Power lunch etiquette

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During my advertising agency days when I worked with Asian car companies, I had countless business meals with Asian men who had been schooled by experts in the art of American dining. Their training was evident; when faced with four forks at the first course of our meal, my companions were astute enough to know to take the second fork from the outside. (The rule, for dining idiots, is, when in doubt, use the utensil farthest from the plate, which in this case was the appetizer fork.) With every meal thereafter, I learned a little more about dining from them, and they learned a little more about server-side technology from me, until none of us needed each other anymore and a final “Check, please” was uttered.

Since then, I’ve gathered tips for business meals. I’m not perfect — in fact, I still don’t know why people use chopsticks for sushi when it seems like finger food — but I have learned a few things that can help keep meals moving smoothly. And I received a few e-mails last week suggesting that I write a column about table manners during business meals, so here goes.

Don’t dive for your food. I think the rule about not being the first to eat comes from the idea that you shouldn’t dis the Queen by eating the good stuff before her. Or something like that. Then, I think, this rule came to mean, Don’t look like you’re starving as if we were living in Depression-era times. Now, I think, it’s more about being interested in the people at — instead of the food that’s on — your table.

Don’t order soup. It splashes. It’s hard not to slurp. If your soup is hot and everyone else has a cold appetizer, they will have to wait while your soup cools. And in case your mom never told you this — when you tip the bowl to get the dregs of the soup, tip away from yourself, not toward. Also, spoon away from yourself, not toward, unless you want to drip-dry later.

Don’t sit facing a mirror. You will not be able to stop looking at yourself, which people might mistake for vanity or disinterest in the people around you. Both may be true, which would make things even worse. Don’t sit facing the sun. You will squint, which is never attractive. You will see your dining partner as a silhouette and you will miss facial expressions, which are crucial to reading moods.

Don’t cross your legs under the table. Sitting this way tilts your body a little bit. The tilt looks fine to those who can see your sheer stockings with a seam running up the back, but when your companions see no legs, just body, the tilt makes you look like you have either bad posture or no equilibrium.

In groups of more than five people, there is likely to be more than one conversation at a time. Sit near the person you want to talk to, but not next to her — it’s so much easier to talk across the table. That said, you must say a few words to those on either side of you. No matter how large the party, it is rude to talk only to the person on one side of you.

Drink. I’m not saying go wild, but if everyone else is drinking, unless you’re in a 12-step program, give in to peer pressure. It’s like wearing a suit when everyone else wears a suit. This goes for dessert also. I’m not saying you should initiate ordering the banana split flambe, because part of being a good executive is not being out of control, which means not being fat, which means not eating desserts. But if everyone else is getting one, don’t ruin the fun. How hard is it to take a bite in a show of camaraderie?

When in doubt, take your cue from those around you. For example, you probably don’t know how to use a finger bowl. I, in fact, do. But when my grandma trotted them out for my sweet-16 birthday party, my friends ate the floating carrot-fish out of the bowl. Are others ordering an appetizer? In what price range are their entrees? By the way, fingertips are dipped daintily into the finger bowl then patted dry with the napkin.

These tips may not land an account or close a deal, but I’ve found they are extras I bring to the table.

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Listen to the voice of experience

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My friend Ann has a really deep voice. Not a sexy, deep voice like at a 1-900 service. It’s more like Oscar the Grouch with a sore throat, or maybe even like Darth Vader on Prozac. Her voice, the result of a birth complication, is a disability that she must deal with daily, and for the most part has overcome. I know that now, but I didn’t always see things that way.

I knew Ann in grade school where I confess to having had evil thoughts:

  1. Why is she first chair in saxophone and I am last chair in oboe? She has a weird mouth and I don’t. It’s not fair.
  2. Why is she class president and I am not even getting invited to boy-girl parties? How is someone with such an awful voice so much more popular than I am?

In high school, Ann and I were on the track team together and we became close friends. I spent so much time with her that I stopped noticing that her voice was different. It seemed normal to me.

But there were constant reminders: People in restaurants stared when they heard us talking. Often sales people did not understand her question at first because they were so stunned by her voice. Ann never lost patience, never looked uncomfortable. I never knew how she did it.

