Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Managing the Boss

Don’t Quit Your Job Until

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Before you quit your job, give your employer a chance to address your issues.

Thoughtfully identify what the real concerns are. Is the problem your current job, your supervisor, a coworker, the processes, the whole company? If the job is the problem, consider making a move within your company before you decide to leave. Time your concerns appropriately.

Before you quit your job, give your employer a chance to address your issues If you don’t tell your supervisor, she can’t fix it. Who knows what’s feasible—a different job description, team, department, schedule? You may just be surprised at how enriched your experience can be once the key issues are addressed.

Don’t jump ship in frustration if you’re likely to run into the same problems with your next employer. It’s easier to tackle frustrations in a familiar environment at your current employer than at a new company, where you’ll be under pressure to learn the ropes and quickly produce results.

Indeed, your supervisor may not be able to fix your issues even if she knows what they are. But unless you give her a chance, you’ll never know. If you can’t work it out, don’t get hung up on whose “fault” it is.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Job-Hunting While Still Employed
  2. Job Interviewing #2: Interviewing with a Competitor of your Current Employer
  3. What’s Behind Your Desire to Job-Hunt and Jump Ship?
  4. Before Jumping Ship, Consider This
  5. Don’t Quit Your Job Just Yet

Five Ways … You Could Score Points with Your Boss

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  1. Five Ways Know that your job is to help the boss win. If you’re not sure what exactly represents success for your boss, ask. Keep her goals in mind when presenting ideas. Minimize your use of her time and resources.
  2. Keep track of everything your boss puts on your plate. Let her realize that if she assigns something to you, it’s either going to be handled, or you’ll bring it back up with her for a follow-up.
  3. Size up your boss’s style. Is she a delegator (don’t overwhelm her with detailed updates) or a hand-holder (involve her in making decisions—even if to ask, “Does that sound right to you?”)? Match up your boss’s communication preferences.
  4. Identify your boss’s pet peeves. Is it being late to appointments, dropping by unexpectedly, bringing a problem to her without suggesting a remedy, or coming to a meeting unprepared? Avoid them like land mines.
  5. Take upon yourself any aspect of your boss’s job that she doesn’t find particularly interesting. You’ll improve her work-life quality. (And you’ll broaden your experiences and become noticeable to other leaders.)

Bonus: If she’s a good boss, tell her. Few people think to say it. Praise, but don’t flatter.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Don’t Be Friends with Your Boss
  2. No Boss Likes a Surprise—Good or Bad
  3. Four Keys to an Excellent Relationship with Your Boss
  4. Is Showing up Late to a Meeting a Sign of Power?
  5. The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument

Don’t Be Friends with Your Boss

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Don't Be Friends with Your Boss Develop a cordial, constructive, and trusting relationship with your boss. But don’t extend that connection into a chummy friendship.

A boss-employee friendship comes with complications and tensions that don’t exist in other relationships. The boundaries in friendships are softer and more diffuse. In a boss-employee relationship, the boundaries are more pronounced, and rightly so.

When you’ve got a great rapport that comes with a friendship, it’s easy to start expecting to be treated a bit better than everyone else on your team. You’ll be disappointed when some special consideration—a plump assignment or a flexible vacation schedule—doesn’t come your way. Your boss will expect you to abide by the same standards and rules as everyone else.

You also have to be more vigilant about how your friendship appears to other people.

Idea for Impact: Boss first, friend second. Don’t mix the two. Sure, be friendly with your boss, but don’t expect to be treated as a friend.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Don’t be Friends with Your Employees
  2. Four Keys to an Excellent Relationship with Your Boss
  3. No Boss Likes a Surprise—Good or Bad
  4. Good Boss in a Bad Company or Bad Boss in a Good Company?
  5. Make Friends Now with the People You’ll Need Later

Good Boss in a Bad Company or Bad Boss in a Good Company?

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Who would you work for: a good boss in a mediocre company or a bad boss in a good company?

Without a doubt, your boss matters more than you realize. Having a good boss is one of work-life’s greatest experiences. A good boss can make work fun and meaningful and enriching.

Alas, the system of finding jobs is designed to let bosses pick employees, not the other way. You can’t expect to work at all times under a good boss.

Neither will you always have a chance to choose your boss (or your subordinates for that matter.) You’ll need to learn to get along with all sorts of people.

The Surprising Benefits of a Bad Boss

There’re quite a few reasons you’ll be better off for having endured a boss who’s insensitive, moody, manipulative, bad-tempered, or just plain incompetent.

