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

Start-up skill: Find people who compensate for your weakness

April 2nd, 2008
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The update on my company is that Ryan Healy and I are not talking to each other. Well, he is talking to me, but I am giving him the silent treatment.
Still, I am confident that things are going well. First, because I am bad at the silent treatment—I have too much to say all the [...]

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Try to be funny, even if you're not

February 29th, 2008
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Men are hard-wired to think they are funny. They use it as a courtship technique. A study by Eric Brassler at McMaster University finds that women rate men as more attractive if they make more jokes. And men are somehow aware of this, because they are more likely to make jokes if women are around.
This [...]

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Three specific ways to improve your social skills

January 16th, 2008
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Now that I do a lot of public speaking, I am flying a lot – two or three times a month. There are a lot of perks to travel, like expensive hotel rooms and a break from my kids. But my favorite perk is meeting sales guys.
Warning: here come generalizations with no data to back [...]

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Twentysomething: 5 ways people get screwed early in a career

Posted to: Managing Up |  Office Politics
January 15th, 2008
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This guest post is by Susan Johnston who is 24 years old and blogs at The Urban Muse.
By Susan Johnston – It's easy to get screwed when you're fresh out of undergrad and starting a new job. Nobody tells you this, because it doesn't make a particularly inspiring message for a graduation speech or greeting [...]

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How to deal with getting fired (from Yahoo)

Posted to: Journalism |  Money |  Office Politics
December 27th, 2007
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I just got fired from Yahoo Finance.
The long road to my quick termination started in the spring, when I grew friendly with one of the higher-ups in engineering at Yahoo. When he became my boss's boss's boss at Yahoo, he suggested that we meet if we were ever both in New York at the same [...]

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5 Communication lessons learned in marriage counseling

Posted to: Negotiating |  Office Politics
November 28th, 2007
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In case you are new to the drama that is my marriage, here is the post about our first day of counseling, which now has 171 comments. And here is the post where I blame my whole marriage on the institution of shared-care parenting, and also where I find out that the population of available [...]

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Stop thinking you'll get by on your high I.Q.

November 20th, 2007
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My son's I.Q. is in the top .05% of all preschoolers, but he attended preschool in a special education classroom. He has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism typified by a distinctly high I.Q. and a notable lack of emotional intelligence. Asperger's is thought to be genetic, and it is surging among kids in places [...]

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Twentysomething: The rising rift between gen X and gen Y

Posted to: Office Politics
November 6th, 2007
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Rebecca Thorman is 24 years old. I met her when I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and spoke at an event she put together. I've been reading her blog, Modite, ever since.
By Rebecca Thorman – As the workplace weather changes, Generation X isn't happy to see Generation Y as the rainbow in their persistent rainstorm.
Both [...]

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Five workplace practices that should be over. Now.

Posted to: Office Politics
October 9th, 2007
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1. Voice mail
It will come as news to most people over thirty that most people under thirty do not leave voice mail messages. Think about it: Voice mail takes a long time to retrieve and it's almost never earth-shattering, so it's not worth the time it requires. Microsoft is such a big believer in [...]

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Five ways to make yourself a workplace superstar

Posted to: Goal setting |  Office Politics
September 27th, 2007
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It's fun to be a superstar. You get a lot of accolades. But the real benefit to being a workplace superstar is that you have more control over your life. A superstar gets flextime. A superstar gets to take a five-month sabbatical and have their job held for them. Superstars are so top-flight that they'd [...]

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Yahoo column: Office politics encourages self-improvement

Posted to: Office Politics
September 14th, 2007
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Office politics is good for you. That is, it makes your life better — not just your work life, but your whole life.
Office politics is a commitment to quality — in your relationships and in your projects. So you need to see it as the glorious underpinning of a transparent workplace in which everyone helps one [...]

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How to be likable to people who are complaining about you

Posted to: Networking |  Office Politics
August 1st, 2007
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I am always harping on how important it is to be nice. I have written about how you will be happy at work if you have three friends there, you will get promoted if people like you and you should try to be more likable no matter how likable you think you are right now.
A [...]

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Yahoo column: 10 Tips for the new workplace etiquette

Posted to: Office Politics
July 26th, 2007
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There's a new workplace etiquette for the new millennium, and, no surprise, it's all about transparency and authenticity.
The new etiquette is driven by the fact that young people who grew up online don't know how to operate any other way except transparently. The good news is this means they have great social skills; the bad [...]

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Coachology: Building bridges at work

Posted to: Management |  Office Politics
July 13th, 2007
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After a week of posts about generational conflict, you'll be happy to hear that Alexandra Levit is a professional bridge builder (and blogger at Water Cooler Wisdom). Leaders in the Fortune 500 call her when they can't cope with young people anymore. She teaches people how to stop annoying each other by gaining a better understanding of generational differences.
Deloitte has a [...]

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Yahoo column: Why we should be grateful for Generation Y

Posted to: Management |  Managing Up |  Office Politics
July 12th, 2007
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What's the point of baby boomers complaining about Generation Y at work? First of all, it's a cliché, because people over 40 have been complaining about "young people" since forever.
Even worse, it's a losing battle. Generation Y is huge. It's one thing for boomers to verbally squash Generation X — that was no problem. Gen [...]

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Twentysomething: Why I started blogging

Posted to: How to blog |  Office Politics
July 10th, 2007
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By Ryan Healy – People often ask why I decided to get into this whole career blogging world that I have come to love. Usually my answer is something about giving my generation a voice in the corporate discussion, or standing up for all of my peers and friends who openly discuss their bitterness towards [...]

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A question for the readers

Posted to: How to blog |  Office Politics
June 28th, 2007
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Some of you might know that the thousands of comments that I receive on my Yahoo column are generally abrasive. Here's an example.
Some of the most common things people say to me in the comment section on Yahoo are:
1. Why do you write for Yahoo? You should be fired!
2. You don't have enough experience in [...]

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The unimportance of being right (growing up in a colorblind family)

Posted to: Diversity |  Office Politics
June 26th, 2007
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At some point in our lives we each have felt surrounded by people who see the world incorrectly. Sometimes it's the accountant who works for a management team that doesn't understand numbers. Or it's the artist who works for a marketing team that doesn't understand font. Sometimes we feel so certain that we are right and [...]

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What generation are you part of, really? Take this test.

June 25th, 2007
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If you want to know how old you really are, look at the media you use rather than the generation you were born into.
Generational labels are important in the discussion of the changing workforce. For example, we need to understand who is pushing for change and who is criticizing change in order to understand [...]

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Twentysomething: Problems with working at a big company

June 19th, 2007
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By Ryan Healy — If there is an overarching impact my generation is already having on the corporate world, it is entrepreneurship. Roughly 80% of my friends and acquaintances plan to start their own business at some point. Both males and females, college grads and current students, everyone wants to run their own [...]

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