Rude Behavior 2

Last week I described a job candidate I’ll call Sam, who was flabbergasted to find he’d been eliminated from competition because the interviewer viewed his behavior as unacceptable.

This is Sam’s version of what happened: Sam had a busy morning and as a result, was late getting to his interview. When he arrived, the receptionist asked him to wait for an escort to Human Resources. Several minutes passed before he was accompanied to the interviewer’s office where again he was asked to wait. The interviewer had an emergency that he needed to address.

Sam had scheduled another interview with a company across town and he had one hour remaining to get there on time. As the minutes ticked by Sam grew increasingly concerned that he’d miss it. As his anxiety mounted, so did the edgy attitude he displayed to the HR admin, who was making an effort to placate him. Out of frustration, he tried and failed to gain entrance to the interviewer’s office.  Finally, the interviewer agreed to see him, but didn’t give Sam an opportunity to present anything but his resume, indicating that “he had seen enough”, and over Sam’s heated objections and adamant refusal to leave, had him escorted to the parking lot.

What can you learn from Sam’s debacle? Plenty.

Manage your time wisely. Late arrivals and anxious attitudes are noted by everyone including the interviewer and take the interaction in the wrong direction.

Don’t schedule other appointments within three to four hours of your interview. You need to be available in case your meeting is delayed or the interviewer would like you to meet others on the screening team.

Don’t like to be kept waiting?  Occupy yourself by reading company related materials that are typically provided, or read a business magazine or newspaper.

Don’t cop an attitude and think you can later defend or explain your bad behavior.

It’s understandable that you’re frustrated when you arrive at your scheduled interview, on time, only to find that the interviewer isn’t ready for you. If you want the interview, if you believe you’re a good match to the opportunity, if you believe the company is one where you want to work, let go of your frustration. Let it go or it will reveal itself to those who observe you, even casually, and it can hurt your chances for success.

How you react to a negative situation begins with what you think about it. If you want to respond as someone calm and steady, you’ll need to think yourself that way. Change your perspective by envisioning how you want to (respectfully) treat others, how you want to (candidly) answer tough questions, and how you want to (politely/courageously) ask questions of others. Envision how you want to begin the meeting and how you want it to end.

Throughout this mental exercise, you’re neither irritated by, nor fixated on, how others are treating you badly. If you were to be, you’d lose personal power, energy, and control by turning it over to “them” and they win.

You’re right. Life isn’t fair. Good health, wealth, luck, and happiness aren’t equally distributed. It is what it is. We don’t know what demons those who would appear to have it all, struggle with, and we don’t need to know. It’s enough that we struggle with our own.

Given that, we can only make the best choices we can, realizing that there are consequences for the ones that we make. The next time you’re interviewing and you’re ticked off by a company representative’s actions or lack of them, and you’re itching to say something that will show them how wrong they are, take a deep breath and do something far more constructive: show them how a class act behaves.

Rude Behavior

Bummer. You’ve spent weeks practicing answers to the toughest questions, days improving your resume, hours finding the right thing to wear, only to learn you weren’t made a job offer because the interviewer said you had bad manners.

“Bad manners! Can you believe it?” slumped the client.

“Tell me what happened”, I said politely, while correcting my posture and rejecting an overwhelming urge to remove a piece of celery from a niche somewhere between my teeth and gums.

“I don’t know for sure”, he responded, “ the interviewer didn’t say, but it must have been pretty bad to disqualify me.”

I asked him to recall the order of events so we could tag the behavioral culprit. Here’s what he said.

“I got there a little late, gave my name to the receptionist, and took a seat. As the minutes ticked by I started getting concerned and asked the receptionist what was taking so long. She said the interviewer would be with me momentarily. Well, momentarily changed to many momentarilies, and I was getting really worried. I had another interview across town, starting in just over an hour.”

I asked if he had considered that when agreeing to both appointments.

“No, not really. I figured if everything broke just right I could do it. Anyhow, an admin walked up, introduced herself and escorted me to the office where the interview was to take place. When we got there, the interviewer stepped outside his door and asked if I could wait just a few more minutes. He said he had a mini-emergency he had to deal with, and needed to take care of it before we could begin our conversation.

