Twentysomething: 5 ways people get screwed early in a career

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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 card. But it’s true. In college, you had professors to encourage intellectual exploration and advisors to make sure you stayed on track for graduation.

Unfortunately, in the workforce your boss is looking out for the bottom line and you don’t automatically get assigned to someone who will look out for your best interests (you have to find your own mentors and even then they could have their own agenda). I graduated a year early, so I was especially eager and open to managerial manipulations. So, class of 2008, here are some situations to look out for.

1. You could get screwed on a project basis.
If you don’t know what you want from your job, then how can you expect anyone else to know what kind of work to give you? It’s not your employer’s job to help you find yourself, so if you don’t have a clear picture of what you want to do, then you are an easy target for tasks that no one else wants to do. Not every manager is good at delegating or figuring out other people’s strengths, so the employees who know what they want and ask for it make their managers’ lives easier. Those who don’t, get stuck with the leftovers.

2. You could get screwed out of money.
In the past, I’ve been promised raises, and I failed to get it in writing because I trusted my bosses. The first time, I was working at a taco stand over the summer and my manager got fired a week later, meaning I missed out on that extra 25 cents an hour (tragic, I know). The second time my boss gave me a verbal raise but never told accounting. I straightened it out a few paychecks later, but I should have emailed him to confirm immediately after our meeting and avoided the confusion later. Another unfortunate salary manipulation is what I call the preemptive raise. Basically, you get a small raise when you’re not expecting it and they know that you won’t try to negotiate. But you should always negotiate so that you establish yourself as someone who knows what they’re worth.

3. You could screw up your image.
People worry about the stigma of job hopping, but sometimes it’s the only way to gain respect. Say you were interning somewhere and got offered a full time job at the company. Your parents would be elated, but I would caution you not to jump in without weighing your options. First of all, you’ll always be remembered as the Intern, so people will continue asking you to fetch coffee and locate office supplies. My first job out of college was as an admin but a new position opened within a few months and I grabbed it. Even a year after I’d moved up, people still treated me like the receptionist because that’s what I was doing when they met me. If your company thinks you’re worthy of a full time job, then trust your abilities and someone else will offer you a position with more money and more respect as well.

4. You could get screwed into working evenings and weekends.
If you don’t have 2.5 kids and a spouse waiting at home, then in many industries, you’ll be expected to put in extra hours (and no, you don’t necessarily get comp time or overtime). It’s not fair, but that’s just how it is. Take it from someone who didn’t have time to date her first year out of college, because she was running around helping at events on Friday and Saturday nights. I suggest you put in the extra time when you can so that no one can fault you when you have a family commitment or a friend’s birthday party. After all, you have outside obligations, too. Don’t let your eagerness to please prevent you from having a life.

5. You could get screwed by lack of feedback.
Lots of managers are uncomfortable giving feedback (especially negative), so they’ll avoid it if at all possible. For example, I once had a manager say to me “annual reviews are coming up in a month, but since you just started, we’ll wait until next year.” Fourteen months passed before I had a performance review, and I was blindsided by some of the comments I got, because no one brought up issues that had been going on for over a year! You can’t fix it if you don’t know it’s broken, so you should take it upon yourself to check in with your boss periodically and avoid any surprises at your review. You could even ask what you need to do in the next six months to qualify for a raise. They may not give you clear directions, but at least you’ll show that you want to excel in your job.

Susan Johnston’s blog is The Urban Muse.

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How to deal with getting fired (from Yahoo)

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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 time.

It turned out that we would both be there in December, so I asked him if he wanted to get together, and he said yes. His secretary said she’d email me the venue when the date was closer.

The week before, the venue turned out to be the Yahoo offices in New York. I thought that was weird for a casual meeting with a guy who did not even have his own office at that building. That is when I should have called to find out if we had a specific topic for the meeting.

When I got to the meeting my boss’s boss was there as well, so I knew there was a big topic. I told myself to never ever walk into another meeting in my life without knowing who is coming and why I am there. I told myself to stay calm and start looking for clues about our topic so I could mentally prepare.

They went on and on about some sort of technical problem that was happening that day. Of the three of us, two were nontechnical, so I realized this topic was selected due to nervous energy: A clue that this meeting would be really bad.