In the track world, you meet tons of kids from schools all over the state, and when Ann walked by, I heard lots of them say: “What’s wrong with her voice?”

When I asked Ann if she felt uncomfortable about how she sounded, she’d say no. “A deep voice sounds authoritative,” she’d tell me.

Ann flourished in college. She learned to be extra nice to people because they usually would be extra nice back. She became very loyal to friends who stuck by her because so many other acquaintances walked away after hearing her speak. Naturally, she knew she was different, so she concentrated hard in school since good grades would help her overcome prejudices.

After college she went to a top advertising firm. I assume that her voice was not a problem during interviews, or at least that the interviewers believed Ann could overcome her voice impediment enough to impress potential clients.

But then she was assigned to a manager who hated her. He berated her intelligence, made sexually explicit comments in her presence and generally let her know he did not want her around. In truth, his actions amounted to harassment. But harassment is usually thought to occur when a man in power is attracted to a woman with less power. No one would have thought of anyone harassing Darth Vadar girl. Then, too, her harasser was powerful in the company, so Ann didn’t have much leverage.

Ann left the company. And once you leave a high-profile company without recommendations, you can forget going to another company in that industry. So she went back to where she flourished: school. She took programming classes and impressed a classmate so much that he got her a job. His software firm needed someone who knew advertising and someone who knew programming, and the company liked the idea of Ann wearing two hats.

The company went under in the tech meltdown of 2002, but Ann found that by switching gears, she had developed a new specialty in a very narrow niche that she dominates. She would not want me to say that in this column because she didn’t even want me to write the column in the first place. But the bottom line is that things are good for Ann. She weathered many storms and is successful despite her disability. Her tips for others who are struggling with some kind of impediment amount to good advice for any of us:

  1. Convince yourself you are great. Then convincing other people is so much easier.
  2. Don’t blame other people for your failures. Take responsibility for your life and move past people who don’t help you.
  3. Have patience with yourself if you don’t choose the right career on your first try. Trust that you will find a place that is right for you, and keep looking.
  4. Don’t make friends with a writer. They never stop using their friends’ lives as fodder.

Make your own luck

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To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, acknowledge that you are not a leprechaun and that you have to create your own luck. Sure, luck can make or break a career, but those who make their own luck can make their careers shine. St. Patrick's Day is a great day to assess where you stand in the lucky-person parade.

1. Being lucky is a way of looking at the world.

You can look back? on your life and see the luck in it or see the failure. But all good interviewers know that past performance is the best indicator of future performance. They want to know about your successes, so why doom yourself from the start? View yourself as having lead a charmed life, and you will find yourself becoming the recipient of more lucky charms. Optimists know this intuitively. Our lives unfold the way we see them. If you expect bad things to happen, they will. But if you expect good luck, it likely will come your way.

2. Know what luck looks like

The luckiest people knock on the door of opportunity and it opens. Throughout your life, though, you’ll knock on hundreds of these opportunity doors. Sure, this is a figurative statement, but put on your metaphorical walking shoes.

One caveat: You must be clear on what you want for this rule to work. Doors will open to you constantly, and unless you know what you want, you won't know if you have been lucky enough to get it.

To be a lucky person in this world you must have a vision of your life. Otherwise you will walk through any door, and whims, aimlessness and fate will direct your life. [I didn’t understand this last phrase]

3. Entourages make opportunities for luck

You’ll find more four-leafed clovers if everyone is hunting them for you, than if you're searching alone. So invest in yourself by hiring people to help you create luck. An assistant at work, a cleaning person at home — whatever you need to free up clover-hunting time. Examine every task you do that does not, in some way, allow you to knock on doors that might open to big-time luck. Delegate the luckless work so you can concentrate on your vision. Consider using the money you might spend on movies or lattes to pay an assistant. And every entourage should include trusted advisors – a mentor who will steer you to the good clover patches. Don't go picking without one.

4. Surround yourself with lucky people.

Successful people have successful friends. There is, of course, the chicken and egg question. For example, did Sam Waksal befriend Martha Stewart *because* she was rich and famous or because he liked her? You and I will never know, but they did hang out together — along with all their other rich, successful friends (whether either is truly lucky is debatable and probably depends on your personal value system). And that's where the odds come in. Don't worry about why or when lucky people find each other. Just play the odds, and make sure you are hanging out with lucky people now.

