On Careers
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The 10 Questions You Must Ask After You're Fired
Continue reading… 2 Comments"Your position has been eliminated. Your last day of work will be today."
If you haven't heard this line before, it may be in your future. It can be pretty traumatic, and you'll have so many questions, you won't even know which ones to ask. In case this happens to you, here is a list of things you need to know. You don't have to know the answers immediately after being notified, but you should find them out within the next few days.
Here are 10 questions you should have answered. Most (if not all!) should be answered by reading the paperwork you have. If not, call your manager or HR person.
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The Evilest E-mail Sin
Continue reading… 72 CommentsAnimated smiley faces. The thoughtless "reply all." Signature lines with inspirational quotes. Passive aggressively cc-ing a person's boss. And, of course, THE DREADED ALL CAPS.
All email iniquities.
All of them bad.
But what's the worst thing you can do in an E-mail? What is the one unforgivable sin?
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Bad Bosses Can Ruin People
Continue reading… 8 CommentsBad bosses ruin people. They are demanding, impolite, crude; they take too much credit and are adept at making our work lives a living hell. People can get "ruined"—OK, a bit melodramatic, that—because they start thinking that this how bosses operate.
Bad bosses destroy value—in their companies and communities but mostly in their people. The effects of a bad boss linger on a person's attitude over an entire career, like the smell of the dead skunk I almost ran over this weekend.
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Is It Too Much to Ask for Some Office Bathroom Improvements?
Continue reading… 0 CommentsMy last two blog posts for Outside Voices have generated a fair share of criticism. While I know blog commenters are more likely to participate when they disagree with you, I've decided to write about something that only an insane person couldn't agree with: needed improvements to your office bathroom.
We're not talking marble tile, granite countertops, and Kohler appliances. Rather, simple changes that would make the entire experience a lot more human. My time (and hopefully yours) in the workplace lavatory is an infrequent experience, and I understand that employers don't want us to become too comfortable away from our desks. Or you might end up like the janitor at my job who nods off for several hours a day in stall No. 2.
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How to Resign Your Job Gracefully
Continue reading… 9 CommentsI get a lot of questions from people who are nervous about the best way to tell their boss they're resigning. Fortunately, there's a basic formula for doing it well:
• First, be sure resigning is the right decision. Don't do it in a huff, to make a point, or in the hopes that it will make them realize how much they need you.
• Do it in person. Unless you have virtually no personal relationship with your boss, this is not a message to send by E-mail or via a letter left in your manager's inbox. Request a meeting, and say it face to face.
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What You Should Learn From a Talentless Celebrity
Continue reading… 0 CommentsThis post is for those of you who feel as if you are trapped within a bubble and that you have not been sufficiently recognized by the world.
You read of the careers of others and wonder: How did this person do it? That question is especially painful if the individual or celebrity seems to possess little talent aside from a flair for self-promotion.
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How to Make a Lazy Worker Move, or How to Move On From a Lazy Worker
Continue reading… 3 CommentsI have an employee who has been with us for 5 years. He has always been a so-so performer. He does his job, but does not go out of his way to contribute. It has now come to a point where he does not want to accept any more responsibilities nor does he want to advance in any other way but he complains about his salary and that he is no longer challenged. What do we do at this point? We have explained the possibilities of advancement which would thus increase his salary and give him more challenges but he refuses to take our suggestions. I want to salvage this relationship but I don't think he feels the same way. What do you think?
I once had a friend who had been married and divorced four times. She started dating a man who had been married and divorced five times. Of course, they got married after a few months of dating. So, would you like to guess if they are still married? Of course not! They divorced within two years.
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The Secret to Staying Energetic in Your Career
Continue reading… 0 CommentsWhat if you had a way to make sure you'd never need to come to someone like me to help you figure out how to inject the energy back into your career? Better yet, what if the process were easy and painless? Would you want to know about it?
Well here's the secret sauce: Make your work a nonstop research experiment focused on you. As you go about your work, ask yourself questions like:
- What do I love about this? Why?
- What drives me nuts about this? Why?
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Playing Like the Big Boys
Continue reading… 4 CommentsSo, you've just been pink-slipped. Or you've still got a job but you're worried it's not for long. What do you do?
You play like the big boys.
When times get tough for Google and Motorola and, heck, even General Motors, the first thing they do is diversify. Why? Because they know that when one part of the economy is tanking, another part is just taking off. Sure, jobs are being eliminated or sent elsewhere. But at the same time, whole new categories of jobs are being created.
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Attention, Bosses: Leave Us Alone on Friday Afternoon
Continue reading… 9 CommentsThe majority of full-time workers in America are required to be at the office Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. While many of us have a minimum number of hours we must work, one thing is certain: We don't spend all of our working hours at work working. Since many bosses have unrealistic expectations or are simply in denial, I feel it's important to broadcast this message to every boss, supervisor, and coworker across the land:
NOTHING GETS DONE ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON.
Accept it. Embrace it.
We might physically be present, but mentally, we are somewhere far, far away.
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Master the Hallway First, Then the Board Room
Continue reading… 30 CommentsWhen they were younger, my kids would tell their friends that Daddy had a boring job—he just talked with people in the hallway all day.