To his credit, the guy I thought I was friendly with got right down to the point: “We are not renewing your contract.”

The first thought I had was: When is my contract up?

And then I realized: Oh. Now.

The next thought I had was: Be poised. Do not break down right now.

I have been fired a lot. Sometimes it has not mattered, like when my grandma fired me from her bookstore because I kept reading on the job. Sometimes it has been a bad scene with me shaking because I was so scared – like when I was fired at Ingram Micro for using the computer for non-work-related stuff (Yes, people got fired for that in 1995.)

But I checked in with myself at Yahoo and realized that I was fine. I was not going to cry. I was actually in problem-solving mode.

So I asked why I was being fired.

Maybe you are thinking it’s because every week, 400 people leave comments on Yahoo saying how stupid I am. (And surely today’s final column at Yahoo Finance will break records for she-is-so-stupid comments.) But that’s not the reason my column was cancelled; Yahoo is about traffic, and according to Wikipedia, my column has some of the highest traffic on all of Yahoo.

It turns out that financial content gets a higher CPM (advertising rate) than career content. So while my column has a lot of traffic, Yahoo sells my career column to advertisers as part of the Yahoo Finance package, and I bring down the CPM of the whole package.

That’s a fair reason to cancel the column. And actually, if it were not resulting in a huge financial hit for me, it would be an interesting reason.

Here’s what a career advisor does when she is being fired: She tries to remember the advice she gives to everyone else when they are getting fired.

I asked if there’s another place I can write at Yahoo. This tactic is straight out of the book: Use your last moments to network, even if you are getting fired.

Here’s what my boss’s boss’s boss said: “You should write for Lifestyles. That is more women oriented.”

Immediately I was reminded of when my column was cancelled at Business 2.0 magazine. After I had recently announced that I was pregnant and said I did not plan to take any time off from writing the column.

My editor told me, as he was firing me, “Now that you’re going to be a mom you should try writing someplace like Working Mother.”

This advice from ex-bosses makes me question my own advice about getting help from people who are firing you. But still, discussions progressed at Yahoo to HotJobs, which is a Yahoo channel, and I could end up writing for them.

Also, a big trade publication called me last week to see if I want to write a column for them. The editor said that she sees me as such a huge risk taker, and she expects that the column will be a lot about that – how to take risks.

The thing is, I don’t think I’m a huge risk taker. I just choose the lifestyle I want first, before I choose my work. Lifestyle first means that I turned down entry-level bullshit jobs in favor of playing professional beach volleyball. Not because I was dying to have all my friends think I was a lunatic, but because I couldn’t believe people expect you to do mindless work after earning a college degree.

And the same is true now. I am a freelance writer because if I worked nine-to-five I wouldn’t see my kids. That’s my bottom line. There have been so many times when I’ve told myself that I can’t stand the instability of a freelancer’s life. But more than that, I can’t stand the idea that I would only see my kids on the weekends.

People ask me all the time how can they get this life that I have where I do something I love, get to make my own hours, and support a family. Seems great, right? But that life also comes with this: having no idea how I’ll get paid next. And it happens all the time.

Soon, I hope, I’ll be able to draw a salary from my startup. And my speaking career is going well enough that getting fired from Yahoo won’t kill me. But I am worried, and I think about not telling people that I feel worried because everyone who is negotiating with me now knows that money is super important to me, and I’m probably not going to walk away from an offer.

But more important than preserving an edge negotiating money is somehow documenting how hard it is to be true to yourself, how hard it is to be at risk all the time. It’s a tradeoff. Sometimes my life looks glamorous. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s all the same life though.

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5 Communication lessons learned in marriage counseling

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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 235 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 babysitters in Madison, Wisconsin is reading my blog, and maybe that’s why we now offer the highest paying babysitting job in town.

At this point we’ve been seeing the marriage counselor for a few months, and believe it or not, I’ve learned a thing or two about communicating. We all want to think that our communication problems at home are different from the communication problems we have at work. In fact, though, corporate training companies like VitalSmarts have shown that communication skills are the same at home and at work, just the stakes are higher at home, where getting fired is not just a new job hunt.

