end up being seen as doormats. So, next time your boss asks for something outside your job description, calmly explain that while you want to be helpful, this request is beyond what’s reasonable. It might be daunting, especially if you haven’t been respected in the past, but it’s crucial to stand up for yourself and set clear limits without losing your cool.

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Filed Under: Effective Communication, Managing People Tagged With: Assertiveness, Conflict, Delegation, Likeability, Managing the Boss, Negotiation, Winning on the Job

Five Questions to Spark Your Career Move

January 16, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Five Questions to Spark Your Career Move There are numerous compelling reasons to consider switching jobs. Factors such as work-life balance, economic pressures, family relocations, company downsizing, or a desire for a change can all influence your decision. However, these motivations often stem from circumstances rather than personal feelings, leading to less uncertainty than the deeper reasons we’ll explore later in this article.

We naturally resist change, even when dissatisfaction looms large, which can make leaving an uninspiring job difficult. Yet, a career switch can sometimes be the best choice for your well-being. Here are some essential questions to guide your decision-making process:

  1. Are you mentally stimulated in your job? If your work has become repetitive and unchallenging, you may be experiencing “rust-out.” Seek opportunities that engage your mind and rekindle your passion for your role.
  2. Do you feel valued in your workplace? Job satisfaction often hinges on recognition from your manager and colleagues. Feeling undervalued can lead to burnout and disengagement, making a positive work environment essential for motivation.
  3. Are you performing at your best, or merely coasting? If your work feels effortless and routine, you might be underperforming. Addressing frustrations in your current role could be easier than starting anew with fresh challenges.
  4. Where do you envision your future? Reflect on whether there are specific roles or industries you’ve hesitated to explore. Understanding your long-term goals can clarify if you’re on the right path toward achieving your aspirations.
  5. Are you settling for a job that misaligns with your values? If your current position doesn’t reflect your self-worth or personal beliefs, it may be time to seek opportunities that resonate more with what truly matters to you.

Idea for Impact: Before quitting out of frustration, consider giving your employer a chance to address your concerns. Identify the core issue: is it the job itself, your boss, a coworker, or the company culture? Even if your supervisor can’t resolve everything, sharing your thoughts may spark positive changes. If improvements don’t materialize, shift your focus to moving forward rather than assigning blame.

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  5. The Never-Ending Office vs. Remote Work Debate

Filed Under: Career Development, Managing People, MBA in a Nutshell Tagged With: Career Planning, Coaching, Human Resources, Job Transitions, Managing the Boss, Motivation, Performance Management, Work-Life, Workplace

‘Use it or Lose it’ Budget Syndrome

November 26, 2024 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Problem with 'Use it or Lose it' Budgeting As the fiscal year draws to a close, the annual spectacle of “use it or lose it” budget mayhem unfolds.

Caught in this whirlwind, departmental managers rush to burn through their budgets to avoid potential cuts in the upcoming year. This frenzy results in impulsive purchases, rushed projects, excess inventory, temporary hires, lavish team-building events, and premature contract renewals—all while the essential task of creating value for the company gets sidelined.

This rush-job approach stems from an outdated planning system that values appearances over genuine fiscal responsibility.

Idea for Impact: Consider a move towards more flexible, performance-based budgeting approaches by loosening rigid budget structures.

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  5. Looking at Problems from an Outsider’s Perspective

Filed Under: Business Stories, Leading Teams, MBA in a Nutshell Tagged With: Budgeting, Decision-Making, Leadership, Managing the Boss, Targets

What’s Next When You Get Snubbed for a Promotion

January 29, 2024 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

What's the Plan After Being Overlooked for a Promotion? Feeling passed over for a promotion hits hard, but how you handle it makes all the difference.

Sure, you might want to unleash some frustration on your boss or resort to sticking pins in a voodoo doll resembling them.

Set a Clear Path to Reach Your Career Goals

Take a breather and allow yourself to recover from the setback, but don’t let self-pity take control. It’s normal to experience moments of low spirits, but ensure it doesn’t evolve into an ongoing cycle of self-pity.

