Help with Your Job
1 Why Trust This Guide?
Ben felt an unease at work that he couldn’t explain. When he had started at the company, everything had been fine. But over his first few months, things had changed. His supervisor was no longer friendly toward him. His co-workers barely acknowledged his presence. The owner wouldn’t even look at him when passing through, while showing customers the company’s products and processes. What was worse was that Ben knew that he was the problem. Everyone else seemed to get along fine. Ben’s problem was that he didn’t know what he was doing wrong or how to improve things. No one seemed to want to help. He needed the job. But more and more, the job felt as if it didn’t need or want him. If things didn’t change soon, Ben knew he was on his way out.
Advice
You can get advice, welcome and unwelcome, from a lot of sources. No sooner are we walking and talking, than we’re ready to tell others what to do and how to do it. Indeed, one of the great satisfactions of a job is not to have someone tell you how to do it. It’s your job, and you generally know quite well how to do it. You don’t usually want anyone else’s advice to get your own job done. Let others stick to their own jobs and keep their nose out of your business, right? Yet a time can come when you need job advice and should be ready to seek and accept it. The hardest person on whom to get a perspective is often oneself. We can so easily see the small faults of others, when we can’t see our own much larger faults. That’s human nature. We look outward on others more so than inward at ourselves. Know when you could benefit from a little advice. Know when you need advice and should be taking it. Then, seek sound advice and prepare to accept it.
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2 What Is a Job?
Donna had been in and out of jobs around her hometown all her adult life. Sometimes she worked, sometimes she didn’t. Donna didn’t mind working. She just never had any particular attachment to a job, employer, or workforce. Sometimes, she moved from one job to another job without even really thinking much about why. Then one day, Donna realized that the friends and acquaintances with whom she’d entered the workforce long ago had nearly all advanced in their fields, even if many of them had also changed fields a time or two or three across the years. Donna, though, was still doing entry-level jobs, wherever she went. Donna’s realization made her wonder whether she hadn’t treated her jobs right. Had she been missing something about the nature of jobs and work?
Definition
If you’re going to work most of your adult life, you may as well know what a job is. Indeed, if you don’t give at least some thought to your job and work, then you might end up like the figure in the above illustration. You’ve probably known someone like the above figure who just never seemed to get on in a job, almost as if they never really figured out why they worked or what a job entailed. Yet you’ve probably also known individuals who knew exactly what a job was and how to do it for the best advantage of everyone. The point is that you get to choose. You may be fine drifting through your work life, never truly taking hold. A job doesn’t have to mean the same thing to everyone. Just don’t blame your job circumstance on anyone else. You don’t entirely control your job, but you can certainly influence it. And to do so, you must generally have a sound idea of what a job is.
Jobs
A job is a productive activity done at the request and direction of another for compensation. Jobs can be lots of other things, but jobs routinely include these three features: (1) productive activity; (2) employer direction and control; and (3) compensation in return, such as wages and benefits. Keep those three features in mind. Each is important in its own way. Failure in any of those three respects can lead to job dissatisfaction or termination. If you’re not sufficiently productive, you do not follow employer instructions, or you do not receive sufficient compensation or sufficiently justify it, then something is definitely wrong. Yet as much as each of those features is singularly significant, the balance of those three features is also important. Too much or too little of any of the three features in proportion to the others can wreck a job, one way or the other. The telling proverb is not to muzzle the ox while it treads the grain. The worker, work, and return should all balance within your job.
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3 Why Get Job Help?
Thomas knew that management wasn’t happy with him at work. But he figured that was their problem, not his. He’d always been disagreeable. What could he do about his own nature? He figured that his natural obnoxiousness just kept management honest, on their toes. Thomas even felt that he was sticking up for other workers who just kept their noses to the grindstone while mostly avoiding him. And he was okay with that, too. Everyone could just leave him alone. Yet then HR paid him a visit, saying something about putting him on a corrective action plan if he didn’t shape up. HR’s visit made Thomas grumble even more. He couldn’t see what he could do about his naturally critical attitude. But he had an inkling that he’d better find out fast if he wanted to keep his job.
Problems
Much of the time, we can just work along in our job, not worrying about how we’re doing. Jobs should have a flow to them. You can’t be thinking about what you’re doing all the time without growing too self-conscious, even jumpy. Instead, relax and get on with the job. But jobs can also take some deep introspection and reform. Just go through the motions for too long on a job, and you can fall into some bad habits and rough patches. Job problems can certainly arise. One minute you’re sailing along just fine. The next minute, you’re struggling because of an unforeseen event or circumstance. Recognize when you have job issues and problems. Indeed, try to recognize when you’re slowly sliding toward what could become a job issue or problem. The best way to solve a job problem is to avoid it before it even arises. The next best way to solve a problem is to jump on it with a sound plan based on sound advice.
Crises
Address job issues and problems with a sound plan and sound advice before they become crises. A crisis is an event that may by its sudden occurrence change long-standing conditions and relationships. Employers are generally tolerant of the need for employees to make adjustments in their work habits and practices. When things get just a little out of whack or off kilter on the job, employers generally trust employees to discern and take the appropriate action to get back on track. That’s what supervisors do, noticing and correcting the small things before they become big things. When you see something going on with your own work that you sense is already an issue and could soon become a crisis, get help to work it out. While employers generally give employees some leeway to make the small adjustments, employers won’t ignore a crisis that interrupts or threatens to interrupt the workflow. When you get to the point of a crisis interrupting work, management and even ownership will get involved. And when management gets involved, you lose your ability to control the situation. Indeed, you could lose your job. Get help from others with relevant experience as soon as you sense an emerging issue, before you face a crisis.