5. Don't tell other people they were lucky

We all want to believe that we have accomplished some great feat through personal skill and ability — not luck. If you say it was because of luck, then it seems as though we had nothing to do with making something happen. So don’t tell someone who’s just achieved an important goal that they are lucky. Maybe they are, but you should focus on the skill they used to make their luck Besides, showing respect and admiration for others — not to mention hanging around with a winner — makes you look good..

If you hate your acquaintance for being lucky, stifle that feeling until you get home and can curse and scream until you feel better. But remember that no one seems very lucky while jealously screaming about his or her neighbor. And don’t forget Rule No. 4. Stop screaming and go out hang out with this person.

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How to do workplace sports talk

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For those of you who cannot shut up about this weekend's Super Bowl, think about your impact on the workplace atmosphere: A study of Harvard Business School graduates found that in 85 percent of the cases — drum roll, please — men initiated sports talk. This is because female population does not care about spectator sports with nearly the fervor of the male population.

Of course, small talk should be easy, inclusive, and non-offensive. The weather comes to mind as a safe topic — unless someone's mother just died in a hurricane. The price of gas is safe — just don't start placing blame. Commenting on the new furniture in the office is a good tactic because it affects everyone.

Sports talk is not like the weather. Those who initiate sports talk at work alienate people who do not follow sports. And when sports-talk gets to the metaphor stage, the whole company is in trouble. When the sales manager says, “We’re using a long-pass strategy,” the sports-ignorant may continue to go after small accounts, and then there is no strategy at all. So those of you who initiate team-building meetings with talk about sports should consider the fact that you might be undermining teamwork by talking about other people’s teams.

I do not differentiate watching soap operas during the week from watching sports on the weekend: both strike me as a vapid escape from ones own reality. But people who want to be in charge are the people most likely to enjoy competing, so it’s natural that the leaders of the workplace talk sports. And it makes sense that if you want to be friendly with the leaders of the workplace, you need to be able to talk sports.

Luckily, you don’t actually need to be capable of playing the sport to understand it. Exhibit A: the beer-bellied couch potatoes who pontificate on football. Exhibit B: me. I play basketball very well and have never played football, and when it comes to analogies, I feel equally competent in both arenas.

Another step I’ve taken to fit in at work is to follow the soap-opera aspect of sports. This is not difficult to do because:

1. It satisfies my need for intrigue, which would otherwise require hours with the National Enquirer.

2. Personal problems (Mike Tyson has a temper) are much easier to remember than personal statistics (Mike Tyson had X knockouts in X number of years).

3. The New York Times Magazine (registration required) does an amazing job of covering sports as if it were drama. (My favorite — a recent article about a grade school aged skateboarder who won sponsorship from Nike. Now I can talk for hours on the perils of corporate sponsorship for athletes.)

The great thing about the drama of sports is that once you read a story, it’s good for more than a few years of workplace chatter (e.g., Venus's stint at fashion school or Michael Jordan’s family life).

If you can’t stand the idea of reading about sports, try this: Go to a gym. Learn a lot about weight training; people love to talk about their workouts at work. You can impress someone with your knowledge of squat techniques to the point where you will get out of having to talk about other sports-related trivia. Because, after all, people who talk about sports at work are just looking for an easy, non-threatening way to connect with people that is not as obvious as talking about the weather.

So okay, sports talk is workplace behavior that is non-inclusive of women, but so are a lot of other things, like, impromptu meetings in the men's room and posters of naked women in cubicles. So battle the latter when you can and capitulate to the sports talk. If you can't figure out how to fake it in a sports talking office, check out the book Talk Sports Like a Pro, by Jean McCormick. If you are one of the sports talk promoters in your office try reading a section of the newspaper that is not sports. It'll give you something else to talk about even when the Super Bowl looms large.

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Learn to give a compliment

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The problem with being nice is that it is not very interesting. It's the people with dirt to dish who are magnets at the water cooler.

But if you want your boss to like you, give him compliments. I know, that sounds like I'm telling you to brownnose. Instead, I'm telling you to find genuine ways to compliment your boss.

