HARD WORKING Vs SALARY THEOREM
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In life you’ll realise that there is a purpose for every person you meet.
Some are there to test you,
some will use you,
some will teach you,
and some will bring out the best in you.
You can tell whether a person is clever
by his answers,
you can tell whether a person is wise by his question
[ ::: ♥ What to Do If You’re Smarter than Your Boss
You want to work for a great boss — someone you can respect and learn from. But what if your manager isn’t good at his job? What if you’re more competent or have greater skills? Should you be raising a ruckus or keeping your head down? And how do you get what you need without making your boss look bad?
What the Experts Say
“There are a lot of bad managers out there,” says Annie McKee, founder of the Teleos Leadership Institute and coauthor of Primal Leadership. So it’s not unusual to feel smarter or more qualified than your boss. Still, being in good company doesn’t make the situation any more tenable. Toiling under someone who you feel is incompetent can be demoralizing. But not all hope is lost. Even less-than-great bosses have something to teach, says Linda Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and coauthor of Collective Genius and Being the Boss: “There are very few people in this world that I don’t think I can learn from.” So try not to discount your boss completely. Here’s how to make the most of the often frustrating situation.
Be honest with yourself
Before you declare your boss an incompetent fool, take a close look at what’s really happening. “Some people need to believe they’re better to keep their self-esteem intact, or they may just be more qualified in one area,” McKee says. Ask yourself if you’re genuinely smarter than your manager or if it’s possible that you’re more qualified in some areas but not others. “As people move up it’s natural to get better at leading and managing while losing your technical edge,” says McKee. Be honest with yourself about what skills you have and which your boss lacks. “Being smarter than your boss doesn’t mean you’re going to be more effective,” says Hill. After all, to be good at your job, you don’t just need smarts. “You need experience, strong relationships, social capital, and emotional intelligence,” she says.
Keep quiet
If after reflecting on the situation, you conclude that you’re actually smarter or more qualified, think twice before talking to anyone about it. McKee says it’s tempting to plead your case to higher ups or to try to prove that you should have you manager’s job. But this rarely works. “You put yourself at risk if you decide to go directly into that conflict because bosses usually win,” she says. Sure, you may want to vent to one or two trusted colleagues, but be careful. “If your boss senses you are critical or derogatory of her, that relationship may be over,” she says. Many people in this situation make the mistake of telling others how incompetent or unqualified their boss is. “You need to be respectful. If you badmouth your manager, it’s going to reflect badly on you. People notice and worry you’ll talk about them the same way,” says Hill. Nor should you take it out on her. “Don’t be mad at the boss, be mad at the people who didn’t make you the boss,” she says.
Focus on doing a good job
Don’t get caught up in ruminating about who should have what job. You’re better off focusing on your responsibilities, says Hill: “You want to make sure you do your work and people understand what you’ve been able to accomplish.” It might help to focus on the bigger picture instead of your relationship. “You have to find a higher purpose,” says McKee. “Take it outside of the interpersonal fight with your boss.” Hill agrees: “Don’t come in as the smart, young hotshot. Do what’s best for the enterprise.”
Help your boss be better
There’s no reason not to be generous. If your boss is successful, there’s a greater chance you’ll be successful too. “See yourself as a complement to the person. Find a way to compensate for her weaknesses,” says Hill. If he isn’t good at seeing the big picture, ask questions that help him pull back from the details. If she doesn’t understand the technical ins and outs of your product, offer to cover the part of a meeting where the features will be discussed. “Offer up ways that he or she can use you better,” says McKee.
Don’t cover up
“There’s a big difference between delivering on what you’re supposed to do and covering up your boss’s mistakes,” says McKee. If your boss has a pattern of making gaffes, it doesn’t serve you or the company to continuously clean up his mess. “You need to do your job well and you need to deliver on what your boss is asking of you, but if your work is being used to cover up serious deficiencies, you may need to have a conversation with HR,” says McKee.
Find something to respect
It’s easy to focus on the bad but even the worst bosses have redeeming qualities. “How can you find something you respect?” asks McKee. She recommends looking beyond the work environment if necessary. “Is your boss a good mom or a kind husband?” If you truly can’t find something you admire, you may need to find a new job. “If not now, soon,” says McKee. “It’s soul destroying to work for someone you truly don’t respect.” Hill agrees: “If you think you can’t partner with that person, then you need to think about whether you should be at the organization.”