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4 What Is Job Success?
Shawn had a strange feeling about his job. On one hand, he felt that he did his job well, just as well as anyone else in his workplace. Yet on the other hand, Shawn could clearly see that he was not succeeding in his work to the same degree as his co-workers. The supervisors and managers didn’t greet Shawn with the same consistency and cheerfulness as they greeted his co-workers. Shawn always seemed to get the worst assignments. He also ended up getting the blame whenever anything went wrong. Shawn could take all that, except that he also knew that he wasn’t getting the bonuses and promotions that his co-workers were getting. And because of all that, Shawn no longer felt good about his job. He began to think that he needed to have a clearer idea of what he expected out of his job, or things were going to have to change soon, one way or the other.
Success
We all want to be successful at whatever we do. We want to succeed not just in our education and vocation but also in our finances, recreation, and relationships, including for instance in our friendships and marriage. That desire for success is also true, and especially true, about one’s job. Jobs are such a big part of our lives that, at times, we can draw more from them than we do from friendships, recreations, and a lot of other activities. We have a lot riding on our job success. Those stakes can include our identity, self-esteem, and confidence, not to mention our income, healthcare coverage, and other general security. No one goes to work with the clear goal of failure in mind. Failure may come, but we’d generally rather succeed. So, consider a little advice on what constitutes job success. Your success at your job likely matters a lot to you.
Aims
The concept of success assumes that you work for reasons and aims, and with a purpose. Work should have aims, reasons, and purposes. Indeed, life should have aims, reasons, and purposes, and work can be a big part of giving life those aims, reasons, and purposes. Again, you can have several different aims for your job. Income to keep a roof over the head of you and your family, and food in your bellies and clothes on your backs, can certainly be a primary job aim. You can also work largely or primarily for job benefits, referring here to healthcare coverage, retirement contributions, vacation pay, and maybe dental, vision, life, and disability insurance. Yet you can also work primarily for other, non-economic reasons. Once you are financially secure, you may work mostly to stay engaged in productive activities and to maintain meaningful relationships around a structured schedule. You succeed in your job when you fulfill its aims, reasons, and purposes, both for you and your employer. If you’re not clear on your reasons for working, then have a good discussion with someone who knows you well and cares deeply about you, beginning with your spouse or other closest family member. They’ll help you discern your true aims.
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5 Who Can Help Me With My Job?
Wendy knew she needed help. Things had gone poorly at work recently, so poorly that Wendy could see the handwriting on the wall that she might soon no longer have a job. Indeed, her company had already brought in a temp worker, ostensibly to “help” her, when Wendy suspected that the temp would soon have her job. To make matters worse, everyone loved the temp, while they hardly spoke to Wendy. Wendy was desperate to get help improving at her job. But to whom was she to turn, when no one seemed willing to help?
Control
Many of us want to do better at our job but don’t know to whom to turn to do so. Doing better at your job isn’t all on you. If job improvement were always within your sole reach and control, then you could focus on your own interests and development, to just get after it. But doing better at your job isn’t entirely within your control. Sometimes, others need to do differently or do better for you to do better, too. And even if job improvement is entirely within your control, you might need the help of others to know what to do to improve. If you’re struggling with your job, or even if you’re not struggling but just want to do better, then consider on whom you might rely for help, whether that help involves them doing something for you or just advising you what to do for yourself.
Team
Here’s another way to think about this subject of who can give you the best job help: the best performers in any job tend to have a strong team around them. You may not be a famous athlete, actor, or musician with an entourage of agents, trainers, nutritionists, public-relations managers, and financial advisors. But no matter your job, industry, seniority, standing, or role, you can still assemble a team around you. As a young lawyer, my first client of my own was a teenage businessman without a high school diploma who had just bought himself a beat up old tow truck and needed advice on a tow contract and state authority. That young man had little idea of what he was doing, except that he knew he needed a team of people around him who cared about him and knew at least a little more than he did. That young man is now a rich and unimaginably successful older man because he knew to choose and rely on people who would help him.
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6 How Do I Care for My Family?
Derek knew that he had been burning the midnight oil to keep up at work. He also knew that his work late into the weekday evenings at home and on the weekends, after full days of work during the week, had cut deeply into his family time. Indeed, he really hadn’t spent any recent time with his wife and children other than brief dinners before he retired to his home office to resume his work. Derek had expected his big work push to last just for a brief season, but it had instead stretched into weeks and then months. His wife hadn’t said anything, but she didn’t need to do so. Derek could tell from her attitude and demeanor that he was not caring for her and their kids as he should. And the sad thing was that all his extra hours at work hadn’t really gained him anything at work, not even any overtime since his employer had put him on salary and made him a so-called manager the prior year. Something had to give, and Derek wasn’t ready to let that loss involve his family relationships.
