Do Business Well

Praise is easy to take. Who doesn’t want to be flattered? Criticism is another matter because it touches a sensitive nerve: our egos.

Unless it’s given properly and under the right conditions, criticism is often perceived as an attack, says Robert Bies, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. “A person’s defenses go up when it comes to taking criticism,” he says. “Nobody wants to hear what he or she thinks may be bad news.”

As unpleasant as it is to give and take, criticism is essential for getting the best from your subordinates and from yourself. Continue Reading »

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Consider the following examples of organizational credit-grabbing:

Your boss has delegated the job of organizing the annual meeting to you, which his boss has assigned to him. You spend two weeks lining up speakers, reserving accommodations, organizing the agenda, writing and distributing invitations and drawing together a myriad of other details. At the closing banquet, your boss publicly accepts accolades for his fine job of organizing a successful meeting without mentioning your work even once.

You’ve asked another manager to contribute to a proposal you’re writing for submission to your mutual boss at a departmental meeting. The proposal is well received at the meeting, but you are annoyed when your colleague takes equal credit, referring often to “our research” and “when we were deciding on budget recommendations . .” Continue Reading »

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Ever wonder why an executive who makes a million-dollar mistake can get off with a reprimand, while another who does an expert job is let go? Maybe performance is not the determining factor when cutbacks have to be made. This is what a number of executives are discovering, and it’s a bewildering lesson.

“Part of our job is to find out how a person ended up in our offices,” says Dr. Adela Oliver, president of Oliver Human Resource Consultants, Inc., a New York-based executive out-placement and organization development firm. “It’s very difficult for some people to understand that even if their performance is exemplary, they are sometimes more vulnerable than individuals who aren’t quite as good at what they do— but who understand the unspoken rules of the game.” Continue Reading »

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The Logic of the Game

To the hotel Manager, the Boss’s game was a good one, so he learned how to play it. It was a simple game, but effective. It was built on the following logic:

Most people today are not getting what they want. Not from their jobs, not from their families, not from their religion, not from their government, and, most important, not from themselves.

Something is missing in most of our lives.

Part of what’s missing is purpose. Values. Worthwhile standards against which our lives can be measured. Part of what’s missing is a Game Worth Playing. What’s also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another.

In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? Continue Reading »

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An aggressive sales manager in your division attempts to get the better of you by resorting to one or more of these tactics:

• Trying to lure away some of your best salespeople.
• Prospecting in your territory.

• Undermining your ability as a manager.
• Using your contacts to get new customers.

Both of you want the same things: to chalk up exemplary production records, power, money and better perks. The disturbing difference is that you’re playing fair while your colleague is employing unsavory tactics. Continue Reading »

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For many managers, it comes as a shock when “trusted subordinates,” whose loyalty and devotion have long been taken for granted, reveal themselves as being after their boss’s job.

Think about your most trusted subordinate. Does he (or she) want your job? Chances are he does. He may be utterly loyal, a staunch friend—but he wants your job. And what about the situation between you and your own boss? Do you want your boss’s job? Probably you do.

How, then, you deal with the subordinate who wants your job—and advance your own hopes as well? Continue Reading »

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