I never knew how important it is to compliment a boss until I complimented mine, mostly by accident. My boss gave a speech packed with bad news to employees, and I knew it had been hard on him. So after the meeting, I stopped by his office to tell him privately, “You delivered the bad news really well. People were shocked, but they listened to you, and you made them hopeful.”

His face brightened, and he said, in a surprised voice, “Really?”

I realized immediately how much my input had meant to him. How surprised he was to know I thought he did well and how much he respected my assessment. It seemed pathetic, really. I had thought he was a more confident guy than that. But that's the thing about complimenting your boss: It's disarming and makes your boss think of you as an equal

Studies show, in fact, that powerful people think that people who praise them are smarter and more likeable than those who don't. This may be because powerful people receive fewer compliments than the rest of us.

Not surprisingly, it is the job of powerful people act as though they don't care what anyone else thinks of them. But everyone likes — and needs — compliments, and one reason for the dearth of them at the top is that men give fewer compliments than women, and we all know who dominates the top ranks.

So start crafting your compliments now.

But don't brownnose. The difference between a genuine compliment and a desperate brownnosing attempt is empathy and insight. If you understand what worries your boss, and what she is trying hardest to achieve personally, then you will easily spot opportunities for praise. Don't just say “good job” for the sake of it. And don't just say “good job” either. Carefully craft a compliment in an area that is particularly important to your boss.

Why? The most effective compliments are very specific. And creative words are more memorable than standard words, according to research by Mark Knapp of the University of Texas. Praise of character is the most rare and most memorable praise of all. For example, “Nice job of being compassionate while you were laying everyone off.”

That said, your boss needs to view you as a trusted resource. This means you need to be able to give him bad news as well as good news. I will never forget the employee who told me, “You know how everyone laughs at your jokes at the staff meeting? Well, the jokes are not that funny, but since all those people report to you, they laugh. You should stop with the jokes.”

I was crushed to hear that I was not funny. But it would have been worse if I had been allowed to go on and on. (Though sometimes I tell myself that I really was funny and that particular employee just didn't get my humor.) Still, this person's subsequent compliments meant more to me because I knew she was honest.
I also remember when a boss pulled me into her office and said, “Joe (not his real name) is accusing me of leading him on romantically. This is a serious accusation since I am his boss. Do you think other people perceive me as leading him on?”

I was floored that my boss would ask me this question. Especially since she may have already been in a legal mess. But I was flattered that she trusted me to give her an honest answer. (The guy was a nut case.)

So give genuine compliments, but offer insightful criticism, as well. And remember, if you compliment your boss, she'll view you as a smarter person than she did previously and begin to take all your comments more seriously.

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10 counter-intuitive career tips

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1. Don't be the hardest worker.
No one can work 70-hour weeks forever without losing their mind — or at least their perspective. You need to pace yourself. Besides, at this kind of pace, you may not always the best worker, but you’ll surely look like the most desperate.

2. Hire people you wouldn't want as friends.
Diverse business teams are more successful than homogenous teams. Creating diversity doesn't mean hiring one guy from each fraternity. It means hiring people who scare you, disagree with you and think in totally different ways than you.

3. Don’t fear failure.
Most people who have wild success have wild failure first. Have your failure early and significantly so that you're primed for success.

4. Learn to write direct mail.
A resume is a piece of direct mail. At best, it will get a 10-second scan from a hiring manager trying to decide whether to interview you. Know how to control what happens in those 10 seconds. Hint: You don't want the person to spend that time reading “References available upon request.”

5. Bake cookies for your team.
Surprise people with your caring and kindness. They will view you — and your mistakes — much more generously. Also, showing your soft side at the office is risky. Cookies are softness without the risk that you're revealing too much.

6. Give the brand of you a rest.
You cannot get to the top alone, so stop looking at yourself like you're a one-man show. Education is the No. 1 factor in determining who will be successful. The caliber of your stable of mentors is the No. 2 factor. So start looking outside yourself. You need help.