Foundation
You may wonder what your family has to do with job success. We tend to think in terms of two separate worlds, the world of the workplace and the world of the home. Yet you build job success on a foundation. Indeed, anything you build of value is going to have a strong and deep foundation. Care for your family, along with your family’s reciprocal care for you, is a very solid job foundation. You might find short-term success in a job by ignoring your family. But before long, your neglect of your family will crumble the foundation of deep and caring relationships that you need to sustain your drive, motivation, energy, joy, purpose, and health. Neglect your family, and you’ll soon find that you have little or no sound reason to apply yourself to work.
Family
Families are the foundation of society, not just the foundation for work. Families hold that revered status for good reason. They are and always have been the fundamental procreative unit on which all society depends to birth and nurture our young through two decades to relative maturity. But never mind that families are essential for birthing, nurturing, and raising children to maturity. Families are also the traditional unit of care, concern, and purpose for adults. Indeed, we strangely need not just to receive the consistent loving society of intimate others closely related to ourselves, but also to provide that love for those others. Work, or more specifically a job, is a primary means of providing the resources for that consistent care. For many of us, we could think of nothing greater to accomplish in the world than to provide for our own families through the arduous and long effort of earning and holding a job. One answer to the question of how to care for your family is to work, or more specifically, to get and hold a decent job. You care for your family when you earn a living sufficient to provide for its needs.
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7 How Can I Care for My Health?
Danielle didn’t know if she could do it any longer. After twenty years at her job, she was worn out. The swelling of her joints was as usual painful and disfiguring. The ice packs and elevation of her feet and legs that she did every night was no longer doing any good. And now, her joints were stiffening, clicking, and even locking, so that at times, she couldn’t really bend them at all. Several of her co-workers had already left their jobs with the same conditions. Some had sought worker’s comp, while others had not. To Danielle’s knowledge, none had received it. The only thing Danielle knew was that she couldn’t keep doing the job unless something changed, and fast.
Health
Health is basic to job success. You can’t work if you don’t have the physical and mental health for the job. And you shouldn’t work the job if the job itself is destroying your physical or mental health. Nearly every worker at one time or another has a health concern affecting work, whether caused by work or not. Most of us miss at least a day or two of work for common colds or influenza. Many of us struggle through work with periodic days off due to chronic conditions like migraine headaches, pinched nerves, or bad backs. And some of us must take more-extended breaks for hospitalization, treatment, and recovery for more-serious conditions like broken bones, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, or failing organs. Health, good or bad, is a huge factor in job failure or success. The race generally goes to the strong and fast, not the frail and feeble. Even if you’re not personally into health routines, give due attention to your health for its impact on your job success.
Habits
Your health habits need to lay a solid foundation for your ability to continually meet your job’s physical and mental demands. If you’re not exercising, eating nutritious food, managing your weight and blood pressure, and avoiding harmful indulgences, then you’re probably on your way to job disability and interruptions. Poor health habits will catch up with you, sooner or later. They often first do so in the workplace. In your twenties, you learn that you need regular sleep. In your thirties, you learn that you can’t tolerate so much partying. In your forties, you learn that your health takes actual thought, discipline, and work. In your fifties, you learn that what you didn’t do for your health when you were younger eventually catches up with you. In your sixties, you pay for every youthful indulgence. By your seventies, you probably no longer have the energy and strength for substantial stretches of hard work. You are fortunate to even be living into your eighties. Take your health seriously. If you don’t, you may pay for it in job disability and loss. Start exercising, get on a diet, and have periodic medical checkups. Don’t ignore your good health. Your job success depends on it.
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8 How Do I Improve Job Knowledge?
Tim had never met anyone like him. The consultant had come in, walked around the place, and then met with the workplace staff over how they could improve the whole operation. Tim instantly knew that the consultant, who knew every fact and figure, every benchmark, every best practice, and every standard, was right in everything that he told the workplace staff. Everything the consultant said about their industry and their operation was something that Tim had already intuited deep down, without being able to express it. When the consultant left, Tim’s strongest impression wasn’t about the consultant’s suggested improvements. It was instead that Tim wanted to be smart like him.
Knowledge
Knowledge is a peculiar attribute in the workplace. Knowledge in school is one thing, while knowledge in the workplace is another thing. Knowledge in school seems like memorizing a bunch of facts on which to draw for examination, only to forget them immediately after the course is done. Knowledge in school involves items to pick up and soon later cast off. But knowledge in the workplace isn’t something to memorize, repeat once, and then cast aside. Workplace knowledge instead embeds itself into workplace demands, opportunities, and practices, beckoning you into a relationship with it that will enable you to do your job. You don’t so much acquire knowledge in the workplace as enter into a relationship with it. You coax and court knowledge, not buy it or pick it up and cast it off. Workplace knowledge also leads you on, introducing you to a mastery that you’ve always admired but don’t so much acquire as instead consent to by devotion. Get the right idea of job knowledge if you intend to improve your job performance. Don’t treat job knowledge as a cold and hard item. Instead, treat job knowledge like an old wizard whom you hope to befriend, to become more like him.
Education
Workers have several ways in which to gain job knowledge. Education is the most basic form. Many workplaces require specific minimum education, whether a high school diploma, two-year community college degree, four-year undergraduate degree, or some form of graduate or professional degree beyond college. Some workplaces employ only degreed individuals for certain jobs because of a licensure or certification requirement. Medicine, nursing, law, psychology, social work, and teaching are examples. In other workplaces, education is optional but can help. In either case, degree required or not, you may be able to advance your job success by gaining additional education, whether in a formal degree program or just additional coursework. Even doctors and lawyers who already have the minimum education and the license will sometimes go back to school for additional graduate degrees, to improve their job knowledge. Age and station don’t necessarily matter. What matters is your job interest, curiosity, and growth. Don’t overlook the opportunity to complete your degree, start a new degree, or take additional coursework, to gain greater job knowledge. Your initiative and commitment alone may be enough to open doors to your job advancement.