“Sure”, I told him, “ and I have a mini-emergency myself. I have an interview across town that starts in just under an hour. Could you hurry this up please? I said, “please”. I distinctly remember being courteous when stating my request. He looked at me pleasantly enough, went into his office without me, closed the door and I guess he took care of his ‘emergency’.

“I asked the admin if this was his typical behavior, and she smiled and said that he had a lot going on that day.

“Like I don’t,” I said. “Apparently I was a little edgier in my response than I had intended, since she immediately went into her boss’s office, and closed the door before I could squeeze through. In less than a minute the interviewer thrust open the door, invited me in, closed the door, a little sharply, I thought, and asked me to take a seat.

“He oughtn’t to have bothered, since I grabbed for the first chair I could find. Regrettably, it was his.

“He apologized for the delay, but didn’t seem very sincere, and proceeded to review my resume. He told me that it looked ‘in order’, whatever that means, and thanked me for stopping by.

“Don’t you have any questions for me?” I asked.

“No,” he responded. “You’ve given me all I need.”

”Come on!” I begged. “Ask me something.”

“That’s when he stood. I guess he wanted me to go but I wanted to press my case. Which I did, emphatically.

He opened the door, gesturing for me to leave. When I didn’t, he said something to his admin, and before I knew it, a security guard showed up and escorted me, politely but persuasively, to the parking lot and my car.”

“Wow”, I said, so amazed at his story that I had forgotten about the celery that lurked between my molars.

“Yep”, he sighed, “some people are so rude you wonder how they ever manage to get hired.”

With that, he put his sox back on, laced up his shoes, and left.

In a Jam

“I read your column and wonder if you get people like me out of a jam.”

That prompted my curiosity and I asked her to describe, “people like me”.

“People who are so lost they don’t know where to start. I’m a college graduate and I can’t believe I’m earning minimum wage in a dead-end job. I’m stuck, and I want to know if you can get me out of this mess.”

Her tone was strident, and as she punched each word though the telephone, she continued.

“I have a liberal arts degree that didn’t prepare me for work, parents who keep saying ‘I told you so’, and a dog that just ruined the sofa that I borrowed from my aunt, who will probably disown me when she finds out. Can you get me out of this mess?”

I explained that career counselors ask questions, provide assessments, clarify issues, offer perspective, give counsel, discuss strategy, and outline tactical approaches for job and career search. It’s up to their clients to decide which, if any, behaviors they’re willing to change, and actions they’re willing to take. Bottom line, she’d have to doing things differently if she wanted a better outcome.

I offer her lament, with her permission, as description of one that you or someone you know may be experiencing as well.

The issue: You feel lost and don’t know where to begin in your search for something better than the place you find yourself.

The goal: To know what you want, where you’d want to work, and what you have capacity for doing best.

The rules: Be flexible, proactive, and responsive; know your goal, set your objectives, readjust as you go, and  keep your eye on the prize.

The process: If you don’t know what you do best, get help, now. If you prefer to kick- start your thinking by reading, you can find books and career interest/vocational surveys on line, in bookstores and libraries.  If you’re overwhelmed by the number and variety and don’t know where to direct your attention, get free, human assistance:  ask librarians to direct you toward the appropriate titles and sources.

Once you’ve gotten a handle on what makes sense for you, based on your innate strengths, learned skills, and potential for development, you’re either ready to launch your search or ready to talk to someone about how to launch it. You can find those folks in private practice (look for Career Coaches/Counselors), and if you’re a student, in the career or guidance office of your respective schools.

If you’re more extraverted and want to think by talking, find the right people for the right reasons.  To maximize your time and that of others, and the probability that your discussion will yield a positive outcome, talk and listen to people who know you, are willing and interested in knowing more about you, who are savvy to the world of work and the necessities and intricacies of job search and willing to offer you their candid perspective.

Network, network, network. Once you understand what you do well, or have aptitude for but limited experience doing,  find people who currently have the job you’d want. If you don’t know who they are, network your way toward them and when you get there, make the most of the time you have together by asking  their advice for making the transition.

Changing career direction or finding the right job after a string of wrong ones may require additional schooling, apprenticeships, and working your way up from ground level. It’s not the stuff of miracles, chance meetings, or sheer luck. It takes hard work and daring to meet the right people to ask the right questions to take the right actions. And it’s worth it.