Circle back to your boss and ask straight up, “What do I need to do for that next promotion?” Keep it simple. Collaborate on a plan. If you’re lucky, you’ll both be on the same page, paving the way for future success.

Your boss might promise to make things right, but don’t get your hopes up. Companies, especially HR, have a reputation for dropping the ball.

Get Advice from a Supportive Mentor

A supportive mentor brings valuable perspective, insight, and guidance to help navigate the situation constructively. They might suggest that perhaps you weren’t quite ready for that promotion, or maybe you pushed too hard or inadvertently rubbed someone the wrong way.

Alternatively, it could be that the right people simply haven’t noticed you yet. Building key relationships is crucial for climbing the career ladder, so investing time in nurturing those connections is essential advice your mentor might offer.

If you’re feeling stuck, it might be time to explore other options, especially if your current job isn’t aligning with your long-term career goals. But remember, jumping ship isn’t always the quick fix. Dealing with promotion issues or performance setbacks in a familiar environment can be easier than starting anew, where you have to prove yourself from scratch and navigate new dynamics.

Idea for Impact: Own Your Path to Promotion

There’s a big difference between not getting what you want and not getting what you’ve earned. When you’re aiming for something but haven’t secured it yet, it’s up to you to figure out the steps needed to make it happen.

Wondering what to read next?

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  3. What Every Manager Should Know Why Generation Y Quits
  4. Five Questions to Spark Your Career Move
  5. From Passion to Pragmatism: An Acceptable, Good Career

Filed Under: Career Development, Managing People Tagged With: Career Planning, Human Resources, Job Transitions, Managing the Boss, Personal Growth, Winning on the Job

What to Do When Your Boss Steals Your Best Ideas

April 10, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Be thankful that your boss is stealing your ideas or getting credit for your work because the best way to make your boss love you is to make her look good.

It’s surprising how well this ensures a steady and trusting working relationship. So suck it up, buttercup!

Your boss’s opinion counts more than anyone else’s in your career trajectory. So the last thing you want is to put yourself in an adverse situation with your boss.

Credit for ideas is way overrated, anyway. The core of your job isn’t to sit in a cubicle and think up ideas. It’s carrying out those ideas—that’s what you’ll list on your resume—projects done, money saved, marketing campaigns led–not your bright ideas.

Don’t go over your boss’s head and protest. Your boss’s boss doesn’t pay attention to who stole whose ideas. If your boss is mean and nasty, your boss’s boss will eventually figure it out without your help.

Idea for Impact: Is it that awful that your boss takes credit for your ideas? Think of it as unselfishly donating some ideas in exchange for a good relationship with your boss.

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Filed Under: Career Development, Managing People Tagged With: Assertiveness, Conflict, Getting Along, Managing the Boss, Mindfulness, Relationships, Social Dynamics

You Can’t Serve Two Masters

February 6, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Learning to “serve two masters” and managing multiple supervisors is a vital skill in today’s work world. Organizations have increasingly embraced matrix structures, with “dashed line” reporting (you work under a supervisor who doesn’t do your performance reviews) and “solid line” reporting (the true boss who evaluates your performance.) Do your best to accommodate the latter, but don’t overlook the other(s.)

Further, with cross-functional teams, it’s common these days to have multiple team-based supervisors, each overseeing your work on different projects. If you’re not cautious, it’ll become all too easy for each supervisor to regard you as if you have no other commitments, and you can end up letting them both down.

The key to managing expectations at odds is insisting on boundaries. If you aren’t too careful, you could become totally overwhelmed—each boss isn’t mindful of what the other’s sending you. Each ends up pushing their own agendas regardless of what you already bear on your plate.

To resolve the two-boss dilemma and try to please everybody, take the initiative and get your bosses to cooperate and liaise regularly:

  • Create and maintain one master priority list of everything on your plate. Update it at the beginning of every week, and make sure both bosses have a copy. This should help each understand how any emergent task would jibe with the other items on your list.
  • When one boss drops an urgent task on your lap, refer to the master priority list and ask, “If you want me to do this, what is it you want me to take off the list because I also have three other deliverables due in the next few days.”
  • Establish a daily 5- or 10-minute standing coordination meeting (“scrum”) with all the bosses. In the meeting, point out your current and impending priorities. They can adjust their relative preferences for you.
  • Don’t be the “go-between” and agree to speak on behalf of one boss to the other—especially if they aren’t speaking to each other. There’s much ambiguity, and managing conflict can become a significant challenge for you.