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9 How Do I Improve Job Skills?
Faith had always felt adequately skilled at her job, until the company brought in a new system. Everyone but Faith took the new training. She had been on vacation when the company installed the new system and had the trainers on the premises. Everyone took a little time to adjust. Some had more difficulty than others. But they all made the adjustment before long, all except Faith. To Faith, the whole system seemed counterintuitive. Everything she did was wrong, indeed the opposite of what she should have done. Everyone knew Faith was struggling, and everyone wanted to help. But she just couldn’t seem to get the knack of it. She soon got so flustered that she lost all confidence and started to look for excuses not to come to work.
Dimensions
Job success has components or dimensions. Skill is the second of three critical dimensions for success at work, including (1) knowledge, (2) skills, and (3) ethics. Job knowledge helps you understand and grasp the goals and methods of work. Job skills help you get the work done correctly and efficiently. Job ethics give you the reasons for doing the work. All three dimensions of work are important. Failure along any one of the three dimensions can get you fired. You may be brilliant and skilled, but if you’re unethical, you won’t be long on the job. You may alternatively be skilled and ethical, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll not have a job for long. And same thing if you’re knowledgeable and ethical but you so badly lack skill that you can’t get the job done. All three dimensions are important. Yet of the three dimensions, skill may be the most significant. In the workplace, you can’t hide a lack of skill. You can’t hide it if you can’t get the job done.
Skill
Skill involves the capacity to complete a task to standards, consistently and efficiently. Think of it: skill means getting things accomplished quickly and predictably in a way that benefits the larger operation integrating the particular task. Few things in life are more satisfying than exhibiting skill. Exhibiting skill first of all means that you have developed the capacity to complete in a proper way a structured activity of some procedural complexity. We don’t call someone skilled when they can eat, drink, or tie their shoes. Ordinary self-care isn’t skill; it’s instead an expectation, a given for basic maturity. Skill, though, means something more. Skill is an accomplishment, perhaps not especially distinguishing because we nearly all have skill of one sort or another, but an accomplishment nonetheless. To say that someone has skill marks them as able to get on in the world with at least the one thing in which they have skill, whether that thing is translating a foreign language, driving a forklift, or organizing a social-work case file. Value skill. It means a lot.
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10 How Do I Improve My Job Ethics?
Dirk had never given much thought to character, ethics, or whatever you called it. He just pretty much did what he thought, he assumed like everyone else did. Yet after working for the same company owner for a few years, Dirk began to see something different in the owner that Dirk thought might have had something to do with why he was the owner. When the owner had first hired Dirk, Dirk had assumed that the owner had inherited the company. When Dirk later learned that the owner had built the company up from scratch himself, Dirk began to study the owner for the attributes that might have enabled him to do so. Sure enough, Dirk soon saw that the owner was different in certain respects. And then Dirk realized that the owner’s difference was affecting Dirk and everyone else in the company. Maybe character and ethics had something to them after all.
Ethics
As the prior chapter indicates, ethics is a third dimension, along with knowledge and skill, of job success. For job success, you generally need more than just knowing what to do and how to do it. You also need sound reasons or motivations for doing the work, honestly and consistently, with reasonable devotion to the task. Job ethics are an expression of the values one holds, the perspective through which one views the world of work, and the deeper commitments or truths that one embraces that generate one’s thoughts and actions at work. You may not think much about ethics at work for the very reason that the values and commitments that generate ethics lay beneath the surface of things. You think instead of job knowledge and skills, and the particulars of your work, not the things that give your work meaning and that drive you toward job success. Yet that’s why ethics are so important: they fuel your drive and guide you along the right paths toward success. Don’t underestimate the role and significance of ethics to your job success.
Character
You may find it easier and more productive to think of job character rather than job ethics. Ask any employer representative, such as an administrator, supervisor, manager, or director, and they’ll tell you the kind of character they’d prefer to see in an employee. You’ll hear attributes like honest, hard working, diligent, thoughtful, caring, compassionate, organized, capable, and committed. Notice how these attributes don’t address any specific job knowledge or skill. They don’t describe what the worker knows or can do. They instead describe the worker, as if the attributes colored, constituted, influenced, or imbued the worker like magic potions. Character, though, expresses itself in observable actions. Character is not a magic potion. Character is instead an accumulation of the things that a worker says and does, and the attitudes and attributes the worker exhibits while doing the work. Job character can be either good or bad, or a mix of good and bad. Consistently do the things that express good character, and you’ll find others identifying your character as good, whether you feel like you’re good or not.
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11 How Do I Manage Job Schedules?
Mary’s co-worker astonished her at how much her co-worker regularly got done. Mary would think she’d had a productive day, only to find out that her co-worker had done twice as much. Mary had no clear idea how her co-worker accomplished so much. Her co-worker didn’t seem to work a lot of extra hours. But Mary could see some hints of her co-worker’s efficiency in little habits and practices. For one, her co-worker clearly kept an accurate and up-to-date record of her assignments and progress on her assignments, including their due dates. Yet her co-worker didn’t seem constantly hurried and burdened by deadlines, like Mary. Finally, one day when Mary just couldn’t keep up under the blizzard of deadlines, she resolved to ask her co-worker for tips in managing her schedule.
