boss

Don’t snipe at your boss, swipe instead

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Oh, come on, can we not just get a drink and talk about this? Apparently not. Instead, you can now just swipe right on an app called Niko Niko if you’re not happy. Equally you can swipe left if you’re chipper. Swipe down to use a touch-and-drag happiness meter and seriously, for god’s sake, SAY SOMETHING ALOUD.

I’m into technology and even I’m twitching at this idea of turning office teamwork into something like Community’s Meow Meow Beenz. If you can bear it more than I can, take a read of Fast Company’s article.

You work for yourself

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(From The Blank Screen newsletter, free on Fridays – sign up now)

You work for yourself You do. I don’t care if you report to a manager and you turn up every day to the Acme factory line, you work for yourself. Act like you do because it will help your productivity – and act like you do work for yourself because you do work for yourself.

The good thing about fulltime employment – I’m guessing here because I’m freelance and haven’t had one fulltime post in 20 years – is that you do get to relax a bit. Don’t. You’re there to work and you are there to learn, to get value out of your company and be of value to it.

Nobody employs you because they’re nice. Hopefully they are but you earned your job there and it is costing them. A rule of thumb is that your salary is about half what it costs a company to employ you. (On top of the money you take home there is that much again the cost of hiring and tax and insurance and health and providing the equipment you need to do your job. The figure falls down the more you get paid but on average, roughly, kinda, that’s the sum we’re talking about.)

If you’ve done enough today to make you a bargain for them, then barring calamitous company misfortunes, your job is safe.

What I’m concerned about is how much you’ve got from the company. Firms don’t owe you anything but your salary and presumably they’re paying you that. But is what you’re doing valuable to you? Are you enjoying it and is it stretching you, growing you? We are not in a world where you can just walk out of a job if it isn’t, but you can look to see if it is and you can change things if it ain’t.

Don’t wait to be told what to do by a manager. Do what you’re there for and what you know how to do, then look for more. They’ll love you for all those words like initiative and discipline but you’ll love it for how it makes your job more interesting.

Plus, taking charge of what you do at your job helps you take charge of your career. And remember, you work for yourself. I’ve mentioned this. You’re just choosing to work with this firm for now. You have to keep earning your place there but the firm needs to keep earning its place having you.

This is all on my mind because I read some article saying that employees today need much more reassurance and appraisals than they did before. It’s on my mind because I had to make a fairly big business purchase decision and I realised that after 20 years I am still looking for permission from someone to do what I need to do.

That’s the curse of being a writer, though: we secretly believe someone is going to come along and stop us.

Don’t talk back to your boss.

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Not even that one. The one who deserves it. I’m not convinced we need actual research on this – if your boss is bad enough that you want be abusive right back in their stinking face then they are also bad enough to fire you for it – but Harvard Business Review has looked into it.

It was a quiet day.

But there are figures that suggest maybe there are times when you should bite back and then there are figures that say nooooo. I expect those latter figure are chiefly unemployment statistics but if you’re having trouble with a manager or an important client, take a read and let it out.

The alternative hypothesis [to previous studies] that would maybe help us explain why people are hostile toward a hostile boss — we called it the buffering hypothesis in this study — is the idea that if you reciprocate your boss’s hostility, it will actually make things a little bit better and you will feel more satisfied, or not as depressed and psychologically harmed.

Our reasoning behind that second hypothesis is that if you reciprocate a boss’s hostility, you are less likely to feel like a victim. Now, we had never studied the idea that a person would report that they feel like they are a victim when their boss is hostile, but it seemed to make some sense.

So maybe if you reciprocate the boss’s hostility, it will make you feel like you are asserting some control over your situation, you are responding in some way, then you will not feel as victimized.

We found a surprising result: although a person is more likely to feel like a victim when their boss is hostile toward them, they are much less likely to feel like a victim when they reciprocate their boss’s hostility.

What Research Shows About Talking Back to a Jerk Boss – Walter Frick, Harvard Business Review (9 April 2015)

Read the full piece.

What your boss thinks when you quit

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I see you as a writer and in my mind that means you’re self-employed: you may have one day job, you have a dozen clients, but you’re a writer which means you’re creating your own work and then doing it. But we do constantly deal with other people and it’s interesting to see things from their perspective as well as ours.

I think it’s interesting from a writers’ point, the writer’s way of understanding characters. But it’s also practical and pragmatic when it comes to, say, quitting your job. This is a weekend read kind of piece about what it’s like to be a boss losing staff and how they should best cope with this – which means it’s also about what we can expect and what we should hope for whenever we resign from a job or a contract.