Learn from someone else
If your boss isn’t giving you the coaching you need, “broaden your network,” Hill recommends. Take your learning into your own hands and, McKee suggests, volunteer for projects that will allow you to interact with other senior people in the company. Be explicit about what you want. You might approach another manager and say, “I’d love to learn more about how you do X. Do you mind if we spend a couple hours together over the next few months?” “You can choose to see every opportunity as a way to learn,” McKee says.
Principles to Remember
Do:
Help your boss do her job — see yourself as a complement
Find something you genuinely respect about him
Seek out other mentors to help you learn and grow
Don’t:
Assume that you’re more qualified than your boss— chances are she has some skills you don’t
Try to take over her job — bosses usually win
Cover up egregious mistakes or a long-standing pattern of ineptitude
Case study #1: Help out when you can
When Patricia Wright* was appointed by a government official in South Africa as an assistant, the job was meant to be administrative. But it was quickly clear to her and her new boss that she had valuable technical skills and experience. “My knowledge and experience on IT-related issues superseded those of my colleagues and my manager,” she says.
At the beginning, she found it irritating to know more than her boss. But he was “very open to learning and being shown how things should be done,” Patricia says. “We grew up in different eras so it did take time and patience to teach him but when he used my ideas, he would thank me and attribute the suggestions to me.” So her frustration soon turned to pride.
Eventually Patricia moved on because she wasn’t passionate about the work. Still she got a lot from her experience. “I learned to have plenty of patience and to be a ‘solution seeker.’ This way of thinking helped me get the job I have today.”
Case study #2: Make your boss look good
Soon after Abike Eze* became a marketing and business development manager at a financial services company based in Lagos, Nigeria, he got a new boss — we’ll call her Rose.* Rose moved to marketing from HR and had no background in the function. Abike found himself having to cover a lot of her work. “Even though she heads the marketing unit, I am responsible for coming up with the strategy to grow the business and for cutting costs,” he says.
He admits that it’s frustrating at times, especially when she makes decisions that go against what he thinks is best based on his expertise. Still, he does whatever he can to support her and make her look good. “Humility is the way to go,” he says. “I offer to help when I sense she may be struggling with a task or an idea.” And when he presents an idea to more senior executives, he often gives Rose the credit or at least says that they worked on it together. She is aware of what Abike does for her and returns the favor, saying good things about him to their boss.
This collaborative —rather than combative — approach has worked for Abike. He is well regarded by his boss’s boss and he has critical responsibilities in the company, even if he doesn’t hold the “head of marketing” title. Besides he doesn’t see another good option. “If you have friction with your manager, and the company values him more than you, you may risk being let go,” he explains. “She’s been with the company for over a decade and I have only been here for eight months. Besides she is my boss after all,” he says.
*not their real names
Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review. Follow her on Twitter
Social Talent
The 5 Bad Office Habits That We’re All Guilty Of
Michelle Burke
bad office habits
Let’s face it. We can all be a little annoying at times, especially when it comes to our habits in the office. There’s the person that chews gum with their mouth wide open, the person that hoards coffee cups on their desk and the person that doesn’t refill the kettle (excuse us, while we go tear our hair out…)
Today we’re not talking about these types of bad office habits…we’ll leave that for another day! Instead, we’re focusing on the types of bad habits that we all have but don’t even realise. The ones that have a serious effect on our workload and productivity. They say that it takes about 30 days to form a habit. So let’s see how long it takes you to break these…
Bad Habit #1: Multitasking
Yes, we realise that this sounds ludicrous. Multitasking is considered to be a bad habit? Surely you can get way more done when you are chipping away at lots of jobs at the same time, right? WRONG! Ask yourself this – how often do you stop working on a specific task under the ruse of ‘multitasking’, when in reality all that you’re actually doing is moving away from it because you’ve either hit a stumbling block or simply grown tired of the exercise? A lot, we’ll bet. So all that you’re actually doing is fueling your procrastination addiction.