So in the spirit of acknowledging that work and home require the same communication skills, here is what I’ve learned so far:

1. Make sure the person you’re talking to is ready to hear what you’re saying.
One reason there are so many comments about my posts about my marriage is that men (it’s mostly men) fear the emasculation of my husband via blogging. There is, of course, little sense of irony among these men that my husband’s masculinity would be very precarious if a few blog posts could derail it.

Regardless, this post is about our marriage. So if these posts bother you, you should ask yourself why you are reading past this paragraph.

2. Instead of complaining, ask for what you want in concrete, measurable terms.
In counseling, my husband and I had the earth-shattering revelation that we are treating each other like crap. So, we each got to ask the person to do some things that would change that dynamic and help us feel better about our relationship.

My husband asked me to stop throwing things, which really pissed me off because I have thrown things twice, in fifteen years, both times at a wall, but he brings it up constantly like I have a track record for throwing daggers at his head.

Please, don’t send me emails about how even one thing thrown is traumatizing, okay? I had about ten million things thrown at me as a kid, and the police were at our house all the time, so throwing only twice, and relatively innocuously, is actually a triumph, and the result of ten years of therapy so I don’t repeat what my parents did. No kidding: Ten years.

Here’s what I asked from my husband: That he say or do one nice thing to me every day. He definitely got ripped off in this bargain. Do not write to me about how this is a metaphor for our marriage. It isn’t. In all marriages that reach a low point, both people are getting ripped off equally, or else someone would threaten to leave. And neither of us is leaving.

3. Give feedback if expectations aren’t met, even if the effort is good.
The first day comes, and he writes me a note to thank me for taking care of the kids. Here’s what it said: Thanks for taking care of the kids. Here’s where he put the note: On my Facebook wall.

I didn’t even know he had an account on Facebook. And before you go to mine, let me confess that my assistant does a lot of my Facebook stuff – which is not uncommon because many professionals are on Facebook only because of peer pressure.

My assistant sends an email to me to let me know my husband says, Thank you for taking care of the kids.

I don’t want to tell my husband that he is crazy for posting stuff like this on my wall where thousands of people see it. But after three days of Facebook-based gratitudes, I remind him that my assistant manages my Facebook page.

He says, “Oh yeah. I forgot.” Then he keeps sending stuff there. He does chocolates. Then flowers. Then plants. By now, my Facebook page looks like a greenhouse.

I count the days until we will be back in a counseling session where I can ask for something different.

4. Take responsibility to make your boundary needs clear.
Then I got an email from Ryan P: “I see on Facebook that you and Nino got married. Congratulations.”

That’s when the Facebook thing became too much. I realized it was my husband’s way of doing our marriage publicly. Mine is blogging, his is Facebooking. So I wanted to tell my assistant to unmarry us because I don’t want to be linked to him online because I’m so sick of him. But Ryan P pointed out that if I do that, everyone would think that we got unmarried, “which would be worse than announcing that you’re married.” So I had my assistant fix it to say I’m married, but not say to whom.

5. You must keep talking. That’s the only way to make progress.
The other assignment we had from the marriage counselor was to have a conversation. Yes, that’s where we stand–we must be directed to talk with each other.

It takes us a while. I have been travelling a lot which throws off everyone’s schedule.

So on Friday night we put the kids to bed and we sit down to have our conversation. We sit on the kitchen floor because it’s already freezing in Madison and our house is hard to heat, but the kitchen is always warm. We sit across from each other on our impractical-for-a-kitchen but squishy-soft pink rugs. There is a soft hum from our refrigerator. There is an orange glow from the Halloween lights my son taped across the wall.

Our conversation topic is pre-selected for emotional safety: A book my husband’s reading. James Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.

My husband refers to this book as peak-oil literature. I am shocked to hear he’s reading anything at all because he spends so much time taking care of our kids.

He knows all the scenarios about what will happen if we cannot use technology to replace oil, and he feels strongly that it’s too late to make a difference with recycling. Here are things we talk about:

  • If we cannot transport food then we all have to farm. There will probably be a feudal system because only some people own farmable land.
  • Cuba is a test case for this. When they could not get oil from the Soviet Union, everyone had to farm. It has been deemed a success by agronomists.
  • There is some point when oil gets so expensive that it’s no longer useful for maintaining infrastructure and then infrastructure collapses and oil is worth nothing.

