Getting Along With Your Manager, Part Two
Bruce Tulgan is well known for helping managers understand younger workers. Now in a new book called It’s Okay to Manage the Boss he says, there is an “under management epidemic” and the responsibility for getting along with a manager is up to the employee.
Manager’s don’t manage, says Tulgan, but an employee needs clear expectations for performance that can be framed into concrete actions. If you don’t know what’s expected of you between now and your next review (an institution whose value is debatable according to Samuel A. Culbert at UCLA) it’s time to ask.
The days of hitching your wagon to some else’s rising star may be over, Tulgan says, and catering to a boss’ whims, style and preferences at the expense of your own career development is a recipe for career mismanagement. Instead he suggests an employee have clear expectations of what the job entails and make requests for candid feedback. It’s also an employee’s job to figure out how frequently feedback is useful and whether you can arrange for it in small manageable bites or in longer, less frequent meetings.
He says after establishing ground rules, including an estimate of how long the relationship might last, keep score for yourself. He advocates writing your own operating procedures, planning your own schedule and prioritizing your daily and weekly tasks, all the while being sure to run your intentions by your manage. And yes, a manager may even be threatened by your industriousness.
The reality, says Tulgan, is everyone you come in contact with on a daily basis is a boss, whether it’s a manager in another section or one of your customers. Just accept the fact as a given.
Above all, your manager needs to be kept in the loop. And never go behind his or her back or over his or her head. If a manager takes issue with any of the strategies, Tulgan recommends a sincere simple and a dose of humility. “Smile and say golly,” he says, and never surprise the boss.
While what he proposes is fairly labor intensive, the practice may stand an employee in good stead when he or she becomes a manager.
Getting Along With Your Manager, Part One
About a decade ago, in a story about workplace kindness, called The Wisdom of Thoughtfulness, I quoted Marcus Buckingham, then a senior management consultant at The Gallup Organization who said, “People join companies and leave managers.” He found that most workers rate having a caring boss even higher than they value money or fringe benefits.
It seems several years later managers still had not gotten the message. In 2007, a Florida State University study showed that bosses can resort to some pretty offensive behavior. At the time employees said nearly 1/3 of bosses give their subordinates the silent treatment, nearly 40% fail to give proper credit, just over 25% noted their supervisors made negative comments about them to other employees or managers, and just shy of 25% said their supervisors invade their privacy and blamed others to cover up mistakes or minimize embarrassment.
More recently, a Right Management survey found full 20% of employees rate their manager as incompetent, although one wonders how those same employees were rated by their managers.
Apparently there’s lots of room for improvement in the manager/employee relationship. And in a new book, Bruce Tulgan says, “It’s Okay to Manage Your Boss.” Recently we sat down with Bruce to ask him to ask him how to start. He shares his insights in an upcoming post.
Tags: employee attitudes, managers
Do You Know How to To Improve MBA programs?
What is the one idea that would improve graduate management education? If you know, the Graduate Management Admissions Council, the folks who own the Graduate Management Admissions Test, would like to hear from you. They are about to sponsor a contest to find out. And you need not be a current student or faculty member to enter.
The relevancy of MBA programs has drawn widespread attention in the wake of the Great Recession and record levels of unemployment among 18-29 year olds. Who knows the answer to what will keep us economically competitive in the years to come?
Is Talent Overrated?
Ahead of the financial meltdown Geoff Colvin, author and journalist wrote a book called Talent is Overrated that has recently been reissued in paperback with a new afterward (Portfolio Trade).
It casts a light on what Mr. Colvin calls world class performers, but others would label achievement through opportunity, persistence and enthusiasm for a task.
The book works on several different levels with insights useful to corporate managers, job seekers and recent graduates.
Even with a fiscal crisis Mr. Colvin still makes the case that financial capital is abundant, but the scare resource is human ability. (If only those who have lost their jobs agreed with him.) The illustrations Mr. Colvin uses to support his thesis, Exxon, Microsoft, and Apple are large corporations that hire for specific areas of responsiblity. “Microsoft hires incredibly smart people,” he said.