  • The Surprising Benefits of a Bad Boss If the boss is very good at doing something that you aspire to become good at, it worth your while to learn from a master in action. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, portrayed brilliantly by actress Meryl Streep in the movie The Devil Wears Prada (2006,) may be a terrible pain to work for, but she knows more about the fashion business than just about anybody else. Working as her assistant is a priceless experience, not to mention the exposure to some of the most influential people in the world of fashion.
  • If you have your antennae up, you can learn a lot about good management by working under a bad manager.
  • A stint at a company with an excellent reputation will give you a precious career credential down the road.

A Bad Boss Doesn’t Last Forever

All bosses—good and bad—will leave in due course. They’ll move up, out, or sideways. Organizational changes are widespread in good companies, and personnel departments tend to identify bad bosses and move them around.

Most companies make it easy to move between teams and groups. You can network your way into a fresh opportunity—perhaps with a better boss—within the company.

Think in terms of short-term pains and long-term gains. For the time being, working for a bad boss can a nightmare even in a good company. But in the long-term, until you or your boss can move on, you’ll have to make the best of the learning and networking opportunities.

You Can’t Always Pick Your Own Boss

Be mindful of the organization’s perception of you—do not allow your rocky relationship with your boss to typecast you as a “can’t-get-along.”

One of the best things about working in good companies is networking and becoming known to the people who matter. You can seek doors to new worlds, look for mentors who can guide your career’s progress, and scout job opportunities in other departments. Managers tend to fill up many internal job openings with candidates they have in mind already.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Dissatisfied at Work? Are You Really a Square Peg in a Round Hole?
  2. Before Jumping Ship, Consider This
  3. No Boss Likes a Surprise—Good or Bad
  4. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?
  5. Going Over Your Boss’s Head After She Rejects Your Idea?

The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument

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Winning a conflict with a colleague over who’s right may feel good at the moment. But you could lose a future battle when you may need her cooperation and support the most.

Insisting upon being right when disagreeing with your boss could be dearer.

It’s futile to win any argument by overpowering or silencing the other person. Even causal denigration and occasional microaggressions can eventually lead to feelings of alienation and anger.

The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument Conflicts sometimes evolve quickly from simple disagreements into high-stakes battles. So, before it’s too late, consider if taking a step back is wiser. Take the initiative and concede a point—even if you may end up losing the argument.

Seeking small glory now may only spoil your chance of bigger success in the future. Focus on the outcome—often, it’s the result that matters, not your role in it.

Idea for Impact: When you think you can nail someone with a winning argument, take a deep breath, and check if you could control your ego and back down. You may actually lose something small, but avoid losing something bigger.

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  2. Rapoport’s Rules to Criticize Someone Constructively
  3. How to Have a Decent Discussion with Those You Love but Disagree With
  4. To Make an Effective Argument, Explain Your Opponent’s Perspective
  5. Become a Smart, Restrained Communicator Like Benjamin Franklin

How to Improve Your Career Prospects During the COVID-19 Crisis

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Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has plunged the world into despondency and uncertainty, it’s easy to worry about your career prospects, feel risk-averse, and become inert.

However, if you could look beyond the short-term challenges, now’s a good time to take on new skills, tend to your network, and accelerate your long-term career prospects.

Here’s how to take a bit of initiative and think creatively about your career during the current lockdown.

  1. Reflect upon your goals for your life and career. Think clearly through the steps you must take to realize your aspirations.
  2. State clearly your aims. If you want to earn more or get a better responsibility, speak to your boss about what it’ll take to secure a promotion.
  3. Seek specific feedback, but don’t just reflect on the past. Asking for feedback puts you—not your boss—in the driver’s seat. Ask lots of questions and decide what you could do to make a positive change.
  4. Redefine your goals at work. Identify worthwhile measures of success. Agree on targets that stretch but don’t strain.
  5. Work with your boss to find gaps in your experience. Find projects where you could develop and use those skills.
  6. How to Improve Your Career Prospects During the COVID-19 Crisis Don’t try to do everything. Prioritize. Ask yourself, “Where do my strengths lie?” Focusing on one or two areas could help you isolate and sharpen the necessary skills to move up.
  7. Seek out new opportunities. Be alert to points of diminishing returns on learning new skills.
  8. Take the lead on a project that others don’t find particularly interesting (see Theo Epstein’s 20 Percent Rule.) You could not only learn by way of broader experiences and gain confidence but also become more visible to management and situate yourself for a promotion.
  9. Offer to share responsibility. Take an interest in your colleagues’ work. You could win over grateful allies and open up new opportunities within your company.
  10. Reevaluate what’s essential. To the extent possible, divest yourself of the boring, time-wasting, frivolous, and worthless—anything that doesn’t “move the ball down the field.”
  11. Pursue side projects. Cultivating knowledge and trying out new skills during your free time is a definite path to career reinvention.
  12. Seek out mentors. Make the right contacts. Bear in mind, those who influence decisions may not necessarily be the ones at the top.
  13. Begin actively networking. It’s never late to put together a range of experts whose knowledge and experience you could tap into.