What’s Your Attitude?

Everyone has an attitude. How you project that attitude has enormous influence on how you are perceived. Those perceptions and interpretations by prospective employers make the difference between a winning interview, and one that doesn’t quite get it.

Attitudes are influenced by events and your reactions to them. You may be a great communicator, a motivating team builder, and an all around wonderful catch, but if you’re stuck in a bad place, all those attributes go up in smoke, replaced by behaviors that aren’t nearly as appealing. Under stress and duress you can act withdrawn, impatient, easily distracted, irritable, and cynical, second- guessing the motives of people you typically trust and value. Or you can take on the attitudes of the (pseudonyms) Ted, Chris, Janet, or Jake:

After twenty- five years with the same company, Ted was laid off. He had depended on the job for an income, insurance, retirement, friendships, and identity. Now it’s all gone. He says he doesn’t blame the company, they did what they had to do, that’s he’s moved on with his life.  Has he?

“No, to tell the truth, I’m not over it. They could have done a lot of things differently. Lots of folks saw problems up ahead and no one seemed to be addressing them. Their answer to the economy, the competition, outdated equipment and outmoded strategy was ‘work harder’. Well, that didn’t work.

Maybe nothing could have saved us. The owners were good people. I know they didn’t want to let us go, and they didn’t want to lose a business they had worked all their adult lives to maintain. So, I don’t blame them. But I’m frustrated, angry and scared.”

How has your attitude impacted your interviews?

“I’m tentative. Cautious. I’m careful about what I say, careful about

how I act, careful about asking questions. The interviewer doesn’t get much of a read on me because I don’t let him.”

He’s right. And wrong. The interviewer does get a read and interprets Ted’s caution as not having the courage to make a decision, or the courage to question one. Ted comes across as a follower in need of strong direction. He won’t make the cut.

Chris has a different attitude. She believes that practice makes perfect so she practices for interviews the way she prepped for piano recitals, plays, and exams: Exhaustively.

“I’m ready. I’ve researched countless web sites for questions commonly asked and I’ve prepared my answers. I’ve visited the company’s website and I’ve memorized every fact on it. I know what to say, where to pause for emphasis, when to smile to show that I have a sense of humor, and when to look serious so that I’m perceived as, you know, serious. I am so prepared. I can’t lose!”

Sorry. Chris’s canned- do attitude won’t win this job. She’s so tightly wrapped the interviewer is turned off by her lack of spontaneity and her “too rehearsed” style. The interviewer wants someone who can work on matrixed teams that are as well oiled as they are well-integrated. The interviewer wants someone intellectually nimble, able to juggle tasks along with ideas, and when needed, change directions, without memorizing the how, what, and why of the playbook.

Janet is a battle toughened, hard worker with a victim’s attitude. Her strengths are obscured by a long-suffering, woe-is-me, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen personality. Her affect is so depressing, the interviewer closes out the meeting before it even gets started.

Then there’s Jake:

He’s intolerant, temperamental, sarcastic, assumes the worst, and gets it. He’s smart but not savvy. He’s focused, but not on the right things. He answers questions with disdain, presuming the interviewer won’t understand his value, which is true, and he can’t provide the employer a track record of consistent contribution, because he doesn’t have one.

“My attitude is, why bother?” he says. “I’d be better off working for myself.”

That’s probably what he’ll end up doing.

Vitality. Social savvy, emotional health and physical well being. Intellectual dexterity, internal calm, and external energy. Positive attitudes that combine to project an image of someone we all want to have on our teams, and in our companies.

What’s your attitude?

The First Job

Wake up sleepy heads, today’s the first day of the rest of your young working lives, and you need to walk out the door with your best foot forward.

Speaking of your best foot…fellas, if you’re working with the public, wear socks and serious shoes; big hairy toes or shoe-string draggin’ sneakers just don’t do it for employers or their customers. Gals, if your job requires heavy loading, lifting, cooking or cleaning, chances are you can drop, slop, or slip, so you want those serious shoes to have tread and reinforced toes.

If you want to keep your job, get there on time. If you want to impress your employer, get there early. If you want to be alert and early, it helps to be awake, so get the sleep you need to be at your best.

If you want to keep your job, be polite. It’s a sign of respect to those who pay you at the end of the week, who know more about your job than you do, and have the power and authority to return you to the ranks of the unemployed.

If you want to keep your job, act as pleasant as you are responsible. Managers want to supervise employees who want to be there and want to make a difference while they’re there. Act responsible because no matter what job you have, your safety and security and the safety and security of others are part of the business of being there.

If you want to keep your job, be fully present. Do your work and jump in when someone needs your help. If you prefer talking on your cell-phone, to your work buddies, or to the voice in your head that says you’d rather be somewhere else, count on it, you’re going to be.

If you want to keep your job, respond immediately and energetically when you’re asked a question, and answer it in complete sentences.  If you don’t know the answer, say so, and find out what it is.

If you want to keep your job, don’t gossip. Tell the truth. Accept responsibility for your mistakes and learn from them.

If you want to keep your job, anticipate what you can do without having to be told. Balance initiative with common sense.

If you want to keep your job, be a team player. If you’re in a jam you’ll

want your co-workers to help you out. They will if you demonstrate your willingness to do the same.

If you want to keep your job, make work a priority. You’ll be faced with all

kinds of temptations this summer, fall, winter, and spring.  Everything from a trip to the beach, to sleeping in late after a late night out. When deciding what matters most, honor your obligations to those who pay and trust you to do the right thing.

If you want to keep your job, learn to do more than your job. If you work

with new technologies, processes, and procedures, you’ll increase your income potential and improve your job longevity.

If your parents shoved this column in your face while twisting your nose and pulling your ear, they have a reason. They may have noticed that you’re not a rule follower, and do the opposite of what you’re told. They’re afraid that you’ll push the boundaries and lose your job.

If your parents gently set this column in front of you, and you obediently picked it up and began reading, they may be concerned that you’re not as assertive as they’d like, and are afraid you’ll be overlooked in favor of those who are more forceful, extraverted, and risk taking.

If your parents got your attention by poking you with the newspaper, plastering want-ads on the bathroom mirror, and wrapping your breakfast in this column, they’re afraid you’re in no hurry to get a job and will be hanging around the house for the foreseeable future.

Surprise them. Surprise all of them. Wash your face, brush your teeth, comb your hair, and get out there and make it happen.  Let your parents know through your actions, that you have what it takes to get a job and keep a job.

I Don’t Know What’s Wrong – 2

You can repeat your mistakes or learn from them. That’s up to you. Life’s lessons are many and varied. Some are easier to understand than others.

When it comes to interviewing it’s hard to know what comment, question, response, smile, frown, or explanation got in the way of your winning first prize. There are too many X’s and Y’s, too many unknowns, and too little opportunity to find out what worked and what didn’t.

To be or not to be: Interviewers base their hiring decisions on a variety of technical and interpersonal statements and impressions that emanate from the applicants’ ability to present skills, strengths, and contributions in cogent, convincing, compelling sound bites. Those who are selected come across as open, goal focused and confident while not appearing assumptive, arrogant, or overly ambitious.

Hiring decisions can be imprecise and difficult to justify, which is why even the most objective interviewers would rather not get into extended discussions about the finer points of their process with applicants who didn’t make the grade.

So what can you do to improve on your ability to make favorable impressions?  Practice with individuals you trust that are willing and able to provide you objective and subjective, constructive, honest, direct feedback and insight regarding how you can improve the style and substance of your interview.

Before you involve appropriate acquaintances, friends or family in your pursuit, assess your level of openness to different perspectives and your willingness to do something with what you hear. If you’re not prepared, don’t start.

If you’re ready and so are they, establish the ground rules: when you’ll meet and how often, what’s fair game and what isn’t, and if compensation is involved, how much? Establish an exit strategy. A great idea can sour quickly if either or both participants aren’t as enamored with the process as they thought they’d be.

What’s your starting point? Your ability to describe the job you want and the experience, strengths and abilities you have that enable you to be successful doing it. If you haven’t figured that out you’re not ready for prime time.

What’s the responsibility of the feedback provider? To play the role of interviewer, asking direct and probing questions about your current expectations, perceived value and future aspirations, asking you to describe your setbacks as well as your successes.

What’s the process? Feedback providers ask the questions, listen to your responses and feed back to you the variety of impressions they derive from what you say. If their impressions are positive, you keep going; if their reactions are mixed or negative, brainstorm and experiment with better ways to respond to the question. Practice your changes, don’t memorize them, and when your interviewer-coach gives you the thumbs up, move to the next set of questions.

For feedback to be helpful it should be specific, behavior based, and descriptive. In other words, you want to see and hear yourself as you are seen and heard. Here’s an example:

When I asked you to describe your worst boss this is what you said:

“He made me angry”; “he made me feel badly”; “there was nothing I could do”.

As you spoke, you slumped in your chair, looked fatigued, and your face crumpled as though you might cry. I had the impression that in that circumstance you saw yourself as a victim; that you felt helpless and unable to choose differently.

If I were an employer I’d want to hire someone with the experience and capability of making mature choices in difficult situations. Try again: how would you describe your worst boss in a way that illustrates your ability to deal effectively under adverse conditions?

If you want to learn from your mistakes, ask for honest feedback.

I Don’t Know What’s Wrong

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I think I have a great looking resume and impressive experience; that I’m reasonably attractive, smart, and have an outgoing personality. I’ve mailed hundreds of resumes and haven’t had one interview! I’m frustrated and losing confidence. I’m enclosing my resume for your review. I need help so don’t hold back.

I’ve looked it over and here’s what I see that’s working in your favor: You have an impressive education, a competitive major, a strong GPA, and what appears to be a strong work ethic. That indicates you’re focused on what’s important to you and you’re willing to work hard to get it. Your resume looks professional, the spelling’s correct, and there aren’t gaps in your employment. Your track record shows wide-ranging experience: that you’ve worked in a variety of positions for several different organizations in a relatively short period of time.

What’s working against you? Wide- ranging experiences working for several organizations in a relatively short period of time can be a turn off to many employers. Your four- page resume is too long and the tiny type, narrow margins, and all those italics make it hard to read. Your best information is buried inside dense paragraphs, written in technical jargon that’s known to a precious few, and you’ve used too many words to describe too many things. Ouch.

What can you do? Rethink, regroup, redesign, refocus, and refill your coffee cup. This may take a while:

Rethink: Be concise; convincing without hype; and immediately understandable. Include information that reinforces your objective; delete information that detracts from it.

Regroup: What job you want? If you don’t know (your current objective is ambiguous) the employer won’t either, and won’t figure it out for you. If you want to be competitive, you’ll need to spell out what you’re competing for. Once you have it, write a one- sentence objective that describes it. That’s your lead.

Redesign: You went to a top tier school, received a business degree, graduated with honors, worked your way through school while maintaining a 4.0 and hid that information on the bottom of page four. You have an important, impressive selling point. It needs to be on page one, right after your objective.

Use a reverse chronological format because that’s what the overwhelming majority of potential employers want to see. A functional format reads well but looks like you’re trying to cover up something (too many jobs in too few years? terminations? poor choices?) and is likely to get tossed.

Widen those margins, increase that typeface to 12 point, and select a font that’s easy to read.  The typical reader scans your resume in about 20 seconds so if you want your best stuff to get noticed, get it on page one, front and center and get the job done inside two pages, max.

Refocus: For each company you’ve worked, include the name of the organization, location, your title, and start and end dates of your employment. Indicate your promotions with title changes, and briefly outline your broadened authority and accountability. Use bullet points to highlight accomplishments and validate each accomplishment in quantifiable terms that are easily understood and verified. When briefly describing your responsibilities, lead with what you enjoyed most and were most successful doing and minimize or eliminate what you no longer want to do.

Ask objective outside readers (who aren’t friends or family) to proof your resume for correct spelling and syntax and to give you feedback by answering a few questions: To what extent am I: Clearly and succinctly describing the job I want?  Making my case by providing the information necessary to obtain it? Coming across as someone who’s made a difference for the companies I’ve worked?

Lost Cat? Found Job.

