[W]hat I crave in my role as a boss, is to feel that my team can complete my sentences. That they follow me like my shadow. That doesn’t mean they should always agree with me – but understand what I’m talking about, where I’m coming from and why — yes!
What’s the next best thing to seamless teamwork? And how do I know when someone who just joined our team is going to work out well? They ask frequently for feedback. This is best when done casually as part of our workflow and especially near the start of new projects or responsibilities.
For example:
BAD:“Eric, can we schedule a time to talk about my job performance?”
GREAT: “Eric, how do you like what I’m doing? Is this what you had in mind? Any ideas for improvement?”
(by e-mail, IM, tel or VM, all great)
If you need to schedule a time to ask for feedback, then you probably are not in the habit of asking and you’ve created a situation where your request may be perceived as an annoyance and the meeting itself a source of tension. Why?
If you are not in the habit of asking for frequent feedback, the meeting you requested comes too late. Too late to make changes to work that has already been done. If you haven’t asked me for feedback in nine months, I’ll assume that you are fearful and unreceptive. Or, I may assume your interest level and commitment to the job are just average.
Whatever the reasons are, a lack of steady communication about performance, will eventually create tension between you and your boss. Of course, if you aren’t asking for feedback because I’m already giving you a steady stream of positive feedback, that’s understandable – we’ll probably have a good meeting if you insist.
Should the boss ask for feedback from the team also? Yes! While you’re waiting for the boss to ask you for feedback, here’s a checklist.
to calibrate your efforts to current priorities & avoid wasting company resources
to enhance your productivity and value to the company
to evaluate and enhance your job security
to stand out from the pack
to dissipate tension and enjoy a better relationship with your boss
to create more opportunities for discussing job fit with your boss
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]I[/mks_dropcap]’ve just asked you not to over explain, so this may seem a little contradictory. But, please, please, be precise, be specific and be blunt:
start a conversation with a little background – for example, say “Eric, remember last Friday when we discussed…”
always use names instead of pronouns – say “Jack wrote it” not “he wrote it”
use titles instead of nouns – say “I read The Cat in the Hat” not “I read a book”
use dates – say ”Thursday, September 8th” not “next week” or “next Thursday” or “very soon”
use real-life examples to illustrate instead of speaking in generalities
provide links or copies of any text you refer to
speak your mind, politely but bluntly – take a stand
Why? I don’t know what you were thinking 10 seconds before you started talking. I don’t want to guess what you’re referring to, I want to know. And I want to know without asking you. It’s not efficient or fun for me to ask you what you’re talking about.
Without precise communication, there is too much room for error. And errors, presumptions, and miscommunication can be very costly. So please give me the material I need to follow along – give me names, titles, dates, links, documents, and examples!
And please be blunt. Half the time what you thought you said was not heard. The other half, you’re perceived as timid or manipulative. Speaking directly may be a little uncomfortable for both of us, but it’s an unavoidable side of life and business. Not addressing the difficult issues and not asking difficult questions allows issues to fester and grow and breaks trust. Show you care by telling the truth clearly and politely.
Confusion is expensive and demoralizing and avoidable. It always reflects badly on us whether you’re the culprit or the victim or we’re working as a team to create confusion. Is that clear?
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
My boss wanted me to help him get a prostitute back to his hotel in Mexico City because he didn’t speak any Spanish. At the office in Charlotte, NC, I noticed he didn’t want to go home in the evenings (he didn’t like his wife). I had just graduated with an MBA and was selling chainsaws and weedeaters to Latin America. My heart wasn’t in it and I’d have sucked at that job had I stayed longer. The chainsaws I sold were used to cut down the tropical forest and the weedeaters were second rate – it just seemed like meaningless work.
If you hate your job, it doesn’t help to know what your boss wants. You’re going to suck at your job anyway when it doesn’t have meaning for you. If you’re faking the passion (or not even trying), you’re headed for a train wreck. Find a job you can do with real passion before your boss decides you suck and fires you.
As your boss, why should I care if you’re following your bliss or not? I care because I want a team whose passion for the job can keep us together for 5 years, 10 years or longer. If you don’t know yourself well or fake the passion, you introduce a lot of risk to our relationship, and it usually doesn’t work out for either of us. So search your soul.
When people think about following their passion with their career, often it ends with the money. “Can’t make enough money at that”, we think. And, probably – it’s true. But, before you put the idea to bed, read The Man Who Quit Money – it’s a deeply moving story that changed my thinking.
