Workplace

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

July 9, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

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.

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.

We Live in a Lookist Society

July 2, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From Irmgard Schlögl’s The Wisdom of the Zen Masters (1976,)

Wealthy donors invited Master Ikkyū to a banquet.

The Master arrived there dressed in beggar’s robes. His host, not recognizing him in this garb, hustled him away: “We cannot have you here at the doorstep. We are expecting the famous Master Ikkyū any moment.”

The Master went home, there changed into his ceremonial robe of purple brocade, and again presented himself at his host’s doorstep.

He was received with due respect, and ushered into the banquet room. There, he put his stiff robe on the cushion, saying, “I expect you invited the robe since you showed me away a little while ago,” and left.

That what you wear affects how others will perceive you is well-known empirically and has been established in scientific literature. People dressed conservatively, for example, are seen as more composed and trustworthy, whereas those dressed bold and suave are viewed as more attractive and self-assured. Women who wear menswear-inspired dress suits are more likely to be perceived well in job interviews. Men are shown to misperceive women’s friendliness as sexual intent, particularly when the women are dressed suggestively.

In the Second Quarto (1604) of Hamlet, Shakespeare, in the voice of the Polonius, declares, “For the apparrell oft proclaimes the man.” Mark Twain seemingly pronounced, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Several maxims remark about the notion that an individual’s clothing is confirmation for his/her personal, professional, and social identity:

In Egypt: “لبس البوصة، تبقى عروسة” or “Dressing up a stick turns it into a doll”
In China: “我们在外面判断这件衣服, 在家里我们判断这个人” or “Abroad we judge the dress; at home we judge the man”
In Japan: “馬子にも衣装” or “Even a packhorse driver would look great in fine clothes”
In Korea: “옷이 날개다” or “Clothes are wings”

Idea for Impact: We live in a lookist society. Always dress the part. Ignore this at your own peril.

Let Your Work Do the Bragging for You?

March 26, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

From American clergyman Madison C. Peters’s Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud (1900):

All the other rivers said to the Euphrates: “Why is the current of thy water not heard at a distance?”

The Euphrates replied: “My deeds testify for me. Anything sown by men at my shores will be in full bloom within thirty days.”

The rivers then addressed the Tigris: “Why is the current of thy waters heard at a distance?”

“I must direct the attention of the people to me by my tumultuous rapidity,” the Tigris replied.

The moral: The less the merits of a person are, the more he will feel urged to proclaim them to the public.

If you know that you’re great, you shouldn’t feel a strong need to tell anyone about it. “It is always the secure who are humble,” noted the English writer, philosopher G. K. Chesterton in his insightful essay “In Defense of Humility,” included in The Defendant (1901.)

Your Good Work Should Speak for Itself, But …

Reminding that there is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself, the Canadian entrepreneur Matshona Dhliwayo has said,

Let your work speak for itself:
If poor, it will remain silent.
If average, it will whisper.
If good, it will talk.
If great, it will shout.
If genius, it will sing.

Your feelings of self-esteem and self-confidence hinge on being able to take pride in your achievements. However, be mindful of the thin line between confidence and conceit—confidence is believing in yourself, but conceit is bragging about yourself.

Unfortunately, in the current world of work, it pays to promote yourself—you must speak up about your accomplishments because no one else is going to do it for you.

Let Your Work Do the Bragging for You? Use your work to lead others to view you favorably—but beware, nobody likes blatant braggarts. If other people sense that you’re trying too hard to blow your own horn, they’ll be turned off, and you’ll achieve the opposite of your intended effect on them. This is especially true if the attributes you’re trying to flaunt aren’t the ones that interest the others.

With competition more intense than ever before, what really matters is “who knows you” and “what they know about you” than about “whom you know.”

Do more than is asked. Deliver more than is expected. Show up where the action is. And make a show of your work.