I ask a lot of questions. I find all this fascinating, and so does he. We talk about the author’s blog, Clusterfuck Nation, and I have a moment of blog-title envy. We talk about teaching our two kids to farm. From a book. Because how else would we know? And there really aren’t books like that because historically neighbors have taught each other. Besides, we would need oil to get the books to people.

I tell my husband that I like the idea of not having any oil. It’s a much more simple life, and it’s appealing to me. “We would need to live close to people we love. We’d spend a lot of time sitting on our pink rugs talking.”

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

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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 like Silicon Valley, that attract math and tech geniuses who often have sub-par social skills.

We know one boy with Asperger’s who taught himself to read books when he was two years old. Scientists surmise that learning to read books so fast consumes the part of his brain that should be learning to read social cues.

My son’s special education classroom was full of kids like that one — who used to pass through the education system labeled eccentric geniuses, only to graduate having never learned social skills and consequently falter in adulthood.

Today, educators take a child’s lack of social skills seriously. Parents should also. For educators, any nonverbal learning disability (like not being able to tell if someone cares about what you are talking about) is treated as significantly as a verbal learning disability (like not being able to speak.) Yet I am stunned by how many parents brush aside recommendations from educators to get help for their children by saying to themselves, “My child is so smart.”

Smart is not an endgame. Even in a toddler.

To understand why, look to the workplace. After where you go to school, social skills are the most important factor in whether you succeed or fail. I link to this research all the time, but frankly, if you need research to understand that the people who are best at office politics succeed at the office, then you are missing basic social cues already.

But here’s more evidence: Nine out of ten business schools consider communication and interpersonal skills “highly underrated as a differentiating factor for students,” according to CareerJournal. And Jeff Puzas at PRTM echos a cacophony of workplace voices when he says, “Most of what I do every day as a management consultant has to do with interpersonal skills, not my I.Q.”

And when you think about someone finding his way to success in the real world, consider the Wall St. Journal’s list of the traits that recruiters look for in business school candidates:

Communication and interpersonal skills

Original and visionary thinking

Leadership potential

Ability to work well within a team

Analytical and problem-solving skills

Notice that most of these skills are independent of intelligence. Smart is even less of an endgame for adults than children-and the standard for ability to work well with others is only getting higher, not lower: Generation Y is more team-oriented than prior generations.

So, it’s time for us to stop making excuses for poor social skills and start taking the problem as seriously as educators do. It’s painful for both children and adults who cannot navigate social settings. Kids sit on the sidelines on the playground; adults can’t maintain close relationships. It’s a limited life and it’s limited in the area where people have an inherent need to thrive.

I sense that people are going to argue with me here, but please consider that all the positive psychology research points to the fact that work does not make people happy. Relationships do. But we see the history of people with Asperger’s – Einstein, Mozart, John Forbes Nash – they did amazing work but could not maintain stable, intimate relationships.

Parents: Stop pretending that your child’s I.Q. matters more than their social skills. Get treatment for your child as soon as a professional recommends it. Respect that the risk of not being able to transition to the work world is significant, and so is the risk of waiting to see if your child will fail despite being brilliant.

Human beings learn social skills best at a very young age, when their brain is still forming. So celebrate that the government provides free training for children lacking social skills by using it. Start studying the playground. Respect what often seems insignificant to parents with small children-diagnoses of speech delay or disorder, and diagnoses of sensory integration, for example. Those issues threaten future development of social skills.

As an adult, one of the hardest parts of having low emotional intelligence is that you don’t realize it. People who are missing the cues have no idea they are missing them. So the most unable often have the least understanding of where they fall in the spectrum.

I’m going to tell you something harsh: If your career is stuck, it’s probably because of poor social skills. People who don’t know what they want to do with themselves but have good social skills don’t feel stuck, they feel unsure. People who are lacking social skills feel like they have nowhere to go.

Lost people feel possibilities. Stuck people do not feel possibilities. Ask yourself which you are. And if you feel suck, stop looking outside yourself to solve the problem. You need to change how you interact with people.

Another idea for how to figure out where you fall in the social skills spectrum is to take a self-diagnostic test. Here is one at Wired magazine about Aperger’s, and here is one about emotional intelligence. Or give a test to the people you work with – a 360-degree review will tell you in no uncertain terms if you are being held back because people don’t like you.