Schedules
Take some practical advice in this chapter. For real success, many jobs require the worker to adroitly juggle assignments and schedules. If that’s your job, then you know that you must keep accurate track of assignments and their due dates, while making progress on assignments to complete them on schedule. Nearly all work has some kind of schedule. Much work has a reasonably precise schedule with specific delivery dates. For lawyers, those delivery dates may be court hearings and trials, sale closings, and client meetings. For physicians, delivery dates may be surgery schedules, office visits, or prompt lab reviews or consulting reports. For event planners, delivery is the wedding or banquet date. Few workers have only a single assignment at a time. Assignments overlap, and work piles up. New employees often feel overwhelmed, and sometimes even succumb, to the blizzard of new assignments. The workplace can at times feel like the old saying, If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Management
Managing job assignments and work time well is critical to job success. Success in this area begins with sound time management. One can’t actually manage time. Time passes on its own schedule. But you can manage your activities as time passes. One way to do so productively is to work while at work. That may sound too obvious, but many workers find ways to avoid working at work or fall into habits that distract from work while at work. Don’t get distracted or distract others, standing around the water cooler while talking sports. It’s fine to exchange pleasantries, but then get to work. You can relax on scheduled breaks or at home. Develop the habit of working diligently while at work. If someone regularly interrupts you with irrelevant chatter, politely tell them that you’ve got to get back to work. They’ll soon find someone else to interrupt. If you don’t finish your work at work, you’ll end up paying for it by staying late or taking work home. Generally, the more diligently you work while at work, the more relief you’ll have from work while at home. Time management involves managing your activities so that you work diligently and productively while on the clock.
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12 How Do I Improve Job Relations?
Willett had never lived to please or impress others. He preferred to just be who he was and let others be who they were, letting things fall where they may, without trying too hard to get along. Yet lately, Willett had noticed just how poor his work relationships were. No one greeted him, smiled at him, or even acknowledged his arrival at work or his work presence. Everyone just did their job, while leaving Willett alone as long as he did his job. Willett’s only interactions with anyone was when they had a complaint over what he did or how well he was doing it. Willett could see, too, that his poor work relationships were affecting him both on the job and personally. Maybe, he finally concluded, it was time for a change in attitude about his work relationships.
Relationships
Relationships are essential to a full life. Somewhere, someplace, you need someone who knows and cares that you exist, what we would call a friend or at least an acquaintance if not a friend. We are social. Our relationships and communications with others correct our wandering cognition, informing us who we are and how we should see, hear, and think. The rare human who grows up alone in the wild never becomes fully human, having lacked human nurture, culture, society, and relationships. If you’re not cognizant of the value of your work relationships to your mental and physical health, and general outlook on the world and life, then you’re missing something important. Family relationships may form the bedrock of society, but work relationships lay close atop that bedrock in keeping us sane, stable, social, healthy, engaged, and functioning.
Engagement
Your work relationships are important not only to your mental and physical health but also to your job success. You can otherwise be the perfect employee but still lose your job to layoff or miss an opportune promotion, if you have poor work relationships. If you can’t get along with your supervisor or co-workers, if you are insolent and insubordinate, or if you just don’t care enough to contribute to morale in a team environment, then your employer may be moving on from you soon. Positive, committed engagement in the workplace is a huge issue for employers and employees. The platitude that 20% of the workers do 80% of the work may not be too far off in many workplaces. The quality of work relationships can have a big influence on worker engagement. If you don’t care about your co-workers, you may not care about the work. Employers pay attention to building and maintaining a strong, positive work culture for good reasons, to keep work tolerable and productive by engaging the mind, talents, and energies of workers.
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13 How Do I Please Customers?
Michelle winced as she watched her newest associate handle his first client intake. Michelle had liked the new hire and was glad that the firm had assigned him to her unit. But she didn’t like what she was seeing as the new associate plopped himself down behind his desk after giving a perfunctory greeting to the client, leaving the client standing at the door and wondering whether and where to sit. Michelle motioned the client to take a seat beside her across the desk from the new associate.
Users
Employers have customers, clients, patients, students, or others whom they serve. For job success, you may need, one way or another, to account for the satisfaction of those customers. If you have direct contact with your employer’s end users, then their satisfaction with your work and your treatment of them may be paramount to your job success. But even if you don’t have direct customer contact, your work may need to conform to customer expectations. Indeed, you may be halfway around the world from your employer’s customer but still need your work to meet that customer’s needs. Whether you design or make a product or configure or provide a service, your work likely has some kind of end user who has a set of needs and expectations. The better you understand, appreciate, and aim your work toward satisfying those needs and expectations, the more likely you are to find job success. Job success isn’t simply a matter of pleasing your employer. Your job success may depend more on pleasing your employer’s end users. Even if your employer isn’t particularly happy with you, if you are serving your employer’s end users especially well, you’ve probably got good job security.