As the boxing legend Muhammad Ali once declared, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”

Do Your Team a Favor: Take a Vacation

August 7, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Everyone understands that a manager should make time to check out and recharge. Yet, there’s an expectation that he remains available, plugged in, informed, and accessible while on vacation. Therefore, even when he does go away, he doesn’t truly get away.

Do Your Team a Favor: Take a Vacation Even the hardworking manager, when overwhelmed and overcommitted, can become a bottleneck. Refusing to take a break not only burns him out but also wreaks havoc on his team’s productivity—it hinders necessary skills building and succession planning. By butting in whenever he can, he subtly undermines his team by insinuating that his team members cannot run things on their own.

In 2012, the contact management company FullContact was in the limelight when it announced a “Paid PAID Vacation” policy. It offered its employees $7,500 every year to go on vacation with the stipulation that the employee totally disconnects. FullContact CEO Bart Lorang explained why employees and their teams can be better when they disconnect:

Once per year, we give each employee $7500 to go on vacation. There are a few rules:

You have to go on vacation, or you don’t get the money.

You must disconnect.

You can’t work while on vacation.

If people know they will be disconnecting and going off the grid for an extended period of time, they might actually keep that in mind as they help build the company. For example:

They might empower direct reports to make more decisions.

They might be less likely to create a special script that isn’t checked into GitHub [software development repository] and only lives on their machine.

They might document their code a bit better.

They might contribute to the Company Wiki and share knowledge.

Get the picture? At the end of the day, the company will improve. As an added bonus, everyone will be happier and more relaxed knowing that they aren’t the last line of defense.

Idea for Impact: Take a vacation. Empower your team. When a smart manager goes on vacation, he leaves clear directions about the critical situations under which his team should contact him. While he mentally checks out, his team members get the opportunity to stretch and show their individual and collective mettle.

Why a Friend Can’t Keep a Secret

April 2, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

A caring, faithful relationship with a family member or a friend is a sacrosanct space where you can shed your guard, reveal your secrets, and disclose your worries. Such relationships are life’s principal social support systems.

Your ability to form close relationships with others hinges on the trust you feel with your nearest and dearest.

Once You Share Something Confidential, You Lose Control of it

Sharing your secrets with others and keeping others’ secrets are essential to establishing and nurturing bonds between people.

Secrets are kept or revealed for a variety of complex reasons—utter carelessness, actual malice, self-serving manipulation, or altruistic protection of others.

Forgetfulness and negligence often initiate letting a secret slip; some people may not understand the potential consequences of not keeping somebody’s secret to themselves.
As the World War II idiom cautions, loose lips sink ships. Some blabbermouths just can’t be the soul of discretion—they have no filters and don’t concern themselves with betraying others’ trust.
Some folks justify spreading others’ secrets by convincing themselves that the secret is common knowledge—if a source shared a secret with them, the source may have shared it with others too.
Some nefarious people use secrets they’re supposed to keep as currency to curry favor with someone else. An egregious recent example is that of McKinsey’s Managing Director Rajat Gupta revealing confidential information about Goldman Sachs, on whose board of directors he sat, to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.
Some people may assume an altruistic—or self-righteous—mind-set and reveal a secret assuming that divulging the secret could be more beneficial to those concerned than keeping the secret.
Some people reveal secrets because they can’t bear the mental distress of keeping the secret. Often, the bigger the secret, the harder it is to keep it.

If you’ve been told a secret or have some information in hand that may put somebody in immediate emotional or physical risk, be careful in how you act. Telling secrets in the wrong way, to the wrong people, or at the wrong time can be surprisingly destructive. If required, seek help from a relationship counselor.

If a friend shared something about you that you told them in private, try to forgive his/her lack of discretion. Hold back your trust until you can feel comfortable trusting them again.

How to Leave Work at Work

November 1, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Employees are expected to be 100% on

Leave Work at Work There was once a time when people went to work, clocked in, put in their hours, clocked out, and forgot all about work until the next day. They fully disconnected from work and took real vacations. They maintained a healthy separation between their work time and their personal time.