Why should YOU care whether you’re following your bliss or not? Popular wisdom tells us that who you are is more important than what you do — but what you do can also change who you are. If you don’t find meaningful work, you may end up becoming someone you don’t want to be.
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run – in the long-run, I say! – success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.
-Viktor E. Frankl
Not sure how to find meaningful work? Answer some tough questions! First, let’s consider if you are doing meaningful work now:
Do you crave work like a show horse or sled dog does?
Are you following your inner voice?
Does your work feed your soul?
Does your work feel like part of your life story?
Do you feel like you found your calling or sweet spot?
Can you do this for 10 years because your heart is in your work?
Can you do your job with passion?
Are the headaches of your job tolerable?
Are you at peace with your ambition either because you are chasing a dream or have let one go?
Are you able to resist the temptations of more power, prestige, or money you might get from less meaningful work?
Are your family and other relationships supported by your work?
Are you comfortable with the example you are setting for your kids?
Are your gifts to the world being revealed?
Does your job give you the chance to do something great or be great?
Can you hang in like grim death when confronted with obstacles at work?
Are you working to impress or please your parents?
Are you surprised by your own productive power?
Do you take gratification in a job well done?
Do you feel nurtured by your work and work environment?
What skills that you already have do you most enjoy using?
Do you like working with people, information, or things best?
Where would you most like to work (geography, environment, responsibility level, field)?
What cause, problem, or values do you want your life to serve?
What do you value in a job besides money? This might include adventure, challenge, respect, influence, popularity, fame, power, intellectual stimulation, creativity, helping others, exercising leadership, making decisions, spirituality, etc…
Would you like to be primarily remembered for contributions to the world made with your mind or body?
This is just a sample of the questions you’ll be asked when you work through the legendary book What Color Is Your Parachute?
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes – within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.
Viktor Frankl on Youth in Search of Meaning 1972:
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]M[/mks_dropcap]y daughter flew over the handlebars a dozen times and got banged up pretty good. I had taken her to a gentle grassy hill just like it said in the magazine article about teaching your kid to ride a bike. But, it only works if your kid can reach the ground while sitting on the seat. Oops! Lucky for me, she’s focused and ignores pain. She was still eager to try something new and learned in a heartbeat on a basketball court. That’s how success is.
Success demands pain and suffering. Consider Steve Jobs. Easy to forget his failures now, but he was devastated when he was fired from his position as CEO in 1985. He also had many product failures which you can be sure he took personally. He often cried in difficult meetings too.
Success causes mental and physical pain for your boss. Building a business is not a 9-to-5 job – it’s 10 to 12 hours a day and there are times you don’t sleep when you want to or need to. It’s the nature of managing people and getting things done in competition. It’s a little like war (or raising kids) – there is always a crisis. There is always noise, there is always pain and there is always fear. You don’t want to add to your boss’s pain.
How you handle crisis matters. It matters to your boss and your career. If your boss looks calm and collected to you, it’s for a reason. Negative emotions are costly – they drain energy needed for thinking clearly and performing at a high level. Negative emotions undermine performance and are contagious too. Chronic negative emotions cause illness. So choose – you can be the one your boss wants to take into battle, or the negative, panicky, hysterical one.
If you want to be combat-ready for your boss, your family or your friends, learn to manage your energy. Below, I show how. I’m not speculating about these things. These are things I’ve actually done to recover from a chronic illness that brought me to my knees (that’s code for “I wanted to die”). Actually, I didn’t really want my life to be over, I just wanted the pain to go away badly enough that I thought through every option for stopping it.
These are the things that eventually restored me and will charge you up, too. I know they work:
Exercise – There are a billion studies showing that exercise improves your emotional, mental and physical health. You could spend years reading them or just start exercising 20 minutes or more a day. Make sure you’re breathing hard for at least 10 minutes. If you’re outside in a beautiful setting, it works even better. Read about high intensity interval training if you want to get your workout down to 4-8 minutes.
Recovery – You need a proportional recovery for every effort. You won’t notice this if you are young and healthy enough, and that’s why we send 18-year-olds off to war. Eventually, with enough age and stress in your life, you’ll find this like the law of gravity.
To keep your balance, you need to plan and formalize your recoveries. Do whatever it takes to bring yourself back to a full charge. When your battery gets drained, that might mean walking around the block, a 10-minute nap, a half-hour massage, 5 minutes of meditation, a day off, or going to bed early for three days in a row. Whatever it takes for you.