Mr. Colvin is also keen on an individual’s cognitive abilities, what some might call brainpower, but he says companies don’t necessarily emphasize them. Perhaps, that’s why he sees opportunities for the resurgence of the corporate manager. “There is going to be a shift to managerial responsibility,” he said. Technology superiority as the basis for economic superiority is about to change.
Where those managers may come from is still open to debate. A recent issue of The Economist (May 8-May 14, 2010) called into question the convention of hiring MBA’s since it said banks and consulting firms are increasingly recruiting people without the degree, particularly mathematicians and computer scientists. And it appears more companies are developing home grown talent.
Since the emphasis in Mr. Colvin’s book is on world- class performance, it would appear the sooner you start, the higher you can soar. If you are considering a so called “encore career” , Mr. Colvin predicts that the more your skills transfer, the more effective you will be.
By far, the best piece of advice applies to companies and new graduates. Think deeply about your core and what you won’t cut. “Focus on that,” he said. Customers will have new problems and will have to come up with new solutions. Don’t just cut price.”
Paying Lip Service to Job Hunting
Temporary work is considered a bellwether of the economy. And as the economy perks up, (over 284,000 temp jobs have been created since the low in September 2009, 50,000 in February alone), some of the millions of unemployed may be toying with temping as a way of getting back into the job market.
Those still on the sidelines, may want to consider the findings of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor David Autor. With his colleague, Susan N. Houseman of the Upjohn Institute, he’s found that temporary help job placements do not improve subsequent earnings and employment outcomes. His study covered low skilled workers. And he says the temp work takes away from the hard work of job hunting.
What hard work? He directed me to the troubling statistic uncovered by his colleague Dr. Alan Krueger of Princeton University who with Andreas Muller who published a paper in May 2008 entitled The Lot of the Unemployed: A Time Use Perspective.
It seems before the financial meltdown unemployed Americans spent a mere 40 minutes a day on their job search, while their gainfully employed colleagues spent a full 408 minutes on the job. What did the unemployed do with the rest of their day?
For openers they spent nearly double the amount on the care of others, 112 minutes for the employed vs. 226 minutes for the unemployed. What did they do with the rest of their time? The unemployed spent more time on education a day, 25 minutes, vs. 11 minutes for the employed. And they spent a disproportionate share of their leisure time watching television, 201 minutes for the unemployed vs. 109 minutes for those who were employed.
Dr. Krueger is on leave at the Treasury Department and unavailable for comment. And, yes, in May 2008, the recession was just beginning. It’s become a truism that jobs are hard to come by and it’s an employers’ market. Still some job seekers might get better results if they redoubled their efforts.
Tags: job seekers, time management, unemployment
Job Seekers Take Note and Heart
For the nearly 90% of employees who have kept their jobs in this recession, a game of musical chairs may be about to begin. As they’ve watched their colleagues endure layoffs, and perhaps experienced some survivor guilt, the added responsibilities appear to have taken a toll and may be near a breaking point. More than half the workforce expects to have a foot out the door in the New Year.
In a newly released survey Right Management (the subsidiary of Manpower, Inc. that handles outplacement) asked 900 workers, “Do you plan to pursue new job opportunities as the economy improves in 2010? Rather than expecting to stay put, fully 60% replied that “yes, I intend to leave.” And nearly another quarter, 21% said “maybe, so I’m networking.”
Hiring managers take note.
Tags: job seekers, networking
New College Grads and Where the Jobs Are
It’s a tough time to have just graduated in this recession. All the enthusiasm in the world and a pocketful of internships may not be sufficient insulation against the downturn.
According to a press release about the latest Michigan State University’s Recruiting Trends Survey of more than 2,500 companies and institutions, hiring levels are at their lowest levels in several decades. This would help explain an unemployment rate for 20-24 year olds that was over 15% in October, the highest level since the recession began. Some job hunters may be tempted to become entrepreneurs, or at least seek out entrepreneurial companies.
The survey found that while mid and large sized companies (500 employees are more) expected a decrease in hiring, companies with fewer than 500 employees expected an uptick in hiring this year. “These companies are guardedly optimistic about hiring over the next year,” said Phil Gardner, Director of MSU Collegiate Employment Research Institute.