Alas, those good times are long gone. Today’s challenging and competitive workplace demands of people not only their stamina to work exceptionally hard but also their hearts-and-minds’ commitment to bring creativity and insight to their efforts.

The pressure to constantly prove themselves is also exacerbated by how modern society judges people by their professional and financial successes—what they do, what they’ve accomplished, and how quickly they’ve accomplished it.

People are expected to be 100% on, take work home, and check in during their vacations. The upshot is that many people have real trouble turning work off. Work-related thoughts encroach upon their off-work hours. Some even lose sleep or wake up in the middle of the night thinking about their work.

Don’t bring work home in your head

Get a Life. Have a life to go to after you leave work. Develop a rich social life. Invest more time in your relationships. Get involved in absorbing activities, events, and hobbies. Schedule fun activities—you’ll have something to look forward to at the end of your workday.
Organize your workday. Structure your schedule to prevent hustling through work towards the end of the day. Be realistic about what you want to accomplish. In the middle of the afternoon, review the tasks ahead. Prioritize, reorganize, and pace yourself to wind down your workday. Do not answer phone calls or email during the last hour.
Organize and prioritize your next day’s schedule before you leave your office. Clean off your desk at the end of each day. This not only brings about a feeling of order and completion, but also helps you tune down and free up your mind.
Create a buffer between work and home. Stop by a gym, go shopping, or visit a friend. After you get home, change clothes, go for a walk, or do something relaxing to mark the transition and create a relaxed mindset for the evening.
Vent if necessary. Ask your loved ones to give you a few minutes to “let it out.” Expect them to just listen and be non-judgmental.
Don’t bring work home. Leave your briefcase, laptop, reports, and work-related reading at your desk.
Disconnect. Modern technology makes it easier for you to stay connected, but also makes it more difficult than ever to leave work at work. Leave your laptop at work. Turn off email and instant messaging on your phone. Resist the temptation to check your email on the family computer. Don’t visit the business center at the hotel when you’re on vacation.
Delegate and cross-train your staff to handle some of your responsibilities while you’re away.
Stop checking in with the office, especially when you’re on vacation. Your team will get along fine without you around. Crises will get managed, production will continue, customers will continue to be satisfied, and you’ll still have your job when you return. Let your team know how to find you in a dire emergency, but ask them not to bother you with the inconsequential stuff.

Idea for Impact: Don’t let work take over your life. Establish boundaries.

Don’t let your work run you. Don’t take work home literally (in your bag/briefcase or on your laptop) or figuratively (in your head). Enjoy your downtime.

Learn to disconnect from work unreservedly and spend time with your family. Play with the kids. Quality time with your loved ones is often more rewarding than your time at work. And perhaps by doing less work, you may end up loving your job more.

Etiquette for Office Cubicle Dwellers

July 15, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Etiquette for Office Cubicle Dwellers

If you work in an open cubicle farm, you already know that a lack of privacy and frequent interruptions can cause cubicle dwellers to get on each others’ nerves. Here are some ground rules and etiquette tips to follow.

If you like to listen to music or the radio, keep the volume low or use headphones. Your neighbors may not work best with background music (or noise) and may not share your music preferences.
Don’t speak loudly. Avoid long, loud conversations—sometimes unrelated to work—with colleagues or on the phone. Step out of your cubicle into the hallway or an empty conference room. Don’t pursue conversations on sensitive topics—it is impossible to know who else is listening.
Avoid popping into others’ cubicles and parking yourself at an open seat. Don’t interpret an “open door” policy for a “no door” choice. Cubicles have made it easy to walk by someone, interrupt them, and start chatting. Don’t interrupt them if they seem busy. Prior to starting a conversation, take a second to ask them if now is a good time to talk. Remember that in the modern workplace, distractions kill productivity more than anything else.
Speak to people from the front. If someone’s sitting with their back to the entrance of their cubicle, don’t startle them. Instead, knock on the wall of their cubicle or take a moment to walk around to their front before talking to them.
Don’t look at others’ computer screens as you walk by their cubicles. Keep your glances out of other people’s space.
Don’t expect others to keep track of their neighbors. If you intend to seek out Anna but can’t find her at her cubicle, don’t expect James to know where Anna is because he’s right next door to her.
And, James may not want to have a chat with you while you wait for Anna. Don’t bother James. Leave a note for Anna and move on.
Don’t linger around someone’s cubicle if they are chatting with another person or on a phone call. Revisit at another time.
Don’t yell across cubicles. Walk over to the other’s location.
Never borrow items from other people in the office without letting them know. If they are away, leave a note on their table saying that you took the item and will return it as soon as possible.
Pay attention to personal hygiene and cubicle cleanliness. Don’t eat a smelly lunch. Don’t overuse perfumes. Don’t take off your shoes.
Personalize your workspace (it’s a sign of nesting) with framed pictures, area rugs, memorabilia, fresh flowers, a candy jar, and the like. Be discerning; don’t flaunt anything distracting, political, religious, unprofessional, or offensive.

Don’t Push Employees to Change

July 12, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don't Push Employees to Change One of managers’ most common complaints relates to their failure to persuade their employees to change.

Having high expectations of employees can lead to bitter disappointment. The frustration that comes from employees not wanting to change causes many managers to focus on their employees’ negative qualities. Such an attitude makes it easy to find errors in employee behavior, leading to more disappointment—even resentment.

Even when an employee wants to change, he often fails to because he is pulled in two directions: by a motivation to change and by a motivation to maintain the status quo. Since change is seldom as easy as we think it will be, the motivation to maintain the status quo often triumphs.

The real reason employees (and people in general) don’t change is that underneath each employee’s commitment to change, he has an underlying, even stronger commitment to something else, as identified his intrinsic motivation.

Employees Resistant to Change For instance, an employee who expresses a desire to earn a promotion may avoid tougher assignments on his current job because he may be anxious about not measuring up. This employee may not even be fully aware of his own opposition. Therefore, managers are best served by understanding what truly motivates (and limits) each employee—i.e. his elements of intrinsic motivation. Only then can managers, through coaching and feedback, impel the employee to change by channeling the levers of extrinsic motivation (rewards, salary raise, fame, recognition, punishment) through one of the employee’s elements of intrinsic motivation.

Idea for Impact: Trying to change people will result in frustration and futility. Employees may change for a short time, but unless they have a compelling reason for change, they will go back to their natural state. Managers must temper their expectations about changing employees. As the Buddha taught, one way to lessen disappointment in life is to learn to lower your expectations of others.

How to Address Employees with Inappropriate Clothing

April 26, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Address Employees with Inappropriate Clothing

Inappropriate dressing is one of those workplace concerns that is often ignored or forgotten until it becomes a problem. Revealing clothing can be an all-day distraction while a sloppy or untidy employee can project an unprofessional image about the entire company.

Some employees simply don’t get it when it comes to clothing choices for work. Inexperienced employees may walk into their offices wearing miniskirts, low rise jeans, baggy jeans that keep falling off the waist, baseball caps, spaghetti strap tops, low-cut blouses that expose the midriff, sandals, flip-flops, inappropriate tattoos, body piercings, or a three-day stubble.

Sadly, managers often avoid talking about inappropriate clothing because the highly sensitive and personal nature of those discussions makes them uncomfortable, especially when the offending employee is of the other gender.

Letting the problem fester makes the situation worse: each day the offending employee doesn’t hear an objection only reinforces his/her assumption that the clothing is appropriate and increases the prospect of a defensive reaction when a manager decides to finally address the issue.

How to Tell an Employee Who Is Dressed Inappropriately?

Dealing with unprofessional dress can be awkward, but it’s crucial to intervene directly, tactfully, and discretely.