Enjoyment – You’ve got to have fun and joy in your life to balance the crap. Joy is powerful. Being silly with my kids does the trick for me. I also garden and fly radio-controlled gliders. Watching TV doesn’t count unless it’s something short that can make you cry with laughter like a good episode of the Three Stooges (try Men in Black).
Positive rituals – your ability to focus on new things and exercise discipline consciously is more limited than you think. Every bit of self-control you exercise in a day draws on a limited reserve of energy. When you feel overwhelmed, it’s because your tank is nearing empty. One way to stretch your energy farther is to build rituals into your day. A ritual or routine allows you to run on autopilot for a while, conserving energy for other uses.
Even better, routines can replenish energy if they are recovery rituals. A few examples on the personal side: I wake up in the morning and say a prayer. It doesn’t have to be religious, just a reminder of you want to live your life and what you’re grateful for. I try to walk or hike every afternoon for 20-30 minutes. My walk starts with another “gratitude prayer” and then I stretch for 15 minutes. This is dynamite for me.
Sleep – Sleep is sacred. Get seven or eight hours of sleep. Go to bed at 10 o’clock. If you have a sleep debt, take a nap during the day (if it doesn’t interfere with your sleep at night). If you are a light sleeper, make sure you sleep in total darkness (use blackout shades), no telephones or TVs in the bedroom, and use ear plugs if necessary.
Go to bed at the same time every night after reading a book for 10 or 15 minutes (no electronic devices). If you have insomnia, use Sleep Restriction Therapy – nothing else works as well. If your sleep quality is poor, find out if you have sleep apnea.
Anxiety and fear – Embrace them. Your fear has the power to paralyze you and it will win if you fight it. Don’t. Often, there is some important message behind your anxiety you need to hear. Talk to yourself. Say, “I feel anxious and that’s alright. I’m basically okay. I have what I need and I can handle this. What am I afraid of specifically?” Write your fears down on paper and consider them carefully.
Look at the worst-case scenario. Can you survive that? Then write down some possible solutions. I don’t know exactly why this works. Maybe spelling out your fears puts a clear border around them. With no border, they ooze around and can grow like weeds. Get them out of your head and into words and they’ll shrink down and sometimes blow away altogether.
Energy drains – Find work you enjoy with a team that energizes you. Don’t enjoy the work? Ask for different responsibilities. Crappy boss? Leave (read What Should I Do with My Life?). I had a crappy boss once and also developed a strong stomach pain that lasted until I got away from her.
A coworker said “just do what I do – every morning I get in the shower and pour a gallon of Vaseline on myself so her crap will just slide off me.” I couldn’t do it. If you can’t get away from the crappy people around you, the next best thing is to refuse to engage with them, and refuse completely.
Food – What you eat has a big impact on your energy level and mood. Anything you eat that causes your sugar level to spike also causes it to crater afterwards. This causes your adrenal glands to pump out cortisol which makes you hungry and now you are on a roller coaster leaving you drained at the end of the day. To get off the roller coaster, you need to make dramatic changes and unlearn most of what the media says about nutrition.
I’ve left this for last, because it’s too difficult if you haven’t experienced a health crisis. But it works and will be here when you’re ready for it: No caffeine, no alcohol, no sugar or sugar equivalents and no processed food. Sugar equivalents are things like fruit, juice, bread, rice, pasta. Those are all foods that cause your sugar to spike.
On the plus side, healthy fats found in whole foods like eggs, cheese, butter, beef, pork, shrimp, fish, olive and coconut oil, etc. are delicious and will keep you feeling satisfied. Everything else you eat should be a vegetable. All you need to know is here.
One last thing – if you follow this diet, there are only two critical vitamins you need to learn about: vitamin C & vitamin D. I take a little over a gram of vitamin C every day and get 50 g by IV a couple times a year. When I was very ill, I would get vitamin C by IV up to twice a week. Next to a good night of sleep, nothing (that’s healthy) has the power to energize like vitamin C.
Nobody can do everything on this list all the time. I can’t. But do whatever you can manage and people around you will notice your increasing calm and strength. Energy is the final frontier. Go boldly.
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
I teach my kids about winners and whiners; that winners:
are in charge of their own lives
don’t blame others or God
take responsibility for making good choices, having a good attitude and for good behavior
At 10 years old or at 30, at home or at work, it’s all the same — we only thrive when we take ownership of everything in our life. In each moment we are interpreting events around us with the opportunity to take the high road of responsibility (and leadership) by stepping up to bat, or the low road of avoidance.
Sometimes these events are mighty transgressions: “I admit, the train wreck was my fault!” But these big events are few and far between. More interesting are the tiny, constant, momentary decisions that sum to become our careers and lives. At the end of the game, we are clearly either leaders making things happen or whiners, the pawns of events and circumstances.
At the most basic level, this is what it means to take ownership – if I ask you for something as your boss, I want you to:
What stops an otherwise talented person from taking ownership?Blame! Imagine this – you work all night long on a presentation, or perhaps weeks brokering a difficult agreement, only to have your ‘moment of victory’ viciously stolen when your foul-mouthed manager shoots down your idea.
Your reaction might include elements like:
That manager always wastes my time by letting me go down the wrong track, just so he can tear me apart at the end!
He’s attacking me personally!
His criticism is so rude!
I’m a competent, driven person, but he is negating and demotivating me!
He’s wrong!
Note that in each of these responses we have placed the cause of suffering outside of ourselves; i.e., we have placed the blame on someone else. But there is another option – we could take responsibility for each of these things with responses like these:
It was silly to get so far into this project without periodically checking with the stakeholders to see if I was on the right track!
I’m under attack and defenseless, how did I get myself into this poor position?
Why am I taking his criticism so personally?
What fundamental difference is making him think something so different from me, and who’s right?
In reviewing the two paths of response, blame or responsibility, note the following differences:
Blame subverts the process of our own improvement. As soon as we blame, we remove the need for ourselves to change; we place the requirement for work and improvement on the shoulders of someone else.
Blame makes us victims of our environment, rather than masters of the universe.
Strength has nothing to do with doing things that are easy – real strength is being strong when you feel weak. Strength separates the wheat from the chaff. Like shooting free throws, getting better and better gets harder and harder. The 1% improvement is easy when you are young and foolish, and takes increasing concentration the better you get.
Blame is easy to recognize when obvious as in: “You moron! I can’t believe you did that! This is all your fault!”
It’s less obvious here: “I was late because Joe couldn’t finish on time.” The path of responsibility: “I failed to plan well with my team.”
It’s even harder to see here: “I was late because the plane was delayed.” But, we can always take earlier flights, so try: “I need to allow a little more slack in my travel schedule.”
Instead of saying, “Yupi hasn’t sent us the contract yet,” let’s try this: “We haven’t received the contract from Yupi yet.” See how the burden subtly changes between Yupi, (“those irresponsible jerks, when will they send it?”), to us… why are we failing to receive it, and what can we do to change that?
This is subtle: “I didn’t have enough time.” Here, we are actually blaming the universe for being herself, for creating a dimension of time that is not to our satisfaction. What a childish tantrum: it’s like blaming water for being liquid! Try this instead: “I didn’t schedule my time well enough to finish.”
An extremely subtle and advanced lesson – look within. Maybe you’ve heard the saying “When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you.” Often when accusing or blaming someone, we find we are talking about something we were actually committing ourselves. This law is as mysterious as the relationship between matter and gravity, but a guarantee: the closer you look, the more it turns out to be true. Heard long ago in our office:
“Apologies for the emotional outburst. … I also realized that it was a bit hypocritical to personally attack you for personally attacking others.”
When you begin to see that you control everything, you will begin to see that you control everything.
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]H[/mks_dropcap]ave a great memory? Take notes anyway! You can stop taking notes when you’re the top boss and you hire someone to do it for you. In the meantime, taking notes tells your boss and colleagues you mean business.
Take notes at work:
to avoid asking the same question twice. Review your notes. We always notice a repeated question or forgotten advice. Always!
in an electronic format so that your notes can be used for any necessary follow-up, as part of documentation for future training you may be asked to do if promoted, or so you can search them by keyword at a later date.
so you can answer questions about the material 3 months later without annoying a coworker or your boss.
so that your boss doesn’t need to. Whenever you can, free your boss up to be more in the moment by handling a task like note-taking. You want your boss to rely on you, to feel that you are taking care of him/her.
to demonstrate your professionalism and commitment to the job and company.
to show that you value the person you’re meeting with and the time they’re giving you.
to provide proof if your word or memory is ever questioned.
to separate yourself from the pack – you’ll shine if you keep in mind that your boss is watching you and asking himself “What am I going to have left when you’re gone?”. So leave your mark! Answer this question proactively and you’ll find yourself getting promoted.
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]T[/mks_dropcap]hree weeks after I hired Maria (not her real name) she distributed her first press release for me. She published the draft version instead of the final. Maria was not a native English speaker and the draft was chock-full of grammatical errors. This was the most public mistake my company had made.
I was very embarrassed. Still, I let Maria make a lot more mistakes over a period of two years before I finally let her go. With little experience managing people or running a company, I was a pathetic boss (15 years ago).
If you make mistakes at work like Maria, you might coast by for a while too. Or, you could use checklists and stop making mistakes in the first place. Ever since Atul Gawande popped up with his book The Checklist Manifesto, I’ve been using checklists and encouraging my team to use them as well. In fact, now we run through a checklist when we let someone like Maria go. We also use checklists for recruiting, interviewing, and reference checking.
Would it feel demeaning to you if your boss asked you to use a checklist for a simple task you’ve performed many times before? If you answered yes, imagine you’re about to have your appendix removed and the operating surgeon is known to be one of the best in the country. Does he need a checklist that starts out like this?
1. Wash your hands
Probably not. Do you want him to use it anyway? I do.
If you just graduated from college, life might appear simple. But, if you’ve been through life’s big traumas like death, divorce, moving, illness, etc., you’ll know in your bones why checklists are not for dimwits. Experts are susceptible to stress and distraction like anyone else; that’s why checklists that save lives might possibly save your job someday. Use them.
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]Y[/mks_dropcap]our boss wants you to listen attentively (not just when they speak). Good listening is critical for building trust, within a team and without. So whether it’s with your boss, a colleague, a customer, partner or vendor, take the cotton out of your ears!
If we were playing baseball, good listening would be first base. To hit a home run, first you need to listen, because there’s no home-run that doesn’t pass through first-base and then remember, act, and follow through. Your listening skills are the foundation for the home run.
How hard could it be?Well, in my experience, easy or hard, good listeners are exceedingly rare. That makes this one of the best ways for you to stand out. Here’s how to polish your listening skills:
Give your full attention to the speaker. Stay focused – think about what’s being said. You think many times faster than most people speak, so use the extra time to understand and organize what you are hearing.
Don’t interrupt – especially if you are being attacked or there is an emotional charge in the speaker. If you interrupt, the speaker will not ‘feel heard’ and will just repeat again and again.
Make eye contact
Use good body language – face the person, uncross your arms and legs, lean slightly forward and avoid fidgeting with hands or feet.
Reflect back on what you’ve heard – paraphrase like this: “So you’re saying that…” and then ask if you got it right: “Have I got it?”
Encourage the speaker to tell more – say: “Oh?” and then stay quiet. Learn to accept and appreciate a little bit of silence in a conversation even if it’s uncomfortable for you at first.
Avoid conversation blockers. Here are 7 different ways of taking the wind out of someone else’s sail. They invalidate the feelings of the person speaking and will make sure the speaker doesn’t feel heard. These are trust breakers:
Opinion giving – ex: “Don’t worry about him, he wastes everyone’s time and no one pays attention to what he says, trust me.”
Criticizing/judging– ex: “You’re still working on that? You’re such a perfectionist! I don’t see how you’ll ever get anything done at that pace.”
Preaching – ex: “You shouldn’t let anything distract you – you should really manage your time better.”
Fixing – ex: “You tell him to mind his own business. If he doesn’t, I’ll have a talk with him.”
Comparing– ex: “You did what? This never happened with John, he never made any mistakes.”
Denial– ex: “I know you don’t mean that. You couldn’t possibly feel that way.”
Change the focus to yourself – ex: “That’s great! I remember when I won the spelling bee in second grade and…”
Can you see that there are endless ways to screw up as a listener?Conversation blocking is really much easier and more natural for most people than good listening is. How many times have you been distracted in a restaurant or an airplane by someone talking too loudly who won’t let his conversation partner say three words? That’s human nature, but we can do better.
Best advice for changing your listening habits?
Understand attentive listening is a precious gift you can give at any moment, a gift that will enrich your relationships and your life.
Assume you are not the smartest person in the room and try to learn something new from everyone you meet.
Are you a parent? There is a great book for teaching listening skills to your kids: Peaceful Parents, Peaceful Kids by Naomi Drew. Highly recommended.
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]B[/mks_dropcap]usiness is a team sport — but a rough one like rugby. Companies and people can get hurt badly because more than ever before it’s a winner-take-all contest. It’s a game played under pressure – losing is not fun and winning solves everything. So, it’s no wonder bosses are looking for real team players.