7. Blend in.
Do not stand out for how your dress. Stand out for your intelligence and creativity. If you dress in a way that makes people look at your clothes, then you say “look at me for my clothes”. If you dress in a way where no one notices what you are wearing then you force people to look at you for your brains. Remember, though, that boring, frumpy fashion stands out as much as flashy, funky fashion.

8. Toss the business books: Read fiction.
Your career is as dependent on your people skills as it is on your professional skills, so read books and magazines that help you to understand people. Read novels your co-workers recommend, and you'll have reliable repartee for weeks. Besides, most non-fiction tells you about peoples' mistakes, but fiction describes what’s achievable.

9. Say no frequently.
Be choosy about how you spend your time so that each project you work on becomes a great bulleted item on your resume. Don't work on projects that don't matter, will get killed or are clearly mismanaged. When your boss asks you to do something you don't have time for, remind her of her priorities and say you want to work on what’s most important to her. This is a professional way of saying no to unimportant assignments.

10. Ignore the urgent stuff.
Most urgent items on your to-do list are not big-picture items. But it’s the big-picture tasks that will make a significant difference in your career. So block off time each day to work solely on big-picture aspects of your to-do list. You don't have to be a visionary at work. But if you aren’t a visionary for your life, who will be?

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Don’t ditch the company party

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For all of you who are plotting to ditch your company's holiday party, forget it: You have to go. And for all of you who are really excited about the holiday party, you can also forget it: The open bar is off-limits to you.

Before I launch into a diatribe against people who ditch company parties, let me just say that I am not a fan of the company holiday party. For one thing, not everyone has a December holiday in his or her life, so the concept is culturally alienating. For another thing, in most cases, holiday party means Christmas party with a token menorah hanging from the rafters: More cultural alienation. But my biggest complaint is that company parties are almost never on company time; they are unpaid overtime for employees.

That said, when I have attended “holiday” parties at which the only holiday is Christmas, I have pretended to have a good time. And you will have to do this, too, because the people who are promoted in corporate America are the people who fit in. Console yourself with the idea that if you are successful in corporate life, you can run your own company and abolish all holiday shenanigans from your offices.

People who blow off company parties look like snobs. Everyone has something better to do that night. But the people who actually DO something better are dissing the people who show up. You will get more done at the office if people like you, and attending one or two office parties is a small price to pay for co-workers who do favors for you when your projects are behind schedule. Luckily, you do not need to be the first there and the last to leave. Show up, make sure people who know you see that you're there. And slip out as soon as you can without being rude.

Some times you have to attend client’s holiday parties. The number one thing to remember when participating in holiday parties — either at a client’s or your own office — is that it is a chance to enhance your image. So since you don't wear short skirts to client meetings, don't show up to a client's Christmas party as Santa's hottest elf. Leverage annoying conventions like grab bags to remind people that you are clever and thoughtful. Buy a good gift but follow the rules: Paying $15 for a $10 grab-bag gift is cheating and dishonest, and stupid gag gifts are just that – stupid.

And even though everyone knows not to get rip-roaring drunk at an office party, people do it all the time. Remember in junior high school when the drug awareness counselor told you to be ready to “just say no?” with a prepared speech when friends tried to push you wayward? You probably didn't use the speech then, but you can use it now. No matter how boring and intolerable the party is, the open bar is not your last opportunity in this lifetime for free mixed drinks. Surely you have a friend who is getting married or getting dumped. Save the ten Cosmopolitans for that event. The only way to manage your image effectively is to do it sober.

You should also buy your boss a gift. Not because she is starving or has a hankering for a fruit basket, but because a gift is an excuse to write a card. Take the time to thank your boss for what she's doing to help you. Be genuine and specific so you won’t seem like a brown nose. Maybe your boss has actually done very little for you, but I would bet money he thinks he's been very helpful. So you can thank him for trying, even if he has failed. After all, isn’t being generous and understanding what the holidays are for?

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Don’t tell me you’re busy

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Let’s abolish the word busy. When you ask someone, “How have you been?” and they say, “Busy,” it doesn’t mean anything. I’m sick of it. We all have the same 24 hours to fill. Everyone’s are filled with something.

The difference is that the “busy” people feel frenetic during those hours. Those of you who walk around telling everyone how busy you are, get a grip. Make some tough choices and calm down. There’s a big difference between a busy day and a full day. The former is so frantic that you aren’t effective.