Unexpected resignations present big challenges for leaders, especially those unaccustomed to dealing with them. “It’s probably a frustration you haven’t had for a while — and if you’re a relatively new manager, you might not have ever experienced this before,” says Priscilla Claman, the president of Career Strategies, a Boston-based consulting firm and a contributor to the HBR Guide to Getting the Right Job. Abrupt employee departures are especially hard on the psyche. If you’ve grown to really rely on that person, “you may feel deserted and alone,” says Anat Lechner, a clinical associate professor of management and organizations at NYU Stern. “You’re left psychologically and practically without a point person.” Here are some tips to help you manage the separation and make the transition as smooth as possible.

Once the news is delivered, Claman advises “muting your inner response of: What? Why? You didn’t tell me!” Instead, she says, “breathe” and “even if you’re upset” do your best to engage in a “warm and friendly conversation about [the person’s] future plans.” In the modern workplace, “people come and go over and over again so it’s important to maintain relationships,” she explains. If your interactions with the employee have been difficult and you sense hostility in the departure — in other words, he can’t wait to leave — you need to “figure out what can be salvaged,” says Lechner. She recommends saying something like, “I appreciate the contributions you’ve made and I understand that you’ve had a tough time here. For the sake of your reputation and mine, let’s take the high road.” She adds, “Do things right so there’s no bad blood.”

When an Employee Quits and You Didn’t See It Coming – Rebecca Knight, Harvard Business Review (12 March 2015)

Read the full piece. The details of corporate practice are American but the principles are the same everywhere.

Alternatively, beg them to SHUT UP

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Someone at Harvard Business Review has had enough and decided to write a Very Heavily Pointed article that even now they are innocently forwarding to the one of the bosses who will for god’s sake not shut up.

The article points out that there may be some things you can do about a boring boss, starting with:

Diagnose the problem. Many senior leaders are long-winded in some situations and not others. Does your boss tend to deliver an Oscar acceptance speech only when big clients come to the office and meet you in the conference room? Will your biggest client complain for hours about his divorce case over lunch, but not if he stops by the office? Are management monologues more likely to occur when there’s no formal agenda, if you’re on a phone call with no time constraints, or when no one asks any questions?

Take note of when your culprit tends to dominate the conversation so you can change the setting or circumstances. All of these clues can indicate what the core problem is — and help you devise a plan of attack.

Advice for Dealing with a Long-Winded Leader – Joe McCormack, HBR (9 January 2015)

Read the full piece.

More on being your own boss at work

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Lisa Dill, a recruiter and trainer, has written a Digital Professional Institute article about how to impress your boss and I think her last one is precisely what I’ve been going on about today here and in the newsletter.

Here’s Dill’s take:

I’m sure we all want to be the individual in the office with the next great idea. Occasionally we may even find ourselves daydreaming about how to make certain aspects of what our company does better overall. Then, all of a sudden it hits you, and you’re ready to present your next big idea. Before you do, pause, think it through, and then bring it to your boss with a plan in mind of how you’d recommend getting it done. Ideas are one thing, but making them a reality is entirely different. Presenting your boss with a game plan is going to demonstrate to her that you don’t just have good ideas, but you can put them into action. This provides her with one less thing to think about in regard to how to get something accomplished, but it also gives you ownership of seeing your idea through and the praise when it’s implemented successfully.

Five Simple Ways to Wow Your Boss – Lisa Dill, Digital Professional Institute (undated)

Read the full piece for more specific advice on handling yourself at work.

You’re your own boss

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When I went freelance in the 1990s, very many people enthused at me about what it would like not being a boss. I knew they were wrong: it was more like I was taking on 17 bosses, each of them paying me a tiny bit.

All these years on, though, they were right. And I was wrong. (Would you look at that? A man saying he was wrong. Songs will be sung of this day.)

I have all these clients, all these editors, most people have just the one boss. But we are all working for ourselves and as easy as it can be to let the boss decide everything, as even easier as it is to just complain about that man or woman, you will be more productive and you will feel better when you realise that you are in charge.

Let’s not get silly about it. Punching your boss in the face is not empowerment, it’s unemployment and a possible legal case. But take everything your job requires you to do and look at it all is if you are the manager. Which bit does your client, your boss, really need? What bits are quick wins you can knock out in ten minutes? What’s the stuff that you know is just bollocks and busy work? And what is the stuff that you can do that needs help from other people? Best yet: what’s missing? What more can you do that will be really good for you, your boss, your company and your future pay rises?

Look at your job not as what you have to do or as who you are, but instead as this business that you are running. You have clients and customers, you have resources, if you use them like that instead of constantly reacting to whatever happens next or whoever demands things the loudest, you’ll feel in control. It’s the best feeling because it’s real, you’ll feel in control because you are.

Mind you, keep doing that and you could end up being promoted to boss. Or go freelance.