We look for people who remain calm and effective under pressure, who empathize with clients and team members in pursuit of the best possible results. The gifted individuals we’re looking for act with grace in stressful situations, listen well, communicate well, admit mistakes and learn from them, respond well to criticism and show high self and situational awareness. With these skills, you can be counted on to build productive relationships founded on trust and respect.
These are essentially ‘people skills’, though employers also call them ’emotional intelligence’. When you lack these skills, you have a “personality issue”. But as any parent can tell you, we aren’t born with people skills.
Good people skills are unnatural. If Johnny the two-year-old wants to play with his brother’s toy, he just grabs it away. His four-year-old brother pushes Johnny down on the ground and takes it back. It’s no wonder that personality issues are the number one reason why VP’s don’t become CEOs and why otherwise good employees lose their jobs in a recession.
Little kids don’t like to share and they don’t like to consider anyone’s feelings but their own. Unsurprisingly, many adults still feel that way. Here’s a typical comment from someone advised to network and brush up on his so-called “soft skills”:
“I am a worker and a human being, not a circus act. If you want someone who will get the job done correctly and on time, every time, then I’m your man. If you want someone to read your mind, entertain you, or cater to your every whim, then you need a palm reader, a clown, or a dog. I’m none of those. Sorry.”
Ok, understood. But get used to sitting on the sidelines in bad times and watching your colleagues be promoted above you during good times. Your attitude makes you like a very specific tool, say a snowblower. I only need you when the snow is too heavy for a snow shovel. The rest of the time you sit in the garage rusting away.
Back to Johnny and his “personality issues”. If he’s lucky enough to receive good parenting, has good genes and enjoys the right social and educational opportunities, the little wild animal will be tamed and his resulting “emotional intelligence” will make him a productive member of society and valuable team member.
If his people skills are really top-notch, he will be perpetually in-demand and never need to prepare a formal resume. Until of course the day comes when he rises to the level in an organization where his strengths and weaknesses are at an equilibrium in relationship to his responsibilities… that’s called the Peter principle, and we’ll save that for another lesson.
If the stars did not align for you the way they did for Johnny, you will have a few more rough edges to polish. The good news is that the hiring managers searching for ’emotional intelligence’ are wrong – it’s not an intelligence, they are just skills that you can learn and practice.
If you don’t want your boss to see a snowblower when he looks at you, if you want him to see someone really special in front of him, follow these steps in order:
Learn to recognize and manage stress – learning your own stress signals and techniques will help you help others. Read Stop Worrying & Start Living by Dale Carnegie.
Be kind to yourself – it’s hard to empathize and connect with others if you can’t do those things with yourself. First, treat yourself kindly.
When you’ve learned these skills, you’ll be of much greater value to your boss and you’ll enjoy your work and your relationships with coworkers more. Last but not least, your family and personal relationships will benefit immeasurably.
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]N[/mks_dropcap]o one knows better than a boss that everyone makes mistakes. But not everyone handles them the same way. When you make a mistake, your boss will be watching you closely and asking himself these questions:
Am I dealing with someone who:
learns easily from mistakes or repeats them endlessly?
tells the simple truth or creates confusion to hide behind?
sincerely accepts responsibility or just tells me what I want to hear?
really hears and understands me?
Your boss will consider the cost of your mistakes to be part of his investment in you. It’s a cost of doing business. Your job when you report a mistake is to convince your supervisor that his investment is a good one. You can do that by following this checklist:
report your mistakes early so your boss doesn’t find out about them from someone else
apologize without assigning blame to others and without sounding defensive
do whatever you can to correct your mistake and do it quickly
show you thought about what led to your mistake
summarize and say back to your boss his message to you, for ex: “I hear you saying that this was a costly mistake for the company at a time when…” and then
commit to not making that mistake again and explain how you will avoid it
Fully accepting a mistake, making repairs and avoiding repetition is extremely difficult. Maybe one of the most difficult things in life. And that’s one of the few advantages you have in this situation — your boss knows how hard it is. So do it right and you’ll show what you’re made of. If you’re lucky, you may just come out ahead!
Get the ebook! If you liked what you read here, and think you may want to refer back to this guide later, grab the Kindle version – we’re hoping you’ll thank us with a five-star review on Amazon if you found this material helpful. The ebook also includes our job search guide.
– it’s a deeply moving story that changed my thinking.
:
, I’ve been using checklists and encouraging my team to use them as well. In fact, now we run through a checklist when we let someone like Maria go. We also use checklists for recruiting, interviewing, and reference checking.
by Naomi Drew. Highly recommended.
by Dale Carnegie.
by Naomi Drew (chapter 6).
by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.