Hold it. Did you just say, “If people don’t like me maybe it’s their fault!” Forget it. People with good social skills can get along with just about everyone.

So help your kids to form intimate relationships with peers, and help yourself, too. In fact, as an adult you can learn how to compensate for lack of social skills by watching how schools are teaching the kids to do it.

Pay attention. Because when it comes to our job – no matter what our job is – it’s the relationships that make us happy, not the work. That’s why I.Q. doesn’t matter.

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Twentysomething: The rising rift between gen X and gen Y

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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 generations have similarities, sure. Technological savvy and the willingness to rebel against boomer norms brought us together for a short time. But as more of Gen Y enters the workplace, Gen X is becoming increasingly marginalized, and the fundamental differences of how we operate are now dividing us along fierce lines:

1. Different job markets
Generation Y is a demographic powerhouse entering into our choice of jobs. With the world conspiring in our favor, we’ve already pushed the limits of the foundation Generation X laid.

Generation X tried to change the status quo while entering into one of the worst job markets since the Great Depression. They scorned the good ole boys, but had to play by their rules anyway, while millenials are able to create our own rules.

The fact that Gen Xers worked hard with little success beyond casual Fridays means that they are “only mentioned to be polite” in generational discussions. This is aggravated by Generation Y’s readiness to assume all the leadership positions when the Boomer generation retires. Gen X can’t seem to win and Gen Y reaps the rewards.

2. Cynicism vs. Idealism
Since the Gen Xers weren’t able to create the workplace change they desired, it’s no wonder that I get the feeling that Generation X is inherently skeptical of who I am. They’re weary of how easy success comes to me, of my desire to bring them into the mix, and of my idealism.

Unlike our older co-workers, Generation Y doesn’t operate out of fear or distrust, but the possibility of what can be done. I realize that Generation Y is new to the workplace. To Gen X, I just don’t get how the world works. And while it’s quite possible that we won’t change the world like we anticipate, why shoot for just the possible? Idealism is what changes the world.

3. You vs. Us
The Gen X focus on distrust makes them solitary workers, preferring to rely solely on their selves to see a project through, while Generation Y tends to want to support and work together. A Gen Xer is often found at the office, squeezing by on their flextime, and blocking out the world with their iPod.

Generation X is no doubt feeling like a stepping stone generation, and many are, in fact, choosing to align themselves with Generation Y rather than fade into the background. The founder of MySpace went so far as to lie about his age.

I say the more the merrier. There is strength and value to realism, and there is strength and value to optimism. That’s why we have to work together. What can I say? I’m a team player.

Rebecca Thorman blogs at Modite.

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Five workplace practices that should be over. Now.

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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 this that all voice mails you leave at the company go straight to email. And you can do the same if you use eVoice.

Young people treat their list of missed calls as a page system. And they call the person back. No extra step for listening to the message.

Except at work, where the old people leave messages. My twenty-three year old brother used to be an analyst at a big investment bank, and he and his friends were so annoyed with the managing directors’ obsessive use of voicemail that they used to make fun of it. For example, they would call someone and leave a message to say they were going to the bathroom. (My brother guest blogged about this here.)

2. The reply-to-all button
This button should be hidden in all email software. You should have to click through five menus to find the option because that’s how many times you should reconsider before you reply to all. This was a great button to have in 1993 when even the busiest people only got fifty emails a day. Back then reply to all was a way to have an inclusive conversation.

Now reply to all is only a way to annoy people and make yourself look foolish.

And here’s a love note to all of you who think you are being really efficient by hitting reply to all: When there are more than four people in the send field, I don’t read the email because I know that if there’s any action item in that email, someone else will do it.

3. The workplace candy machine
I’m not saying that work should be paternalistic, but I am saying that your employer should not be a crack dealer. And when I have sat within twenty yards of a candy machine, I felt like I had a drug dealer on my block. It is very, very difficult for me to have a hard problem at work and not let my mind wander to chocolate. And I’m not even overweight. So I can imagine it is much harder for people who are already not controlling their eating.

So I wonder, who feels good about the candy machine? The vendor, probably. But everyone else feels like crap after they eat a bag of m&m’s, and if you don’t feel like crap your body has acclimated to crap and the first culprit you should consider is the workplace vending machine. