#BadBosses #leaders #managers
Most of us who’ve had jobs have seen different styles in managers.
There are some that left us, as employees, pretty much alone to do our jobs. They interfered only when necessary and appropriate.
Others wanted to know everything, have a say in everything, be copied on everything etc. They are known as micromanagers.
Debra Auerbach, a writer for the Advice and Resources section of CareerBuilder.com, issued a few tips on dealing with micromanagers. Her article appeared in the Feb. 21, 2016, edition of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
Her first tip in dealing with a micromanager is to be on top of your game. You don’t want to give that boss more reason to nitpick, she writes.
Secondly, she suggests determining whether you are a target. See whether the manager picks on others he or she supervises, as much as he or she picks on you.
Thirdly, she suggests building trust. The manager has to trust you if you have any chance of getting “more space” from that manager.
She also suggests providing frequent updates to the manager, trying your best to adapt to that management style and deciding whether working in this environment is a deal-breaker for you.
We’ve all either worked for, or have seen in action, micromanagers. As discussed previously, leaders don’t micromanage. Leaders hire the right people and provide the environment in which the employees are empowered to do their jobs the best way they know how.
Ideally, the boss is doing what he or she does best, so he or she doesn’t have the time or inclination to worry about what the employees do best. Sure, there are certain expectations. But, if the leader has done his job correctly, he or she has no worries about those expectations being met or exceeded.
What kind of environment do you work in? Do you work for a micromanager? Many of them are not necessarily hostile toward you, but they annoy you and make your job more difficult than it should be.
Most jobs have stressful components. Micromanagers add to that stress. Leaders do their best to relieve as much of the stress as possible.
Micromanagers will still be all over your case when you are shorthanded because someone is out sick or on vacation. Leaders will understand that you are working shorthanded, and pitch in to help pick up some of the workload.
A micromanager can ruin the career of a perfectly good person by nitpicking. That manager may even set out to hold his or her people back from advancement. A leader will encourage his or her people to move on, when the opportunity is better for that employee, and even help that person get what he or she wants.
If your boss is nitpicking you to death, you may have to take time outside of work to find other opportunities to earn income, so you can make such nitpicking a deal-breaker. For one of the best ways to do that, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Eventually, you could be the leader that helps others advance.
Remember, some nitpicky bosses don’t mean you harm. It’s just who they are. You are who you are. If you understand them, you can better get along with them, until you are able to move on. Don’t stop looking for new places to go.
Peter
Monthly Archives: February 2016
HOW GOOD IS YOUR BOSS: PART 1
#BadBosses #leaders #managers
The Peter Principle is alive and well in many companies.
In a nutshell: A person becomes very talented and skilled in a certain area. He is promoted to manage that area. He becomes a terrible boss.
Jeff Vrabel discusses this in an article about bosses in the August 2015 issue of Success magazine.
“Some people are natural-born leaders. Others are cruel, inhuman monsters,” reads a sub-headline over Vrabel’s article.
We’ve come to expect, and Vrabel’s article points out, that those employees who perform well are rewarded by moving up to management. In most organizational structures, that is the only way to move up. But a good engineer, a good technician or a good marketer doesn’t always make a good leader. Too often, the opposite is true.
It’s important here to understand the difference between a manager and a leader. Managing is learned. Leadership tends to be natural.
So what happens? The promoted employee is given a list of procedures, a system, if you will, to learn. So he learns to be a manager. And, he or she isn’t even that good at managing.
“Leadership is personal. There’s no single way of leading, no silver bullet,” Vrabel quotes Deborah Ancona, faculty director of the MIT Leadership Center. “We can’t be perfect at everything. So if you’re someone’s boss, the trick is to find out what you’re really good at and what you need to ramp up on, and getting better at both,” Vrabel quotes Ancona.
As a boss, you could be doing everything YOUR boss is telling you to do, but your staff may still hate you. It’s human nature to like some people better than others. It’s also human nature to give more positive attention to some employees, and more negative attention to others.
When you mix the two traits of human nature, it can sometimes turn toxic. You may have a good employee, but, for some reason, you may not like him or her as well as you like some others. The employee senses that, and feels as if he or she is not being treated fairly. That puts added stress on the good employee, and that could manifest into the loss of that employee, or discord within the organization.
More importantly for the employee, he or she may not advance as far as he or she would like, or is capable of. That, too, could ruin a good career.
Managers have to work at treating everyone underneath them as fairly as they can. Leaders have to lead in their own way, as Ancona put it. It’s great to have high expectations of your staff. But if they don’t see you as having those high expectations of yourself, you won’t get the production or cooperation you want.