How to break the habit: Instead of jumping from one thing to another constantly, try your best to focus on doing one thing at a time, no matter how painstaking that particular task might be. That way, when it’s done you can move onto the next task, rather than half-heartedly working on lots of different tasks and not really getting anywhere. Try to avoid having lots of tabs or windows open on your computer so that the temptation to poke around isn’t there.
Bad Habit #2
Opening emails as soon as you receive them
We’re a curious bunch really, aren’t we? The second that we see a new email notification, we’re straight to our inbox to find out who the message is from and what it’s about. It generally doesn’t matter what you’re working on at that moment in time, email trumps all.
This is a big mistake. Why? Easy. How often do you open an email and respond to it on the spot? Sometimes, we’re sure. But how often do you open an email, sigh, say you’ll deal with it later and mark it as unread, only to go back to it later and do the exact same thing? Probably more often than not, right? It’s probably one of the toughest habits to break, but if you can, it’s well worth it to only read your emails when you’re in a position to respond to them. Otherwise, you’re just wasting time and energy that could be spent on doing something more productive.
How to break the habit: The first thing that you should do is to turn off notifications for new emails on your computer. Pop-ups will only distract you from whatever task you’re working on. If you do have a sneaky peek (which is understandable…) you should get a fair idea from looking at the subject lines whether or not anything is so urgent that it can’t wait. What we wouldn’t recommend, however, is waiting until the end of the work day to answer emails. Chances are, you’ll rush through them and send out half-hearted responses, just so that you don’t have to deal with them the following day. Big no no.
Bad Habit #3
Making promises that you can’t keep
A colleague or manager asks you to complete a project and asks when you’ll have it done. Panicking, you list a date off the top of your head, rather than actually calculating how long the process will take. Like when you’re on the phone to a stranger and they ask you if you have a pen to take down a number, you just say yes whether you do or not…what’s that all about, anyway?! You just figure you’ll sort it out somehow. Then, when the time rolls around you inevitably have to tell that person that it may be another couple of days. Not ideal.
How to break the habit: When you’re asked to do something and asked for a delivery date, take a moment to think about it. Think to yourself ‘Realistically, when will I actually get this done?’ Maybe you have a lot of off-site meetings that week, or are going on annual leave in a couple of days. Explain this and give a realistic timeframe of when you can deliver. Then (and this is the important part) follow through! Otherwise, you’ll undoubtedly get a reputation for being the person who ‘cries wolf’ all the time.
Bad Habit #4
Being glued to technology
Have you ever read an email out of hours, but then forgot to actually answer it the following day, because you had marked it as ‘read’ the night before? As hard as it is to do, you really need to try to disconnect from work at some point. Being tuned into emails at all hours won’t make you a better worker. In fact, it could very possibly have the opposite effect. 99% of the times that you check and read your emails out of office hours, you probably don’t respond, do you? Instead, you just mull it them, sometimes annoyed that the sender has asked this of you at this hour of the day. But newsflash…they actually didn’t!
How to break the habit: It might not be realistic for everyone, but if possible, switch off your work emails on your phone when you leave the office. At the very least, switch off your notifications for new emails. And remember – if something is so urgent that it needs to be dealt with immediately, you will probably get a phone call about it, rather than an email – unless it’s the nature of the job that you’re in, that is.
Bad Habit #5: ‘Working’ through lunch
We’re all well aware of this one. We know it’s not a good habit to eat lunch at our desks, yet we simply can’t help ourselves. However, if you regularly work through lunch, you’ll probably find yourself losing all interest in work around 4pm, are we right? It’s quite simple – you need to take a breather from work, we don’t care how busy you are. Even by simply taking a quick walk around the office, at the very least you’ll clear your head. You may also come up with ideas and solutions just by stepping away from your computer.
Also, here’s some food for thought: very little multitasking can actually take place when you’re eating. Honestly, how much work can you output when you’re constantly back and forth to your food?
How to break the habit: There’s only one way to break this bad habit…step away from the computer! Try having lunch in the company canteen or going for a walk during lunch hour every day. Try it out for the next 30 days. We guarantee that the amount of work that you churn out in that month will not be in any way affected by you taking an hour to refresh every day. In fact, we predict that you’ll notice the opposite effect – your output will actually increase! Why? Because you’re not passing out into your keyboard at 4pm, that’s why!
Ninja Skills
@asoka @hese