Even if you have multiple supervisors whom you take direction from, you’re likely to have one boss who’s ultimately responsible for their career. This boss will judge your performance and decide about your compensation and promotions. Tell her about your double bind and see if she can work out an acceptable arrangement with her colleague.

Idea for Impact: Remember to maintain good relations with everybody you work with. Personnel changes are widespread and frequent in most companies, and you never know who’ll be your next boss. Don’t strain your relationships with the other.

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Filed Under: Leading Teams, Managing People Tagged With: Conflict, Getting Along, Great Manager, Managing the Boss, Relationships, Winning on the Job

How Not to Handle a Bad Boss

September 20, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Demanding bosses come in an assortment of guises: idealists, megalomaniacs, overbearing tyrants, windbags, windbags, narcissists, micromanagers, and so on. And you’ll work for some at various stages in your career.

But no matter the boss type, attaching labels like demanding or overbearing can eventually turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The moment you label someone as problematic, you’ve made them more challenging to work with because you’ll no longer give this person the benefit of the doubt. You’ll not relate with them on a productive level.

Idea for Impact: Focus instead on recognizing the boss’s specific behaviors. Calibrate yourself to match your boss’s style, and build a strategic liaison founded on expectations for yourself and the relationship.

Wondering what to read next?

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  3. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?
  4. The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument
  5. No Amount of Shared Triumph Makes a Relationship Immune to Collapse

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Managing People, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Conflict, Getting Along, Managing the Boss, Mindfulness, Relationships, Social Dynamics

Never Skip Those 1-1 Meetings

August 27, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The weekly 1-1 meeting with direct reports is usually the first casualty of managerial overload. A few email exchanges or ad hoc encounters aren’t a reliable alternative for the open line of communication set forth by a regular 1-1 meeting, especially if an employee needs a problem addressed or priorities adjusted in changing situations.

Idea for Impact: Keep your commitment to do whatever is feasible to preserve your 1-1s with direct reports—in both schedule and content—even if it means having an abbreviated meeting or adjourning to later in the week.

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Filed Under: Leading Teams, Managing People Tagged With: Coaching, Conversations, Feedback, Great Manager, Managing the Boss, Performance Management

Do Your Employees Feel Safe Enough to Tell You the Truth?

August 15, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Take any corporate scandal or the Challenger and Columbia disasters, and you’ll find lower-ranking voices that tried to be heard within these organizations to prevent or minimize the consequences of the excesses or the accidents.

Some leaders are too isolated from reality and establish an “all’s-good” guise whereby anything other than affirmative becomes an undesirable—unwelcome even—answer to a performance-related question. Such leaders foster a “good-news culture,” where any truth-teller or devil’s advocate is quickly dismissed. Queries such as the cursory “Is everything okay?” elicit information-free, non-answers like “yes” and “great!”

When leaders are disconnected from reality, they become incontestably right. Employees know the rule of the game is to say what’s safe to say. To not tell the truth. To tell the leader just what she wants to hear. Employees would instead go with the flow rather than speak truth to power.

Consequently, business pressures often lead to shortcuts that go overlooked. Risk is normalized. Leaders who cannot tap into the truth get blindsided when the problems blow up because they didn’t nip the problems in the bud. Leaders have only themselves to blame when things go wrong.

Idea for Impact: Insightful leadership isn’t about the privilege of position but the privilege of information flowing upwards. Wise leaders dare to seek information they don’t want to hear. They know how to ask the right questions, look for revealing details, and set up a culture of openness that makes it easy for employees to tell the truth.

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Filed Under: Effective Communication, Leading Teams, Managing People, MBA in a Nutshell Tagged With: Critical Thinking, Delegation, Great Manager, Leadership, Managing the Boss, Problem Solving, Relationships, Risk

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!