Don’t tell me you can’t help it. You can. Here are the steps to take:

1. Recognize that a frenetic life is a life half lived. You should aim for “Flow,” a concept from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is a unique state of mind where productivity and creativity are at their highest. Csikszentmihalyi shows, in his wide-ranging study, that Flow generates the grand ideas, phenomenal work, and intense, rewarding experiences that people identify with happiness.

Flow occurs when you are fully present and engaged in what you are doing; the concept of time melts away in a commitment to the goal-oriented activity. This feeling requires being occupied and engaged for uninterrupted chunks of your day without ever once thinking that you’re rushed for time. People who are busy do not get this feeling.

2. Recognize that you are addicted to busy. You like what busy does for you.
Busy gives you an excuse for poor performance. Busy gives you a way to ignore parts of your life that are falling apart and need attention. And when what you do makes you feel inadequate — for example, if you’re a volunteer, taking care of a parent, meditating or doing other things that are not valued by society — busy gives you something to say that society does value.

Many people mistakenly feel that busy means important. But busy really means out of control. A full day means planned and prioritized. A busy day means frenetic and unorganized. Full is fine. It is expected. But important people have full days, not busy days, because important people can’t afford to be out of control.

3. Prioritize. This does not mean making a to-do list. Nor does it mean making a list of career goals. You need to list what you want in life. It should be a short list, because life is short. Don’t make a list of dreams; you need to give up your dreams. Not all, but most.

This is because being an adult means making choices. It means admitting that we cannot do everything and choosing to devote the time we have to what’s most important. By not making choices, you aren’t facing the realities of adulthood. By scheduling your days with more things than you can accomplish, you are not taking control of your life. You’re letting chance take control. Chance will dictate what gets done because you refuse to prioritize.

4. Say no. Whenever someone asks you to do something, be ready to say no. Your priorities at work, home, and during your personal and networking time should be clear.

Do not worry that you’ll hurt someone’s feelings by saying no. To do something well, you must be focused. That takes self-discipline. But when you say yes to please someone, it shows you lack the self discipline to be truly focused. Saying no is a gift to the people and projects that are the priorities in your life.

You do not automatically have to say yes to everything you’re asked to do at work either. Your boss establishes your priorities. If she then gives you work that would compromise those priorities, you can refuse (with an explanation). Sticking to the plan will makes you look smart and committed.

5. Change how you talk. Don’t ever say again that you’re busy. If this is your current response, realize you can’t bear to give up your dreams and being busy veils your fear of underperformance. You need to say something more honest than busy.

When you have done the first four steps, you will no longer be busy. You will have room to be focused and enthralled. Then, when someone says, “How have you been?” you will have something more interesting and engaging to say than “Busy.”

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Make office politics work for you

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Everyone stop working right now. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Does my boss like having one-on-one meetings with me?
2. Do my co-workers like going to lunch with me?

If you cannot answer yes to both these questions, then you are focusing on the wrong stuff at work. It doesn't matter how well you do your job. If you can't get along with the people at work, no one will want to work with you.

Larry works at a company where new employees are on a one-year probation while they do four rotations. Larry has had reviews after three of his four rotations. The third reviewer told him he is unprofessional. When Larry asked other reviewers why they had not told him this they said, “Management told us not to.”

Larry's interpersonal skills are so lacking that the company decided early on that they want him out after a year. Larry realized it was too late to save his job, but he thought there might be hope for his ego, so he went to a lawyer. The lawyer said it is not illegal to be a bad manager or to run a company poorly.

Larry's problem is that he cannot gauge how people expect him to act in a given situation. And he cannot adjust how he conducts himself depending on the circumstances.

For some people, this skill comes naturally — they are chameleons who can mirror other peoples' moods. Chameleons know what to say when their boss's pet gerbil dies and they know what to say when a co-worker suggests a date. Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer, for example, acts differently when he meets with Wall St. analysts than when he meets will Dell customer service reps.

Some people have one way of conducting themselves and have no idea how to change for a given situation. These are the people who make inappropriate jokes at a client meeting or are too stiff and formal at a company picnic. Chameleons generally disgust these people, but I've got news for you: chameleons don't get fired for being unprofessional.