Many organizations foster competition among employees, rather than cooperation and teamwork. A good rule of thumb: If you are after the same goals, competition wastes energy. If each person or group in the same organization has different goals, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Have you been, or are you still, being frustrated by bad bosses? Are you feeling stuck under the duress of someone who doesn’t inspire you? You may have to look at developing a way to eventually fire that bad boss. There are many such ways out there for anyone. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Who knows? You could turn into the leader you’ve always wanted, or wanted to be.
The best players almost never make the best coaches. The best employees don’t always make the best leaders. If you run a company, look for ways to reward your good employees without taking them away from what they do best, and most love to do. If you are a good at your job, and love what you do, don’t be afraid to say NO to a job you don’t want, even if it pays more. There are many other ways to add money to your coffers.
Leaders, often quietly, make themselves apparent. For instance, beware the person who wants to take credit for everything. Look for the person who wants to always GIVE credit to someone else.
Peter
WINNING AND LOSING
#winners #losers #coaches
If you are not a winner, are you a loser?
We’ve dealt with that question many times over the years, and we’ve seen both extremes.
In one extreme, tight competition among good players yields only one winner. The rest, though very good, lost. There’s a difference, though, between losing one competition and being a “loser,” we’ve discovered.
The other extreme is a child who gets an award just for showing up, so as not to hurt his self-esteem. This milieu in which everyone “wins” tends to give participants license not to try their best, or not to understand that life is a mix of winning and losing.
Tom Baxter, political columnist for the Atlanta-based Saporta Report, discussed the zero-sum game in the context of University of Alabama’s head football coach Nick Saban’s, and Michigan State University head coach Mark Dantonio’s opposition to expanding the college football playoff system from four to eight teams.
“This would do more to damage to the traditional bowl games and create a ruthless and unfair standard for college coaches,” Baxter writes of the coaches’ argument.
With the number of conferences and teams in college football, playing at varying levels with different levels of support, it’s not easy to determine a national champion. In the past, it was strictly by polls. Now, the polls determine the top four teams, and those teams engage in a playoff, with the winners of the first two games playing in a national championship game in January.
Baxter writes that Saban and Dantonio also argue that the expanded playoff format would put extra pressure on coaches. In college football, and most other sports, coaches live and die – or keep their jobs – based not only on their team’s results, but also on the expectations of the institution, or ownership, and the fan base.
Coaches with good overall records get fired based because of those expectations. Baxter used the example of University of Georgia head coach Mark Richt, who was fired before the 2015 season officially ended for his team, after 15 years of a good record. But the university and their fans had higher expectations, i.e. at least one national championship. If more teams got into the playoff format, that would put more pressure on coaches, Baxter writes of Saban and Dantonio’s argument.
Baxter uses the football analogy in reference to national politics, but let’s look at it in terms of everyday life.
Of course, everyone wants to win. But not everyone can win. There is a limited number of winning positions, at least in theory, and fair competition – or, in some cases, unfair competition – to determine who gets those winning slots.
Sometimes, showing up makes one a winner. Showing up can mean giving it a shot, which is more than some would do.
There are many who see themselves as winners, but are unsure at which endeavor they want to be winners. If you are one of those, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You might find just the things to get your winning juices flowing.
So decide at which game/occupation/skill in which you want to be a winner. Then, go for it. You probably won’t win everything, every time, but keep at it. As for expectations, expect more from yourself than others expect from you. If you achieve your own expectations, you’ll always be considered a winner.
Peter
WILL A FINANCIAL EMERGENCY KILL YOU?
#FinancialEmergency #savings #spending
Fewer than 38 percent of Americans have at least $1,000 in savings.
Say what?
Peter Dunn quotes that statistic in a column he wrote for USA Today, published Jan. 26, 2016.
A car repair, a refrigerator breakdown etc., can drain that $1,000 just like that. When you need a car to get to work, or a refrigerator to keep your food from spoiling, one, more or less, has to find the money to take care of these.
Dunn suggests making a plan. First, determine whether immediate spending changes or income changes will take care of your financial emergency. Second, grab the money from savings, if available. Third, borrow the money for the emergency, while concurrently creating a plan t pay off the debt in a specific period. Fourth, pay off the debt in that time.
“If you don’t leverage your emergency to create stability, you’re going to find yourself in deeper and deeper trouble,” Dunn writes.
Let’s get to basics. If you really only have $1,000 in savings, there are much bigger issues here, especially if you are older than, say, 18. You have to start planning not just for emergencies, but for your retirement years.