Guilty.
It takes real skill to master the hallway chatting experience, and here are some "takeaways" or "learnings" for future leaders (that's HR code for "here comes the advice").
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10 Mistakes Employers Make in Hiring
Continue reading… 6 CommentsI've written a lot about the mistakes job applicants make in the hiring process, but it's often no better on the employer's side. Here are the 10 biggest mistakes I see companies make when they're hiring:
1. Flakiness. They say they'll get back to you this week, and you hear nothing. The job description seems to be a work in progress that keeps changing. You're told you'll be reporting to one person and later it changes to another. You arrive for your interview with Bob and learn that you'll be meeting with Jane instead. Guess what it's going to be like to work with these people? (That said, there can be legitimate, nonworrisome reasons for any of the above. But a nonflaky company will realize that these things can look flaky and will acknowledge it and explain what's going on. What should alarm you is an absence of any awareness or concern about how this may be coming across, as it indicates it's not anything out of the ordinary for this company.)
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Courage and Discretion: Two Essential Qualities
Continue reading… 4 CommentsI've written earlier about the importance of trust, both from the standpoint of integrity and reliability. There are two qualities that bolster trust—and they deserve far more discussion than is given in the average workplace.
The first is courage. Do you have the courage to walk away from an abusive working environment, a demand for unethical behavior, or an improper relationship? Are you fearful of the consequences? That will certainly be the case if courage is involved, because courage is not the absence of fear but the control of fear. Remember the standard rule in negotiations: The side that cares the least has the most power. We see this power rule in marriages, offices, and politics. By being courageous, we have not removed fear—we've simply decided that something matters more than our fear.
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Don’t Let Fear of Failure Keep You From Success
Continue reading… 2 CommentsCreating an energizing, inspiring life inevitably brings with it some degree of failure. Sometimes it's just a little stumble, sometimes it echoes with a resounding splat.
The important thing isn't that you've screwed up—we all do on occasion—it's what you do with the experience. You can either learn and move on, or let that failure limit your life.
In my most recent M.A.P. Maker podcast, Howard Behar (former president of Starbucks Coffee Co. and author of It's Not About the Coffee) stresses the importance of a positive mind-set. Learn from failure, try not to repeat the mistake, but ultimately accept it with a positive attitude. If you don't, he says:
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Become the Right Person for the Job
Continue reading… 1 CommentThere is nothing worse than job hunting. OK, that's a slight exaggeration. The stomach flu on a hot day is worse, as are presidential election-year commercials. But job hunting is an unpleasant activity, so I'm going to tell you a little secret about it:
The person who is interviewing you really, really, really wants to hire you.
Well, not you, specifically. What they want is to hire the person they are interviewing right now because they can then quit interviewing people and get back to work. So, that gives you a distinct advantage—all you have to be is the right person.
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How to Screw Up a Thank-You Letter
Continue reading… 9 CommentsAn evil trend is afoot in the job-hunting universe: form thank-you letters.
Can you imagine? That's almost—not quite—worse than no thank you at all!
One, because it's sort of rude. And two, because you're giving up a primo chance to remind your potential employer why you are such a great candidate for the job.
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What to Do When the Meeting Turns Ugly
Continue reading… 1 CommentBusiness meetings have a way of "going south," especially if an authority figure is not present. It is human nature to complain, even whine a little, and we are all very good at piling it on.
Someone told me once that "the more you stir it, the more it stinks," and it happens in some business meetings—they go negative and in no time at all, it does tend to stink. People are upset, no solutions are found, and what started out as problem identification becomes another episode of Chicken Little's THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING. People leave the meeting unmotivated and unsettled. What are we going to do??
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What to Do if You're Overqualified
Continue reading… 6 CommentsTo job applicants, being told you're overqualified can feel like being told by a prospective date that you're too attractive. In other words, why is that a bad thing?
To understand what hiring managers mean when they say this, and how you can get around it, put yourself in the manager's head. When a manager says you're overqualified, here's what she's thinking:
- You'll be bored.
- You don't have a realistic understanding of what the position is about.
- The salary will be too low for you.
- You're just looking for any job right now, and once a better one comes along, you'll leave us.
- You'll have trouble being managed by someone less experienced than you.
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Why Too Much Information is Bad for Business
Continue reading… 2 CommentsNETMA (Nobody Ever Tells Me Anything) is a major problem in many organizations. Employees aren't briefed on activities directly related to their jobs and the rumor mill thrives because of management's lack of openness.
But what about NETMA's opposite, ETMTM (Everyone Tells Me Too Much)? Can it be that too much information creates as much anxiety as too little?
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Do What You Love, but Money Won't Necessarily Follow
Continue reading… 3 CommentsThis may come as a surprise to hear from someone who makes his living helping people find passion in their careers, but I think the whole "do what you love and the money will follow" idea is completely flawed.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that passion and thriving financially are mutually exclusive. I absolutely believe that the two can go together. I would even say that passion can feed your potential to thrive.
What I am saying is that passion isn't magic. There are far too many starving artists in the world for the "do what you love" saying to hold any water. Not by itself, anyway.
