The art of being managed

<body topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr> <td valign="top" colspan="2" height="110" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="16bf0f21egerdp.jpg"> <div> <b><img src="05b203c0.jpg" border="0" width="32" height="60" align="BOTTOM" hspace="0" vspace="0"></b><font size="5" color="#66334C" face="Arial"><b>   albernstein.com  PSYCHOLOGY THAT WORKS   </b></font><b>      |     </b><a href="index_htm.html" target="_top" title=" albernstein.com PSYCHOLOGY THAT WORK"><u><b>home</b></u></a></div> <div> <a href="id19.html" target="_top" title="The science of management"><u>The science of management</u></a>   |   <b>The art of being managed</b>   |   <a href="id21.html" target="_top" title="Dealing with difficult people"><u>Dealing with difficult people</u></a>   |   <a href="id22.html" target="_top" title="STRESS"><u>STRESS</u></a></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width="210" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="16af2f02egerdp.jpg"> <br> </td> <td valign="top" height="370" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="16df0f03.jpg"> <div> <i>The art of being managed</i></div> <div> <b>Summary: Any of these excuses will solve a short term difficulty by creating a long term problem.</b></div> <div> <b>                     TWENTY-FIVE EXCUSES OF LESS THAN SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE</b></div> <div>                                                               Albert J. Bernstein, Ph.D.</div> <br> <div> <b>It’s </b><i><b>his</b></i><b> fault -- </b>The first step down the slippery slope of ineffectuality is to fix the blame before you fix the problem.</div> <div> <b>I forgot</b> -- It just wasn’t important enough to write down.</div> <div> <b>No, I told you that in the first place</b> -- I must have.  I always do.</div> <div> <b>I can explain</b> -- If you understand every esoteric detail, you’ll see that I was right, and you were wrong.</div> <div> <b>I didn’t think it was important</b> -- And I really didn’t want to do it. </div> <div> <b>You didn’t tell me exactly what you wanted</b> -- How was I to know you expected me to actually <i>think</i> about it and try to figure it out for myself?</div> <div> <b>You’re supposed to keep </b><i><b>records</b></i><b>? -- </b>No, the IRS will take your word.</div> <div> <b>It’s not in my job description</b> -- <i>Breathe</i> isn’t in there either, but you do that.</div> <div> <b>There’s nothing new here</b> -- In fact, I haven’t seen anything new since 1983.</div> <div> <b>There’s no money right now</b> -- No improvement could be as important as coming in under budget. </div> <div> <b>I’m appointing a panel to investigate</b> -- By the time they’re finished, I’ll probably be  transferred.</div> <div> <b>It would cost sixty-thousand jobs -- </b>and it would cut directly into <i>my </i>salary.</div> <div> <b>UPS must’ve lost it</b> -- Then they found it and put it back on my desk.  Go figure.</div> <div> <b>I have allergies -- </b>It will make me sick to be any place I don’t want to be or to be told to do anything I don’t want to do.</div> <div> <b>Why should I have to do it?</b> -- Because success in any area depends on being able to make yourself do things that need to be done, whether or not you<i> want</i> to do them.</div> <div> <b>I do not suffer fools gladly</b> -- too bad since your office is full of them, and one is your boss.</div> <div> <b>I don’t do politics</b> -- If you say this you <i>are</i> doing them.  Badly.</div> <div> <b>Who needs a lawyer?  I know discrimination when I see it.</b></div> <div> <b>My back hurts --</b> No, maybe it’s my neck.  Anyway, I’d better take off for a few days, just as a precaution.</div> <div> <b>I hate speaking in front of groups -- </b>So I’ll just exempt myself from the main venue for demonstrating my competence to the working world.</div> <div> <b>It’s not fair -- </b>Didn’t you know you were supposed to give me exactly what I wanted without my having to ask?  How could you be so insensitive?</div> <div> <b>I was abused as a child -- </b>So now I get to abuse everybody else and it’s not my fault.</div> <div> <b>I’m not in sales -- </b>On this planet, there’s nobody who <i>isn’t</i> in sales.</div> <div> <b>I can’t.</b></div> <br> <br> <div> <b>                           DO YOU HAVE TO BROWN-NOSE TO GET AHEAD?</b></div> <div>                                                        Albert J. Bernstein, Ph. D.</div> <br> <div> A frustrated reader writes:</div> <div> <i>I am a lowly wretch in a large corporation, but I still have my pride.  Is there any way I can move up the corporate ladder because of my hard work and talent, without having to brown-nose every incompetent idiot they happen to put over me?</i></div> <div> <i>Sick of Pretending, in Vancouver.</i></div> <br> <div> Dear Sick,</div> <div> No.</div> <div> Dr. B.</div> <br> <div> There is, however, more to the story. </div> <div> Your letter made me curious, Sick.  What is there about brown-nosing that seems to fill you with existential dread?  I decided to find out.