Do you remember the story about the fellow whose cat led him to the right job?  It went like this…

Apprehensive young man desperate for career and already late for interview has a runaway house cat. After frenzied search, skirmish and surrender, young man and reluctant cat arrive at company’s formidable front entrance. Young man opens resistant door by clamping resume between teeth and wedging cat between sandaled feet. In time it takes to yell, “stop biting my toe”, cat escapes, dashes after delivery truck and leaps aboard. Stowaway cat, unaware driver, and yet to be delivered packages head for highway. After lengthy pursuit young man flags driver to stop. While exchanging cat and pleasantries, young man describes aborted interview. Delivery driver, impressed with young man’s dogged desire to recoup recalcitrant cat suggests career with animal rescue.  Young man turns suggestion into opportunity and works happily ever after.

What’s the moral of the story? To get a great job all you need is a coincidental intersection of people and events?

If that were so there’s little you can do to influence your job search other than stand around intersections, waiting for the coincidence of good fortune to strike you instead of the person standing next to you. I don’t believe that. I do believe that life can be more challenging for some than for others.

Bad things can happen to good people and the best intentions can go ignored; hard working, honest, talented employees can be laid off and the misunderstood can be fired; that some people are born to wealth and privilege and others to misery and despair; that there are many things about which we have no choice but to choose again. It’s in that gap, that place between what was chosen for you and what you choose for yourself that I would hope you would focus.

I’ve worked with a wide variety of clients having to deal with a broad range of job challenges and career issues.  Despite their age or circumstance, education or economics, the majority struggle to answer the question, “what should I be when I grow up?”

Some are locked into the belief that careers should be hard and unforgiving. “That’s why it’s called work”, they say. Others, intellectually quick and hungry for mental stimulation are drawn to what is difficult or unusual, only to find that their learning curve is as short as their interest is brief. “When will I find something that sustains me?” they say. “I’m tired of this endless search.”

Some believe they should set aside the playthings of their youth, that whatever dreams they had as children, of fun, fame and fortune were just dreams, and not to be considered as career possibilities.

I’ve worked with grown children who espouse economic independence from their deep pocket parents even as they accept their co-dependent reality; with young adults who struggle to find an identity that’s not subordinated by a parent’s power or influence.

I’ve worked with not so young adults who’ve overcome poverty and jeopardy to make it on their own and in their own terms; with people who’ve left their jobs and people whose jobs left them; with people for whom English is a second language and want a chance to prove themselves as they are, not as others would wish them to be.

They all have this in common: A desire to enjoy what they do, to be respected, treated fairly, and paid equitably for their effort. It takes courage, not coincidence. It requires stepping into the space between what has happened to them and what they choose to happen next. That’s the place where they improve their self-awareness; increase their self-confidence, and where they take action.

What’s the moral to your story?

Don’t Write Letters

Three employees are headed toward what’s next and appear to be having some trouble leaving behind what was. They’re stuck at a prickly juncture on route to an unfamiliar place. Each wants to even a score:

“I was recently let go from my job and I’m still reeling from the experience. I feel like I was set up to fail. I want to write a letter to the plant manager letting him know just what happened and who he really needs to blame.”

“My boss asked me to sign a letter of resignation. He says it’s that or be fired. I think he’s a loser and this company stinks. That’s the only letter I want to sign.”

“I am leaving my job to join another company, one that’s much better than the sorry place and the sorrier people I’ve been working for the last 5 years. I’d like to write that in my letter of resignation along with a few other well placed zingers.”

No matter how badly you want to set the record straight, how right you think you are and how wrong you think they’ve been; no matter how clear, logical, and rational your argument, please don’t write that letter. You’ll come across as defensive, demeaning, and otherwise unable to accept the reality of your situation. It’s over. Let it go.

You’re working in a small world that’s getting smaller. Odds are, you’ll see these people again. It’s as important to you as it is to them to leave bad situations on good terms. Don’t burn bridges better left standing.

What’s so hard about letting go? In his book, “Managing Transitions”, author William Bridges describes the dilemma of change and our role in it as needing to have endings before we can have beginnings; that until we make sense of where we’ve been we’re stuck in the transition, unable to effectively move toward what’s next and what’s new.