Profiles
Do you know the profile or profiles of your employer’s end users? Having a clear profile of the customers, clients, patients, students, or others whom your work serves can help you refine that work into its best form in goods or services, and their fitting packaging, pricing, and delivery. If you don’t know your employer’s end users, not just what goods or services your employer is selling to them but also their real needs and preferences, then you may be missing substantial opportunities to improve your work. Thinking in terms of profiles can help you discern those needs and preferences. Are you serving mostly heads of households, men, women, the younger or the older, or the rich seeking luxury goods and services or the poor seeking staples? Are your employer’s end users seeking security, comfort, reassurance, healing, protection, inspiration, or adventure? What authors do they read and movies do they watch, from which they draw their yearnings and cultural references? And what is their goal in purchasing your employer’s goods or services? As much as you may like and benefit from your job, you’ll find it hard in the long run to respect your job if you don’t know and respect its customers or end users. Know whom you are ultimately serving.
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14 How Do I Satisfy My Supervisor?
Norm got along great with his supervisor, which was kind of weird. His supervisor was quirky, mercurial, and unpredictable, virtually the opposite of Norm. The supervisor’s eccentricities irritated and annoyed Norm’s co-workers, who would grumble about the supervisor behind his back. The supervisor seemed only to tolerate Norm’s co-workers, while by contrast the supervisor seemed to like Norm, although the supervisor’s quirkiness made it hard to really tell. After about a year at the company, though, Norm had figured it out. Norm was subtly outperforming his co-workers on every significant work measure, and the supervisor knew it, even if Norm’s co-workers didn’t know. The supervisor used his quirkiness, rather than direct confrontation and command, to manage the workforce. Norm avoided the supervisor’s eccentricities because Norm was a top performer whom the supervisor valued and respected, not because of anything peculiar about Norm.
Supervision
Supervision is a necessary aspect of work. In an operation of any complexity involving multiple workers, someone must coordinate the work. In an operation with relatively rigorous standards, someone must ensure that workers meet the standards. In an operation that takes multiple workers to produce the goods or services, someone must ensure that enough workers with the right skills and commitment regularly show up. In an operation under remote ownership, someone must report regularly and reliably to the owners’ representatives and implement their directives through the workforce. Supervision has at least those roles, including worker coordination and accountability, and management reporting and response, to fulfill. Appreciate the burden of responsibility that your supervisor carries. Your supervisor has a boss to satisfy, too. Whether you like your supervisor or not, the more you satisfy your supervisor, the better it will go for you. Be a star for your supervisor, and you will find secure job success.
Trust
Trust is the first thing your supervisor needs from you. Your supervisor has a job to do, which includes seeing that you and perhaps several others in your subordinate role do your job well. If your supervisor can’t trust you with doing your job, then you’ll have problems with your supervisor. Trust begins with showing up for work on time and prepared. If, instead, your supervisor has to remind you, chastise you, and chase after you to get you to show up regularly to work on time, and to prepare you for work once you’re there, then you’ll have problems with your supervisor. If you don’t listen to your supervisor’s directions, or if you undermine your supervisor’s authority among your co-workers, you’ll have problems with your supervisor. If your supervisor finally entrusts you with a critical project after years of grooming you for advancement, but you fumble the project away like a rookie, you’ll have problems with your supervisor. Whatever the need, demand, or issue is, your supervisor needs to see that your supervisor can rely on you to do as the supervisor expects. Work at it, and you’ll be working toward job success.
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15 How Do I Treat Owners?
Olivia hadn’t expected to work so often and so closely with the company’s owner. The company’s manager had first accepted her as an intern at the end of her education program and then hired her on when the internship ended. Olivia worked mostly for the senior employees, fetching things, organizing things, and cleaning up during the course of projects. The company’s owner was mostly out soliciting clients. But often, the owner would stop in to check on the course of projects. When the owner did, the owner seemed to make a point of calling Olivia over to ask Olivia’s opinions on things. Soon, the owner had Olivia doing small projects for the owner directly, like the senior employees. Olivia loved the responsibility. She appreciated even more the owner’s confidence and kindness.
Ownership
Depending on the size and nature of the organization for which you work, it may surprise you that you could have an important relationship with your employing company’s owner or owners. Your relationships with co-workers and supervisors are important. They help you get your work done and integrate your work into the overall workplace operation. But owners play a role in a company’s success, too. And that role may include communicating the company’s mission, values, priorities, and culture not just to executives and managers but also to line workers. Your relationship with your company’s owner or owners may also influence your retention, assignments, and advancement. Your role is not to curry favor with owners, especially if doing so involves going around supervisors, managers, or executives. But an owner’s natural respect and appreciation for you, your character, and your work may lead to opportunities that lead to greater job success. Be cognizant of your relationship to owners.
Proprietors
Sole proprietors of their own business are naturally more involved with their employees than owners of corporate entities may be. A sole proprietorship has no owners other than the one who generally runs the business. Businesses incorporate when reaching any significant size, for multiple good reasons. Yet many small-business founders will continue to operate without a corporate entity or will adopt the form of a single-member limited-liability company (LLC), which is effectively a sole proprietorship. If you work for a sole proprietorship or LLC, you probably work alongside, or with regular contact with, the founder and owner. In that case, everything the prior chapter said about getting along with your supervisor applies equally to your relationship with the owner. But you should also appreciate the owner’s direct concern with preserving and increasing the value of the business. Many small business owners don’t take a regular salary or they minimize the salary they take, not just for tax reasons but also to pour the excess back into building the business. Respect your sole proprietor’s commitment to and interest in the business. Point your work activities to supporting the owner’s interest, and you’ll have your proprietor’s favor for job success. You might even have an opportunity some day to share in ownership.
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16 How Do I Advance in My Job?
Arlen had just about had it. After nearly a decade at the same job, he was tired of seeing others hired after him advance past him into supervisory and management roles. Arlen was frankly jealous of their greater opportunity, respect, standing, and income. He wondered whether he would ever get his turn. He had put in his time, even if grudgingly and with frequent absences. He had done what the company had asked of him, even if no more than that. Arlen couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong to get passed over repeatedly. He finally concluded that maybe he just wasn’t cut out for anything other than the modest work he was doing, which was fine with him except for the lost income that could have come with a promotion.
Advancement
Feeling stuck in a job isn’t a good feeling. It’s fine to do the same job year after year, even decade after decade, if the job does well for you and you do well for the job on the measures the prior chapters describe. But if, instead, you’re feeling stuck in the job, then something’s amiss. You have expectations or needs that your job is not meeting, or the job has expectations and needs that you’re not meeting. Life can be a lot about growing in maturity, skill, and responsibility. The same is true for jobs where we can hold the expectation that we are somehow advancing along a path. Your need or expectation for advancement may be particularly acute when others in your workplace are advancing past you. No one advancing is one thing. Others advancing when you’re not advancing is another thing. You are quite reasonable to expect opportunities for growth and advancement when others have those opportunities but you seem not to have them.
Opportunity
If you are questioning your ability and opportunity to advance in your current job, then look around your workplace for advancement opportunities. Make a frank assessment whether your employer offers opportunities for advancement. Some workforces are so small or peculiar that they don’t offer any hierarchy for advancement or other substantial opportunity for a change in roles to reflect growth in job skills and judgment. That’s one of the potential drawbacks of working for a small firm or company, that it may not provide advancement opportunities. If the only supervisors or managers are the owner’s adult children, then you may not have formal opportunities for promotion, although you can still improve your job knowledge and skills. You may also be able to expand your job responsibilities and be more creative and productive in ways that your employer will reward you with greater compensation, additional benefits, or greater job security, even if not formal promotion.
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17 How Do I Treat Compensation?
Michael had been delighted with his salary when first hired. And he’d been surprised and pleased with the annual bonuses and increases. Indeed, within no time, he’d met the modest financial goals he had set that he had thought would take a decade or more to reach. His employer also had a solid benefits package including retirement contributions. Overall, Michael’s compensation was the last thing about which he would have thought to complain. Yet when the bookkeeper made an innocuous quip about how much money he was making the company, apparently as its star financial performer, Michael gave his first thought to whether his compensation was what he actually deserved and could get on the open market.
Context
Compensation is an important topic when addressing job success. On one hand, if the income from your job isn’t working for you, one way or another, then you might find it hard to call your job a success. Yet on the other hand, if the income your job provides is more than meeting all your financial goals, then maybe you should call your job a success, even if your job feels like it’s falling short on other, non-economic measures. A key to the compensation question is to give that question the right overall context. At some stages in life, such as when you’re just starting out, when you’re just getting back into the workforce after a long time away, or when you’re retired and just trying to get out of the house, any compensation from a job may be enough to make the job worthwhile. But at other stages in life, such as when you’re trying to keep a roof over your family’s head and the children clothed and fed, the compensation from your job may be its only significant measure. When evaluating your compensation, first give it the proper context. Be sure you know what your compensation needs to do for you at your current stage in life.
Budget
You can look at your compensation in two ways, from either one of two different directions. First, you should look at your compensation from the standpoint of your household budget, plans, and needs. You work for purposes, and one of the biggest of those purposes is to provide for your household needs and plans. One direct way of evaluating your compensation is to determine whether it is meeting your household budget. Don’t expect your compensation to immediately provide a luxury lifestyle or enable your profligate spending. Instead, examine your reasonable monthly expenses, and measure them against your monthly earnings. Include retiring debt, building an emergency fund, and accumulating savings in your monthly expenses. If your current compensation is enough to meet your budget, maybe you’re doing just fine. If not, then you may need to reduce your budget, seek an increase in your compensation, or both.
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18 How Do I Report Misconduct?
The event floored Diana, who’d never imagined that she would see anything like it occurring in her workplace. At first, she even tried to explain it away in her head, thinking that she must have misunderstood something. But when one of her co-workers intimated with an eye-roll and disgusting shake of her head that she had seen the same thing, Diana knew that her first instinct had been right. One of her co-workers had altered a record to disguise the co-worker’s deliberately secreting valuable personal property, clearly with the intent to steal the property. The dishonest co-worker hadn’t even tried too hard to conceal her misconduct, apparently believing that others who might have noticed wouldn’t object. Diana had no immediate clue what to do other than to promptly report it.
Misconduct
How you deal with misconduct going on around you in the workplace can be important, even critical, to your job success. Misconduct, especially actions that are either dishonest, immoral, damaging to the employer’s reputation, or endangering, is generally a serious workplace concern. Most employers will take misconduct seriously by promptly imposing job discipline up to suspension and termination. Job discipline of any kind can severely adversely impact one’s job security, standing, reputation, promotion, and prospects. You don’t want to commit misconduct, get caught in misconduct, or overlook a co-worker’s misconduct in a way that imputes that misconduct to you as a co-conspirator or unreliable reporter. If you see any degree of misconduct going on in your workplace, take it seriously. Consider carefully the response you need to make to ensure that you minimize or eliminate the risk that it will adversely affect your employment and job success.
Examples
Understand what workplace misconduct is. Workplace misconduct generally involves a knowing, deliberate, or intentional violation on the job of law, rule, or regulation, including job rules, that subject the employer or another to some risk of loss or harm. Examples include intoxicated or impaired work, theft, conversion, or embezzlement at work, violence or threats of violence in the workplace, arson, trespassing, misuse of employer property, misuse of computer systems including unauthorized access to or alteration of employer files or viewing of inappropriate materials, deliberately misrepresenting hours worked or work completed related to compensation, and disobeying supervisor or employer directives disrupting the workplace. While these examples may be the more common ones, workers can commit many other forms of misconduct, some of them peculiar to the field or sector of the work. Patient abuse or neglect among healthcare workers, and teacher abuse of or sexual relations with students, would be examples. Each field or sector has both general and specific concerns over various forms of misconduct.
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19 How Do I Make Amends?
Greg knew he had made a blunder and a big blunder at that. He just didn’t know how his supervisor and unit manager were going to take it. One thing was for sure: Greg was going to fess up to it, immediately. Only for a fleeting moment did he consider whether he might just cover it up and move on. But he knew there was no covering up his mistake. And it didn’t matter to him whether he could get away with it or not. He didn’t want that burden. He was instead going straight to his supervisor. Greg took a deep breath before making straight for the office, hoping to find his supervisor in a good mood.
Errors
No employee is perfect. Every worker makes mistakes. How you respond to your own errors may contribute greatly to your job success. Mistakes are often how we learn, by trial and error. Your supervisor and other employer representatives may expect you to make errors, the same errors they made when starting out in a new job to learn their way. Of course, avoid errors if you can. Follow instructions and protocols. Practice and perfect skills before applying them to job tasks, if you can. Ask for direction when you’re uncertain over how to proceed. Watch your co-workers perform tasks, and ask them what to watch for so as not to make a rookie mistake. But at some point, you’re bound to make a mistake here and there. Expect it. Indeed, prepare for it. Build up a well of confidence among your supervisors and co-workers, so that when your mistakes happen, they can help you get right back on the horse and ride.
Examples
Most workplaces have at least some history of errors. Indeed, some workers can recall legendary errors having occurred, remembered for their utter stupidity or for their spectacular if disastrous results. Ask around among your co-workers, and you’ll probably hear a story or two that begins with remember the time when and continues by naming the rued if hilarious or preposterous event. Most trades, professions, or industries likewise have accident, error, and mistake patterns. Indeed, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration collects and publishes accident data by field and sector. In law, the mistakes might be missed deadlines, claims or defenses not pled, documentary evidence not requested and presented, and witnesses not identified and called. In medicine, the mistakes might involve physician orders not followed, medications misprescribed or mis-administered, tests not ordered or interpreted correctly, equipment not sterilized or calibrated, and even slips of the surgeon’s scalpel. In engineering, the errors might be in material choices or mathematical calculations. In accounting, the errors might be in accounts misidentified, entries mistakenly recorded, or records and receipts not sampled. Familiarize yourself with the pattern of errors in your own field, and you’ll have taken a significant step toward safeguarding yourself from those errors.
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20 How Do I Handle Self-Employment?
Dana had opportunities to go to work for others. But her mom and dad had always run their own business, in which Dana had grown up involved. And so when her mom and dad offered Dana their business to manage and run on her own, Dana jumped at the chance. She never looked back to regret her decision. Every day of her self-employment had been a challenge. She knew that she was working much harder and longer every week than her friends who worked for companies. Dana also had a lot to learn to take over the business and manage everything on her own. Yet to Dana, it had all been worth it, not especially from the income perspective but from every other standpoint.
Proprietorship
This guide has been about job success, not about running a business. See the guide Help with Your LLC for how to start and operate a new small business. But working in your own business, whether as a sole proprietor or the sole member of your own limited liability company, still constitutes a job of a sort, only one that you, rather than an employer, direct and control. Some of the above job advice, like how to improve your job knowledge, skills, and ethics, applies as much to working for yourself as it does to working for others. Other aspects of the above advice, such as how to get along with supervisors and how to treat business owners, obviously apply only to corporate employment, not self-employment. To ensure that the self-employed get fair treatment as to their own job success, this chapter addresses job-success issues peculiar to self-employment. Refer to Help with Your LLC for broader advice on starting and running your own business.
Income
Working for yourself is still working for income, provided that you are skilled enough at running your own business to earn a profit that you can treat as self-employment income. And that’s the point: you shouldn’t be working at your own job entirely for free. That’s the bane of running your own business, that you may find at year’s end that you made no money that you can treat as your own income. Running a business can create equity, meaning positive value in the business that you might realize from the business’s sale some day. But generally, working for yourself for free, selling goods to customers or services to clients at a loss or for no personal return, just isn’t a wise expenditure of your time and energy, unless you truly want to treat your self-employment as a purely charitable activity and you have the financial means to do so. So, rule one for self-employment: make it pay. Some sole proprietors adopt the rule of paying yourself first to ensure that you control other business expenses enough to earn your own income.