</div> <div> My spies at your company tell me that you are indeed seen as a talented and hard-working person.  Creative too, but behind your back some people call you “Mr. Attitude”.  Not your friends -- they see you as a warm, caring person who's always there with a compliment or a joke when times get rough.  You're never to busy to lend an ear to listen or a hand to help.  The jumper cables on that old Jeep of yours have started more cars in your company lot than Triple A.  People come to you for advice on projects all the time.  They say you never turn down a friend in need.</div> <div> Managers see a totally different side of you.  Your boss, who, while not exactly incompetent, <i>is</i> a bit on the inexperienced side -- which she covers up with a rather hard-nosed management approach that occasionally borders on the comical.  Anyway, your boss sees you as having a chip on your shoulder.  Some days it seems to her that all she hears from you are grunts and monosyllables -- she knows about those faces you make behind her back.  She wonders why you hate her, and how much longer she can take having you in her department.  Already, she's talking to her boss about transferring you.  The other managers steer clear of you too, even when they have a project that could benefit from your talents.  </div> <div> If you're pretending, Sick, it isn't working very well.  Managers think you hate their guts, and treat you accordingly.  I know about your being passed over for that promotion, the letter of reprimand, and how they never listen to you, even when you're right. </div> <div>  As a general rule, people don't listen to people who hate them.</div> <div> The funny thing is, as people, those managers aren't much different than your friends.  What's really different is the way you seem to feel about them.  You treat your friends like human beings and managers like something you ought to scrape off the bottom of your shoe. Somehow, you seem to have gotten the idea that people in authority are the enemy, and anything short of open hostility toward them somehow compromises your principles.  When you're nice to your friends you don't call it brown-nosing, do you?   Why is treating managers decently so different?</div> <div> Part of the problem is the term <i>brown-nosing</i> itself.  If you substitute <i>treating managers like human beings</i>, perhaps it will help you to see other choices.  </div> <div> One thing more, Sick.  Before my spies flew away in their black helicopter, they heard that your wife has been telling you these same things for years.  Perhaps there's another person around whose talent and intelligence is being overlooked.  Just a thought.  </div> <br> <div>                                <b>COMPLAINING, AND OTHER ASSAULT WEAPONS</b></div> <div>                                                          Albert J. Bernstein, Ph.D.</div> <br> <br> <div> When reality deviates from what you expect, what could be more natural than pointing it out?  Getting off your chest by getting it out in the open.  Being <i>honest.</i> Complaining is such a natural aggressive response that many people rip into it on full automatic without even thinking about what kind of damage it might do.</div> <div> Remember when the finance department said they never got your request for the figures you needed for the cost-profit analysis you were supposed to turn in yesterday, and when you finally got the numbers you saw that the information on sales was two weeks old because <i>somebody</i> had forgotten to turn in his reports, and when you finally ran down all the information and put it together, the computer network went down<i> again,</i> so it took three hours to print the stupid report and you couldn't make copies because every antiquated machine in the building was broken, so you had to drive over to the copy shop in the rain, and when you got back your boss had the nerve to chew you out for turning in the report late?</div> <div> Telling a story about a bad experience is a way to get psychological control over a difficult situation.  If you keep telling it, however,  at about the third repetition, cause and effect begin to blur.  The temptation is strong to embellish the story by adding in more details about  suffering other peoples stupidity, incompetence, and insensitivity.  Then you start thinking of other times the car has broken down or the boss has been unreasonable, and pretty soon the story expands to include what's wrong with everybody and everything.  Complaining ceases to be a way of dealing with a bad situation and becomes an end in itself.</div> <div> The first casualty is often your image.  Your coworkers might consider you a captivating raconteur whose piquant recounting of life's daily difficulties make the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune a bit easier for everyone to bear, but I wouldn't count on it.</div> <div> At work complaining is considered the hallmark of bad attitude, especially if you complain to anyone who has the power to make the situation different.  Messengers bringing bad news are often on the endangered species list in corporate America.  