Some employees are stuck in transition, staying with abusive bosses, assuming the insults will decrease or become more tolerable. Some stay in bad jobs, assuming the job will change or become more tolerable. Some employees stay where they are because they’re afraid to leave or stay until they are told to leave. Many employees are unaware that misery has a cost and a consequence that can blindside careers and personal relationships.

Get unstuck. Rather than assume and create different problems or repeat bad history, test your hypotheses and find out what was going on. Get closure on difficult situations by learning from the experience and converting that knowledge into new attitudes and behaviors. Widen the lens through which you gain perspective. Ask those who were present to describe the part that you and others played and what happened as a result.

Heighten your self- awareness. Read body language. Pay attention to the cues around you. Turn on the lights, something’s going on that needs your attention. Ask what it is and do something with what you see and what you hear.

Read the company’s culture, its unique set of values and beliefs. Employees who are attuned to the culture and responsive to it are typically comfortable within it and do reasonably well. Those who are either insensitive to it or disagree with it are apt to challenge and be challenged.

Read books and articles that address best practices in leadership, management, and supervision. Attend workshops and seminars to learn what you know and what you don’t know and need to learn.  Find a mentor, get a coach, learn from those whose interpersonal styles and life skills you value and are worth emulating. Ask for ongoing feedback from objective employees and ask what you can do to return the favor.

Woah, Time Out!

Last week I described a job seeker who’s currently employed and absolutely miserable. She blames her distress on her boss. She describes him as “arrogant, dismissive, rude, and insulting” and vows not to take it anymore. Her solution?

“I’m leaving. I have no idea what I’m going to do next but whatever it is, it can’t be worse than what I have here.”

Erin (not her real name) says she likes her work and is fairly compensated. She likes most of her colleagues and says the company makes a quality product.

She says that her boss, on rare occasions, compliments her, but that’s not enough to make up for his contentious behavior.

Erin’s not alone in her desire to leave a bad situation without knowing where a better situation might be. That’s why she  suggested that you sit in on our conversation and see if it sheds light on something you may be struggling with…

Erin, you’ve been very clear about the reasons you want to leave.  Do you have any uncertainties about your decision?

“Yes. I don’t want to leave my friends and a job that I understand and do well. A search, particularly at my age, is daunting, and something I’d rather not have to do. I just don’t see anyway around it.”

Have you told your boss how you feel about his behavior?

“Tell him? I’d be scared to death. I wouldn’t know what to say! And I don’t know how he’d respond if I did say something.”

What’s the worst that could happen if you told him?

“The worst thing? He might yell, but I’m used to that.”

Would he fire you?

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe the worst thing is that I don’t know how to put my feelings into words. That’s why I don’t say anything.”

Do you deserve better treatment than you’re getting?

“Absolutely!”

Then let’s role- play the conversation:

Erin: Boss, don’t get angry. I want to tell you something that you might not like and I don’t want you to not like me and yell at me.

Boss: What is it? I’m busy.

Erin: Never mind.

“Joyce, I can’t do this. I don’t know what to say or how to say it and that’s why I’ve never said anything before now. It’s easier for me to leave than to face him.”

Would you stay if he treated you with respect and consideration?

“Yes. That’s all I’m asking for.”

Then ask for it.

Erin: Boss, I need you to treat me with respect and consideration.

Boss: Don’t I treat you right? I tell you you’re doing a good job. What else do you want from me?

Erin: I want you to talk to me in a calm voice. I want you to explain things clearly without insulting or demeaning me.

Boss: I talk to everyone that way! I talk to my wife and kids that way!

Erin: I don’t want you to talk to me that way. I work hard. I deserve respect.

Boss: You’re right, you do. But I can’t promise that I won’t lose my temper. Will you get bent out of shape if I do?

Erin: If you persist in making rude and insulting comments, I will leave this company.

Boss: I want you to stay. I’ll work on my temper.

Joyce: Erin, you’ve made real progress. We both know you can’t predict what your boss will say or control his responses to you. You can control what you’ll say and the decisions you’ll make. Are you ready to have that conversation with your boss?

Erin: Yes. Now that I’m prepared, I’ll meet with him tomorrow. And whatever the outcome, I’ll be more self-respecting. That’s the piece I’ve been missing all along.

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