Idea for Impact: Mulling over how to improve yourself and enhance your career is a great shelter-in-place project. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower once declared, “Plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”

Wondering what to read next?

  1. There Isn’t a Shortcut to the Top
  2. What’s Behind Your Desire to Job-Hunt and Jump Ship?
  3. A Little Known, but Powerful Technique to Fast Track Your Career: Theo Epstein’s 20 Percent Rule
  4. Before Jumping Ship, Consider This
  5. Four Telltale Signs of an Unhappy Employee

How to Get Your Budget Through

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  1. Getting Your Next Budget Approved Be familiar with your company’s procedures and criteria for approving and managing capital expenditures. Your management will require a compelling return-on-investment (ROI) study (net present value, payback, breakeven, or internal rate of return estimates) vis-à-vis explicit or implicit hurdle rates.
  2. Establish clear links between your budget and corporate strategy. If your management can see the real benefits to the business, they’ll find the costs easier to absorb. Amazon’s customer-oriented culture requires every proposal for a new feature, product, or service to be pitched by means of a “Mock Press Release” arguing how a hypothetical Amazon customer would first learn about the feature and its utility.
  3. Don’t just roll your budget over from the previous year adding a certain percentage “and then some.” Many companies have adapted a cost-management tool called “Zero-Base Budgeting” that requires you to justify each line item in your budget as if it were an entirely new claim for an entirely new project.
  4. State your assumptions explicitly. Prepare worst-case and best-case scenarios to augment realistic forecasting of the future and help prudent decision-making. Keep your budgets ambitious but realistic.
  5. Allow room for contingencies. Avoid rigidities that could inhibit the quick and effective response to an unexpected event. Bring your contingency planning into the open for a careful review.
  6. Add some fat, but not too much. Keep this in your back pocket, but be ready to make some cuts by knowing what their impact can be. Be clear and confident when questioned about any of the numbers in your budget.
  7. Explain how true you were to the previous year’s budget. Make a distinction between controllable and uncontrollable budget variances. This will build your management’s confidence in your pitch for the year ahead.
  8. Put your budget proposal to test with your team and supportive peers. Encourage them to ask all the difficult questions they can imagine. They may not only know where the skeletons are hidden and help you with the answers you’ll need, but also become indispensable allies in getting your budget approved.
  9. To persuade each member of management, know what matters to him/her and link your budget to his/her objectives. Discuss your budget with the key decision-makers separately before a group discussion. (Management consulting firm McKinsey calls this technique “pre-wiring.”) By getting each participant’s buy-in, you can count on his/her support and avoid surprise reactions and disagreements.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Use Zero-Base Budgeting to Build a Culture of Cost Management
  2. Lessons from Amazon: ‘Mock Press Release’ Discipline to Sell an Idea
  3. This Manager’s Change Initiatives Lacked Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Case Study on Aristotle’s Persuasion Framework
  4. Going Over Your Boss’s Head After She Rejects Your Idea?
  5. Facts Alone Can’t Sell: Lessons from the Intel Pentium Integer Bug Disaster

Going Over Your Boss’s Head After She Rejects Your Idea?

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Going Over Your Boss's Head After She Rejects Your Idea? If you’re terrified by the prospect of going over your boss’s head to pursue an idea after she’s rejected it, consider the following steps.

First, have an in-depth conversation with your boss to make sure that you’re not misreading the circumstances of getting rejected. Your boss may well have a good reason for her decision.

Ask your boss what’s lacking in your proposals.

  • Is your idea solid enough, but lacking the right support products or services to go with it? Is it feasible to implement? Will it divert valuable attention away from other initiatives?
  • Does your idea actually enhance the customer’s experience? Have you explained how your idea translates to the bottom line?
  • Do you lack credibility? Have you previously blown an assignment? Do you need to rebuild leadership’s trust in you before pitching your idea again?
  • Have you prototyped your idea? Have you tested your idea on others? Do you have data confirming your idea’s feasibility? Are you disclosing all underlying issues and potential challenges that will have to be attended?