This must be the reason why so many people who don't have the power to change things complain to each other.  Each one hopes that the other person will get angry enough to become the messenger of bad news.</div> <div> Your boss might regard your complaints as a personal attack or evidence of an inadequate work ethic.  Shell miss a lot of important information about her own behavior this way, but one of the perquisites of power is you is not having to hear what you want to hear.  Until it's too late.              </div> <div> The worst casualty of complaining is your own mood.  When the ratio drops below two positive comments for every complaint, it becomes harder and harder not only to <i>say</i> something positive but to <i>feel</i> something positive as well. Complaining creates a mind-set that leads you to keep looking for another atrocity to add to the list, and the more you look, the easier they are to find.  <font size="3" color="#000000" face="Times New Roman">What started out as an attempt to feel better ends up making you feel much worse.</font></div> <div> Complaints should be treated like dangerous weapons.  Most of the time they should be locked away in a cabinet.  When they are taken out they should be used safely and pointed only at the target you intend to hit.  Unfortunately, many people treat their complaints in the same way Afghan rebels treat their AK-47's--firing them into the air as a perverse form of greeting or a substitute for conversation.  The bullets go up in the air and there is no way of telling who they'll hit when they come down.  Most likely, it will be you.</div> <br> <br> <br> <br> <div>                                                       <b>RELOCATION BLUES</b></div> <div>                                                        Albert J. Bernstein, Ph. D.</div> <br> <div> If you work for a large corporation, moving up usually means moving to another place.  It's not just an issue of a job coming open in Peoria that fits your talents and skills.  Relocation is part of the culture of large corporations, and you cant really be leadership material until you've moved a couple of times -- think sea-duty in the navy.</div> <div> What if you don't want to go?</div> <div> Early in your career, it's possible to misunderstand relocation by paying more attention to the position or the place you might be going than to the meaning of the action.  You're not being offered a specific job so much as a chance to prove yourself by accepting the ritual transfer.  don't let the fact that you're really waiting for a job in human resources or that they don't ski in Peoria cloud your judgment.  In most corporations, you can say no to a relocation only once and then the offers stop coming. </div> <div> To make matters more confusing, your boss will probably say the transfer is optional, that something in Boise might open up in a few months.  She isn't lying. But what she's saying is only part of the truth.  To know the rest of it, talk to a few people who have turned down more than one relocation in the past. If you cant find any, take that as your answer.  </div> <div> How do you decide when to say no?</div> <div> When you're in your twenties or thirties it's hard to imagine yourself as a stodgy fifty year-old with teenage kids who want to graduate high school with their friends, and a spouse who has finally found a good job and a social network.  It <i>will</i> happen, whether you can imagine it or not.  Take it from a stodgy fifty year-old.  Later in your career your option to refuse may be more important, and more understandable to the middle-aged people who decide your future.</div> <div> The whole relocation issue becomes even more complicated when you consider the fact that <i>where</i> you're being transferred can also make a big difference in the trajectory of your career.  Headquarters is always good, as is any place there's an exciting new project.  Stable long-running operations away from big cities may be the corporate equivalent of Siberia -- people go there and get forgotten.  Before you make a decision, make sure you know what your choices mean.  Check it out carefully with a few veterans.</div> <div> Speaking of veterans -- For you stodgy fifty year-olds reading this column, the issues involved in deciding whether or not to relocate are different.  Every transfer may lose you something outside of work that you may not be able to replace.  Is it worth the disruption? You have to weigh your choices just as carefully as those youngsters do, but the questions you ask yourself are harder.  </div> <div> Are you still on the way up?  Are the relocations you're being offered promotions, or are they lateral moves to fill up holes?  If you're not bound for upper management, you need to take a close look at what happens to people at your level as they build up seniority.  Corporate loyalty is no longer what it once was.  Fifty is a little old to still be marching along like a good soldier, especially if there aren't many sixty year-old soldiers around.</div> <br> <div> In the end, relocation <i>is </i>your decision.  Choose wisely.</div> <br> </td> </tr></table></body>