Begin by having an official company policy on the expected work attire and making employees aware of it. Not only does a dress code set the standards for appropriate clothing, but it also provides a legal basis for addressing a problem without making it an issue of personal judgment. Given the modern-day relaxed rules concerning office attire, try to be specific as possible instead of using vague terms such as “business casual.” One best practice is to include pictures from dress stores for what is appropriate and what is not. Make sure the dress code is consistent with your company and industry’s culture and what your customers expect. Include policies regarding hygiene, personal grooming, tattoos, and piercings. Update the dress code to keep up with the latest professional, social, and fashion trends.
Meet the offending employee discretely and ask, “Aaron, are you aware of our dress code?” Then, mention the specific instance of the problem, “Some of your clothes are a bit more provocative than appropriate for our workplace.” State facts and not judgments. Relate any rebuke to a business purpose, viz., the need for a professional workplace or dress-appropriateness in customer-facing roles. Ask the employee how he/she could rectify the matter. If necessary, remind that employees must accommodate the employer, not the other way around.
Be sensitive about religious, cultural, and gender-related aspects of office dressing. A male manager who needs to speak to a female employee (or vice versa) should consider having the problem subtly and discretely addressed through another female employee. Consider including another coworker in the conversation as a witness to prevent a discrimination claim. Seek guidance from human resources.
If the problem persists, try to converse again but have someone from human resources present.

Idea for Impact: A manager can forestall a great deal of employee problems by being proactive about setting expectations. Managers can and should create an appropriate work environment by defining hard boundaries on office etiquette, respectful interaction, and dress codes and then actively addressing concerns before they become problems.

Extrinsic Motivation Couldn’t Change Even Einstein

December 11, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still,” wrote the English poet and satirist Samuel Butler (1613–1680) in Hudibras (Part iii. Canto iii. Line 547.)

Extrinsic Motivation Couldn't Change Einstein to Quit Smoking

Einstein Wouldn’t Quit Smoking

Consider the case of a rational person as great as Albert Einstein. Grandson Bernhard Caesar Einstein, himself a reputed physicist, recalled in 1998 that Grandpa Einstein’s two prized possessions were his violin and smoking pipe; his reliance on the latter “bordered on dependency.”

Despite deteriorating health, Albert Einstein couldn’t be motivated to quit smoking. His doctor tried but just couldn’t convince Einstein to give it up. To circumvent the doctor’s effort to stop him from smoking, Einstein would scour his neighborhood’s sidewalks to collect discarded cigarette butts to smoke in his pipe.

People Will Change Only if Intrinsically Motivated

People are who they are; they have their (intrinsic) motivations and will continue to live their way. Despite well-meaning intentions, you simply can’t change them or mold their minds into your way of thinking.

You may be frustrated by their reluctance to mend their ways, stop engaging in destructive behavior, or even realize that they’re throwing away their potential. But you just can’t force change down their throats if they aren’t intrinsically motivated. You can only express your opinions, offer help, and even persist. Beyond that, you can only hope they change. You can control your effort and create the conditions for success. Beyond that, the outcomes of your efforts to change are outside your span of control. Control your efforts, not the outcomes.

As I elaborated in a previous article, you will succeed in changing another person’s behavior only if you can translate the extrinsic motivation at your disposal to the elements of his/her intrinsic motivation.

Idea for Impact: Extrinsic motivation is pointless in itself

You can’t change people; they must want to change for themselves. In other words, they must be intrinsically motivated to change. Extrinsic motivation is, in itself, pointless.

Workplace

The Surprising Benefits of a Bad Boss

A Bad Boss Doesn’t Last Forever

You Can’t Always Pick Your Own Boss

Wondering what to read next?

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Your Good Work Should Speak for Itself, But …

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Once You Share Something Confidential, You Lose Control of it

Wondering what to read next?

Employees are expected to be 100% on

Don’t bring work home in your head

Idea for Impact: Don’t let work take over your life. Establish boundaries.

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How to Tell an Employee Who Is Dressed Inappropriately?

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Einstein Wouldn’t Quit Smoking

People Will Change Only if Intrinsically Motivated

Idea for Impact: Extrinsic motivation is pointless in itself

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