He says that in addition to students focusing on e-commerce and entrepreneurship, other sectors than can expect to see hiring increases include agriculture production, environmental sciences, information systems, statistics, non-profits, nursing and social work and multimedia including web design.
This week, in the New York Times feature, “The Boss,”
I interviewed Michael Chasen, the president and CEO of Blackboard, an online learning company based in Washington, D.C.
Recently I spoke to Elaine Romanelli, Mr. Chasen’s entrepreneur professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Dr. Romanelli’s research focuses on the characteristics of firms and regional industry environments that are likely to promote new business foundings.
Dr. Romanelli offers these observations that would be entrepreneurs and job seekers at entrepreneurial companies may want to consider.
What does your background tell you?
Dr. Romanelli says that people whose parents were small business owners are more likely to be small business owners themselves. And she said, they’ve developed a, “a habit of mind,” which allows them an ability to spot opportunities and know how to turn those opportunities into products.
Leave yourself open to opportunities…
Beyond that, she says serendipity or accidents may also play a role in successful entrepreneurship. Mr. Chasen’s close friend Matthew Pittinsky was enrolled in a Master’s of Education program at the same time Michael was at Georgetown. And it was Mr. Pattinsky who introduced Mr. Chasen and an entrepreneurship project he developed tin Dr. Romanelli’s class to his boss and launching Mr. Chasen’s business career.
Chose your business location carefully…
Lastly, Dr. Romanelli she says context matters…what others might call location. She says there is knowledge and combinatory of knowledge in areas that are populated by specific industries, e.g. the motion picture industry in Los Angeles and start-ups in the Silicon Valley and ringing Route 128 around Boston. It’s important to chose your location carefully.
Recently the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data and found that companies less than five years old created nearly two-thirds of net new jobs in 2007. While attrition for new companies is high, newly created and young companies are the primary drivers of job creation in the United States.
Tags: jobs
A Family’s Career Journey
What happens when a family goes through career transitions together? My first of a series of occasional
guest blogs appears today at www.careerdiva.net and is now reproduced here. Read the rest of this entry »
Combining Great and Leadership
On Saturday, I traveled 100 miles round trip the original Hall of Fame of Great Americans on the Bronx Community College campus that once belonged to New York University.
The 630 foot sweeping colonnade punctuated by busts of famous Americans was designed by Stanford White at the turn of the last century.
The “greats” were clustered by categories—statesmen, inventors, authors. Still, many of the names that might be synonymous with commerce seemed in short supply. As an example, George Westinghouse was primarily known as an inventor.
The only clearly recognizable business bust was that of Andrew Carnegie, as well known as a philanthropist as he was an investor. Even he was a fairly late arrival, added some three quarters of a century after the Hall was inaugurated.
Only the day before a newly released book from Random House arrived. Entitled When Remarkable Women Lead, it was written by two McKinsey consultants. McKinsey appears to gain traction when the economy goes into the reverse. They have recently been in the news for their recommendations for streamlining Conde Nast.
The first two chapters seem like a direct descendant of the book The Managerial Woman by Margaret Hennig and Anne Jardim which coincidentally came out in 1976, the year that Andrew Carnegie’s bust was added to the Hall of Fame. The authors promote the idea of “Centered Leadership.” I’m interested to see how they develop their theme.
Tags: consultants, female executives, leadership
A Way to Make the Fifties Happier
The headline was definite. “Americans Least Happy in Their 50s and Late 80s,” trumpeted the results of the Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index.
Surely the results came as no surprise to any card carrying fifty something member of the sandwich generation.
An ever lengthening to do list that includes teen and late teen child rearing, ministering to aging parents and squeezing in the possibility of a last promotion or two in a tanking economy is not exactly the best recipe for happiness. Who has time to contemplate happiness anyway?
The forties are long forgotten and the sixties look almost effortless by comparison.
Perhaps we’ve had it backwards all these years. Instead of a work family balance juggle that escalates in the fifties, maybe we need to consider an alternative. Why don’t be consider a ten year work hiatus in the fifties, an early and limited retirement, until myraid family responsibilities come back to a manageable size. Then we can retrain and have at least a decade of work ahead without distraction. Maybe then the fifties would be the happiest decade of all.