Address the above concerns, rework your idea, strengthen your proposal, and pitch it to your boss again. Consider meeting with your peers and your managers’ peers to build some grassroots support (management consulting firm McKinsey calls this “pre-wiring”) for your idea.

If your boss rejects your idea again, handle your boss’s negative response by reiterating that you respect her judgment, but would like a go-ahead to take the idea further. Your boss may surprise you with a green light.

Think twice before stepping outside the chain of command and talking to your boss’s boss about something on your mind.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Sucking up Isn’t a Requirement for Success
  2. Four Keys to an Excellent Relationship with Your Boss
  3. A Manager Badmouths an Employee
  4. Never Surprise Your Boss [Managing Your Boss #2]
  5. Lessons from Procter & Gamble: ‘One-Page Memo’ to Sell an Idea

Don’t Use Personality Assessments to Sort the Talented from the Less Talented

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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator---Developed by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers based on Carl Jung's Psychological Types

Personality assessments have featured in personality development and career counseling for almost a century. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and other tests form the basis for helping people deal with conflict, understand team interplay, outline career search, sharpen decision-making skills, and cope with stress.

Personality Assessments Cannot Predict Performance

Even as their use has grown significantly over the last two decades, personality assessments—including strengths inventories, and emotional intelligence assessments—have been criticized at length:

  • An individual’s personality cannot be summed up by a personality assessment. Individuality is described best by continuous (not discrete), normally-distributed attributes. For example, the MBTI Step I classification of individuals into 16 categories (or 4 dichotomies from Carl Jung‘s book Psychological Types (1921)) does not encapsulate the full range of personality variance.
  • An individual’s behavior cannot be limited to one side of a dichotomy. For instance, every person can be outgoing and assertive in the external world (extraversion,) while requiring time for some contemplation (introversion).
  • Many academic studies question the tests’ predictive validity and poor reliability. Moreover, personality assessments have poor test-retest consistency. Test takers have been shown to change at least one dichotomy when they take the MBTI Step I survey a second time.
  • Personality assessments can initiate confirmation bias (“Barnum Effect”)—the test scores are self-fulfilling because people tend to behave in ways that are predicted for them. In other words, a person who learns that he or she is “outgoing” according to MBTI may behave that way.
  • Personality tests are decidedly fakeable, especially when used to evaluate future career opportunities. All personality assessments are contingent on a degree of honesty, but MBTI test-takers are often motivated to match up to extraverted, sensing, thinking, and judging (ESTJ) proclivities in the modern organization.
  • Assessments are regularly offered as universally applicable. Not only do they tend to mirror the biases of the test developers, but also they are skewed in preference of the social groups the developer studied.

Personality Assessments are Starting Points for Change, Not a Predictor of the Outcome

Academics have long acknowledged the previously mentioned criticisms of personality assessments. They’ve argued fruitfully that many of the criticisms should be directed to how HR practitioners understand personality tests and use them in the development arena.

MBTI and many other personality assessments were never intended to sort the talented from the less talented. They are designed for the individual who takes the assessment, and not for the HR practitioner. In other words, personality assessments were designed to help individuals discover their underlying preferences regarding learning styles, problem-solving styles, self-awareness, ethical inclinations, emotional intelligence, and stress management.

Intended for Increasing Self-awareness, Not Appraisal

On the contrary, HR practitioners tend to interpret test scores speciously to gauge behavior, rather than as pointers of categorical preferences. Besides, HR practitioners often fail to factor in the test-takers’ past and current environmental influences.

And then there’s the risk of people being pigeonholed or pushed into a particular course regardless of his or her preferences. HR practitioners and career counsellors who put too much emphasis on personality assessments may compartmentalize people into rigid categories. This flies in the face of a central tenet of the MBTI premise—that individuals could choose to act against their preferred type if the occasion demands it. People’s attitudes and behaviors often change over time because of emotional experiences or socialization into specific work and social cultures.

Idea for Impact: Use Personality Assessments to Facilitate Self-Awareness, Not for Categorization or as Predictors of Achievement

If you’re a manager or a HR practitioner, don’t use personality assessments to categorize people or as predictors of achievement. Encourage people to take personality tests, but help them interpret these pieces of data about themselves—only they could make sense of test results in the context of their life history, social environment, and ambitions for career and life.

