Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. Advice at the intersection of work and life.
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Browsing category "Office Politics"

8 Tips for anger management

January 8th, 2010
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People at work are asking me why I am not working as many hours as I used to. I am. But I am working on anger management. Here are seven tips I've tried using:
1. Face the problem and make it a priority.
I used to think anger management problem is a thing for men who are [...]

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Leverage the advantages of being an introvert at work

Posted to: Diversity |  Fulfillment |  Office Politics
November 30th, 2009
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The workplace is set up to reward extroverts. For example, ENTJs make up only 3% of the population but they comprise a wide majority of the world's CEOs. The bias against introverts in American society is well documented, including research that shows that a spot on the cheerleading team foreshadows career success much more reliably [...]

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Asperger's at work: 5 ways to be less annoying

November 24th, 2009
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The first step to growing a good career in the face of Asperger's Syndrome is to recognize that this is a social skills deficit, by definition, and work, by definition, is a social skills decathlon.
I have written before that for me, the biggest problem at work stems from my own sensory integration dysfunction – something [...]

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Why men should give women flowers

October 28th, 2009
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Here’s the deal with giving flowers. Women like receiving flowers. Men think flowers are stupid.
Men think: Flowers die, they don’t do anything when they are alive, they are expensive, and they are a cliché. Men know that women in general like flowers, but men also believe that women they know personally do not like flowers. [...]

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Asperger syndrome in the office: How I deal with sensory integration dysfunction

September 30th, 2009
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A lot of people ask me how I manage to keep a job when I have Asperger syndrome. So I'm doing a series this week on the topic, because it’s true that most people with Asperger’s are not doing well at work. The work place rewards social skills, and people with Asperger’s have a social [...]

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This week's series: How to deal with Asperger Syndrome at work

September 29th, 2009
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People often tell me that I should write career advice for people with Asperger Syndrome. This is because I am surrounded by people who have Asperger’s, and I have it myself.  Please, do not tell me I don’t have it. First of all, it looks very different in men and women, and most of you [...]

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Workplace situations we don't talk about

Posted to: Managing Up |  Office Politics
August 6th, 2009
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There are some things about work that are difficult for even me to write about. These are the issues that I have not quite worked out for myself.  I wonder if I am normal in these areas? Maybe no one is talking about them, but they are thinking still. And if no one else is [...]

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What Generation Z will be like at work

Posted to: Management |  Office Politics
July 27th, 2009
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It’s great fun to track trends to try to figure out what the future holds. The Generation after Gen Y is a mystery. Sort of. There are some things we know. And what we know, we know doesn’t change much. For example, people thought Gen Y’s sunny optimism would die down under the ardors of [...]

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Tips for coping when your startup is out of cash

May 15th, 2009
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My company is running out of money again. Well, really, it already happened. But it’s happened so many times that I am sort of used to it. It's a routine. You may recall that part of the routine is not paying my electric bill. But there is more.
1. Focus on something you can control.
You might [...]

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How to pick the people you work with

Posted to: Job Hunt |  Office Politics
May 6th, 2009
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Pick who you work with very carefully. Because you are likely to become like them. So the first thing is to know what’s important to you about you – what you want to become. What you like about yourself. And then, surround yourself with people who match your aspirations for yourself.
Here are some ideas:
Choose people [...]

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How to blog about a co-worker (or someone else close to you)

Posted to: How to blog |  Office Politics
April 27th, 2009
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What you know the most about is what you can offer the most insight about. And you probably know that telling stories is always more compelling than talking in generalities. But if you tell stories, you need people to be in the stories. So if you want to write insightfully, then using stories about people [...]

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Take Your Child to Work Day should be cancelled

Posted to: Diversity |  Office Politics |  Parenting
April 23rd, 2009
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It’s time to admit that Take Your Child to Work Day is an outdated relic of 1970s feminism, and we can put the whole thing to rest.
Do you remember that the day started as Take Our Daughters to Work? It was the 70s, and women wanted their daughters to know that they could do anything. [...]

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Try to give hugs to more people at work

Posted to: Office Politics
February 17th, 2009
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The house manager comes in my front door at 8am. I tell her, “The exterminator is in the kitchen but I forgot to get the cats and bunny out of the house, and the cleaning woman is in the dining room, but she cannot clean while the exterminator is here, and I forgot to [...]

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How to talk to a friend who's been laid off

Posted to: Networking |  Office Politics
February 10th, 2009
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Being laid off used to be taboo. But not anymore. And most of us have thought through some sort of plan for if it happens to us. Gone are the days when people pretend this is not happening.
One of the things my ex-husband and I did well, as did our peers, was learn to tag-team [...]

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The art of knowing when to hide and when to reach out

January 21st, 2009
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Ryan calls me from the office. I say, “Don't talk to me now. I'm sulking.”
He says, “Okay. What are we doing about the five-year sales projections?”
I say, "I told you. I need ten minutes."
“Nothing is going to change in ten minutes,”
“In ten minutes I’ll be more pleasant on the phone.”
“Okay.” He hangs up.
I eat two [...]

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Why you're lucky to be in the office between Christmas and New Years

December 29th, 2008
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One of the reasons my column runs in more than 200 newspapers is that I send out one blog post a week to about 1000 editors. I have to do the list manually because, big surprise, most editors at most papers do not subscribe to blogs.
Today I was besieged by out of the office responses. [...]

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Vulnerability is the key to likability at work (and on the farm)

August 26th, 2008
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This is the last thing I should be writing on my blog. Because it's now clear that the blog is a great dating tool. Propositions all the time. So I should not tell you this, but here it is: It turns out that I'm a lousy girlfriend.
Not the bad in bed type. Well, sort of. [...]

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Five things that are about to stop sucking at work

Posted to: Diversity |  Office Politics
July 24th, 2008
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I used to write about my brother Erik a lot. I wrote about how I retooled his resume to make his dead-end job at Blockbuster into the perfect collection of achievements. Then I let him guest post while he was getting ready to quit the investment banking job he was sick of.
Now he's at Microsoft [...]

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Figure out how much you should be paid (and three cheers for transparent salaries)

Posted to: Money |  Office Politics
July 11th, 2008
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Do you know the salary of every employee at your company? I think you should.
I mean, who is being protected by secret salaries? Certainly not the employee—the more transparent salaries are, the more accurately an employee can assess his or her value to a company.
You'd think that companies benefit from secret salaries and that's why [...]

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Will you get promoted? Take the test

Posted to: Office Politics
April 29th, 2008
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One of the most important indicators of whether or not you should switch jobs is if you are in line for a promotion. It's not so much that you should be climbing a ladder, but more that if you are not being recognized for great work then you're probably not doing great work. And if [...]

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