Most people who hate office social dynamics think people have to change who they are to succeed. But good social skills at work are really a reflection of empathy for the people around you. Anyone who is being their best self — kind, considerate, expressive, interested in others — will instinctively do the right thing at the office.

If you are being your best self, it won't matter that there are difficult personalities at the office. So stop blaming the people you work with for being misfits and morons. People with good social skills can get along with almost anyone; I'm not saying you have to like everyone, I'm saying that you have to make them like you: Figure out what matters to them, what makes them tick, and then speak to that when you interact.

I think you will find, though, that once you get someone at work to like you, you will like them back. When the ugly guy asks you to dance, he is only ugly until he asks you and then his discerning taste makes him more attractive.

So back to Larry. He is young, so he asked his parents what to do. They said, “You can't change other people, but you can change yourself.” (If Larry's parents wrote a career advice column, I would read it. This is good advice for almost any interpersonal problem — at work, at home, anywhere.) So he is seeing a career coach to help him with interpersonal skills: Good idea.

Work is not only about “getting things done” but also getting people to like you. I applaud those of you are hard workers. But let's face it, most work is easily replaceable, especially when five hundred people would love to have your job. Your personality, however, is not so easily replaced. So get people to appreciate you for your interpersonal skills — and you will not only have job security; you'll probably have a spot on the fast track.

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Getting credit for your ideas is overrated

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Your success at work is dependent on your accomplishments, not your ideas. So can everyone please stop being so petty about whose ideas are whose?

A very small number of you are strategists and inventors. For you, your ideas make or break your career. So don't bother reading the rest of this column. For the rest of you, face the music: You are not paid to come up with ideas. You are paid to execute them.

So let's say you're a marketing manager and you have a great idea to spam the whole world to get them to buy soap. Spamming is not an innovation, and selling soap has been done before, too. The person who is a genius will be the person who can make a spam campaign work. That would require direct mail expertise, figuring out which product is most likely to sell, setting up fulfillment capabilities.

Let's say the spam campaign is a success. Who's the genius? The person with the idea to spam or the person who actually increased soap sales? Let me tell you something, in this economy, few companies can afford an “ideas guy”. Companies are hiring people who generate revenue: executors.

Look, I'm not saying the world doesn't need ideas. Ideas are great. And in the perfect world, everyone gets credit for the ideas they have. But the world isn't perfect, and people steal ideas at work. And while we fight off large imperfections like fake (Enron) companies, race discrimination and massive layoffs, getting credit for an idea is pretty small peanuts.

Yet still, I hear people complain about a stolen idea as if it was their first-born child. And sometimes I think maybe it was. Maybe the people who worry about a stolen idea the most are the people who have the fewest ideas. Ask yourself if your problem is not really thievery but scarcity. If you don't have a lot of ideas to begin with then you shouldn't bother trying to be known for your ideas. It's not who you are.

Most people who complain about stolen ideas peg their boss as the culprit. If you're in this category ask yourself this question: Is your job in jeopardy because your boss thinks you have no good ideas? In that case you probably need to start documenting your ideas on paper. But I have news for you: your boss probably doesn't like you if she recognizes you so little as to steal your brilliance and accuse you of lacking ideas. In that case, you can grovel for credit, but you should probably try to find a job working for someone else.

And here's a tip for when you're looking for that next job: Don't bother listing your great ideas on your resume. No one cares. Employers want to see resumes with quantified accomplishments. Replace “thought of opening a new sales channel” to “opened a sales channel and increased revenue x%”.

Maybe your boss steals just a few ideas, but is generally a good boss. In that case, ignore her ethical transgression. You have a limited number of times you can tell your boss she is bothering you. Use those times for instances when you will make more money. If your bonus is tied to having an original idea, then by all means, point out the idea that your boss stole so that you can collect your money. But if the only thing that a stolen idea harms is your ego, then get over it.

Besides, the best way to get a promotion is to make your boss love you. And you can make your boss love you by making her feel smart. If your boss feels smart it doesn't mean that she thinks you are not smart. Don't be so insecure. It should be enough that you know that you have good ideas.

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