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  2. Before Jumping Ship, Consider This
  3. What’s Behind Your Desire to Job-Hunt and Jump Ship?
  4. There Isn’t a Shortcut to the Top
  5. To Inspire, Pay Attention to People: The Hawthorne Effect

No Boss Likes a Surprise—Good or Bad

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Never surprise the boss, particularly on potentially volatile issues that could affect your project’s timeline, budget, or performance.

Even good surprises can backfire. Many an example exists of employees bringing the boss what they believe were good news, only to realize later that that the surprises weren’t so good after all.

Consider the following example of a Boeing test pilot pulling off a shocking stunt on a prototype aircraft, much to the exasperation of his company’s leadership.

A Reckless Stunt That Created a Buzz

Boeing 707 Dash 80 prototype The Boeing 707 was America’s first passenger jet aircraft. Prior to the 707, which entered service in 1958, air travel was mostly limited to the affluent—and even they were hesitant about air travel’s safety. The 707’s in-service safety record and its economic characteristics quickly made travel more accessible and dependable. The 707 ushered in the Jet Age.

But for Boeing, today’s leading aircraft manufacturer, developing the 707 was a big gamble. The 707 had no orders, and Boeing embarked on its development entirely on the wager of its prospective commercial success. When the aircraft’s design commenced in 1951, Boeing’s estimated development costs were $16 million. That was roughly 20% of the company’s value, and more than twice its yearly profits—nearly all of which originated from military contracts.

The Demonstration That Was Far from What the Boss Had Authorized

Boeing built its first and only 707 prototype aircraft in 1955. The company’s leadership decided to show off the aircraft at Seattle’s Seafare Hydroplane races on August 7, 1955.

The display plan was to have Boeing’s Chief Test Pilot, Alvin “Tex” Johnston, do one low pass over the racecourse so that the airline executives, industry pundits, and government officials who attended the high-profile event could witness Boeing’s new undertaking.

Johnston had other plans. In his mind, the audience needed to be sold on the plane’s performance and safety. Seized by the impulse to flaunt the agility of the 707, Johnston had a little more in mind than just an unpretentious flyby.

During the in-air demonstration (see YouTube video,) with the aircraft soaring over Seattle’s Lake Washington, Johnston suddenly pulled back on the controls, and the plane started to climb at a speed of 400 miles per hour. Then, he did a complete 360-degree roll and flew the plane upside down for a moment. As the crowd watched in shock and amazement, Johnston did a second barrel role.

Overconfident Employee, Furious Boss

Alvin Melvin (Tex) Johnston, Boeing Test Pilot In the startled crowd was Boeing’s legendary president William “Bill” Allen. Allen, who had authorized no more than a simple flyby, thought that Johnston’s first barrel role was a mistake. When Allen witnessed the second barrel roll, he feared that either Johnston had lost his mind, or the aircraft was in grave trouble.

According to Robert J. Sterling’s Legend & Legacy: The Story of Boeing and Its People (1991,) Allen summoned Johnston into his office the next day. Allen demanded an explanation and inquired why Johnston had foolishly risked the company’s only prototype.

Pleased with his successful accomplishment, Johnston offered a simple explanation, “I was selling airplanes.” Johnston explained that he had previously tested barrel rolls on the prototype, and it was a safe maneuver. He hadn’t risked the aircraft at all.

Allen reproached Johnston and told him that he appreciated the efforts, but Johnston was never to do anything that had not been approved previously.

Never Let Your Boss Be Surprised by Bad News

If there is only one thing worse than delivering bad news, it’s not delivering bad news as soon as you know that some trouble is brewing.

No boss wants to hear about any looming issue from some third party—especially if it could be worrying—and put her on the spot with her peers and superiors.

When you fail to report any bad news, you are leaving your boss exposed to being blindsided with a potential problem, and the perception that your boss doesn’t have control of her organization.

Idea for Impact: A Good Employee is Predictably Excellent

The surest way to delight your boss is by setting the right expectations, discussing and coordinating on a plan of action, and delivering on her expectations of your performance.

When the status of important any project changes, make it a priority to bring your boss and other affected constituents up to date. If, right from the beginning, you’ve made the true picture clear, your boss may be less surprised with the bad and the good.

Never surprise your boss—just keep her clued-in on a regular basis.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How A Single Point of Failure Became The Boeing 737 MAX’s Achilles Heel
  2. Going Over Your Boss’s Head After She Rejects Your Idea?
  3. Make Friends Now with the People You’ll Need Later
  4. The High Cost of Winning a Small Argument
  5. Any Crisis Calls for Constant, Candid Communication