You don’t make that much money, you say? Well, then, start with looking at what you are spending, and whether your spending is necessary. Buying a cup of coffee on your way to work? Buying lunch at work? It might be better to make your own coffee and buy an insulated container to take it to work. It might be better to make your lunch at home and bring it to work.
You don’t have the extra time in your day to do that, you say? Then, look at how you spend your time. Perhaps getting up 15 minutes earlier in the morning to make your coffee, or making your lunch the night before as you sit in front of the TV may leverage your time better.
Look at other spending habits. For example, how much do you spend on “entertainment?” That can include dining out, movies, even digital services. As a start, look at your cell phone, television and Internet packages. Are there ways to trim back those costs in a way you can live with? Maybe get rid of your premium TV package.
Want a pet? Remember, pets are expensive. They need food, perhaps medicine, as well as your time and attention. Time is money. Are you prepared for that?
You should be able to save a portion of every paycheck, no matter how small. Regular savings, multiplied by time, augmented by wise investment, equals financial security in your later years. If you start saving $5 every week at age 20, and never touch that money, it will amaze you how much you would have at age 40. Then, at 40, check out the amount you’ve saved and continue not to touch it until, say, age 60, all the while continuing to put a regular amount from every paycheck into that fund.
Of course, getting back to Dunn’s point, you also need money for financial emergencies. Remember, if you are young, that you can’t lean on your parents or other family members forever.
Perhaps you might look at ways to earn extra income in a way that doesn’t interfere with what you are doing now. There are many such vehicles out there. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may get a two-fer: a lesson on saving money and a way to earn more money.
Most of all, you need to make saving an absolute priority. What you sacrifice today will pay off tomorrow. One never knows what tomorrow brings. One never knows when you might be forced to retire, or forced to look elsewhere for a job. What you save today may save your life later.
Peter
WHAT WE LEARN IN HIGH SCHOOL
“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”
Paul Simon lyric from “Kodachrome”
#HighSchool #learning #education
What did you learn in high school that you use today?
Perhaps you use some household math. Perhaps, if you took vocational courses, you use what you learned in auto mechanics, machine shop etc.
Most of us, though, would be hard pressed to think of much that we use today from our high school learning.
As it turns out, high schools were designed more than a century ago to produce efficient workers who could follow instructions, according to Ted Dintersmith, venture-capitalist-turned reformer.
“Henry Ford did not need creative, bold innovative assembly-line workers,” Dintersmith said.
Maureen Downey, education columnist for The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, took on the topic of high schools in a January 2016 column. She interviewed Dintersmith as part of it.
Now that the U.S. economy has changed from manufacturing to innovation, have high schools changed with it? Downey asks.
Downey points out that most of us believed that basic jobs, such as truck driving and delivery services, were immune to change as technology advanced. But Google’s self-driving car and Amazon Prime Air delivery drones are changing that.
So that begs the question: will high schools change the way they educate to conform to the changing economy, and the changing technological requirements?
Today, a high school education is not good enough, in many cases, to land a good-paying job. Even some who graduate college are finding they cannot parlay their brainpower into an economically exhilarating career.
So will high schools become irrelevant? Will some college curriculums become an expensive luxury?
Let’s break down the concept of education. Throughout most of our years in school, we learn “things.” We were expected to spit back those “things” on tests, to get our grades. Now, with technology, the “things” we were taught are available at our fingertips. What we really need to know is how to take those “things,” turn them first into ideas and then into action. In other words, gather your “things,” go forth and innovate.
It’s tough to put a finger on those jobs that will never go away. Perhaps some of you have had jobs you thought would never go away, but have. Were you replaced by a machine? Did what you do become irrelevant to the company as technology changed? Or, more likely, did the company just find it too expensive to keep you, so it figured out a way to do without you?
All those “things” you learned help you in trivia games, but they don’t move you forward in a changing world.
Let’s look further into colleges. We are starting to hear that the liberal arts is virtually useless in terms of finding one a job. We are hearing that the STEM programs (science, technology, engineering and math) are the only really employable fields to get into. But we all know that not everyone is cut out for those fields. So what is a person who wants to study the arts to do?
There are many ways to earn money while one pursues his artistic passion. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may find a way to work full time on your passion, and part time on your fortune.
We will always need people to do basic jobs. But those jobs hardly create lucrative careers. Are you learning to think the way innovators do? Or, are you just learning “things,” or how to follow orders?
Schools will eventually have to catch up with the rest of the world. In the meantime, if your school isn’t doing what you think is right for you, use your time outside of school to make things right by you.
Peter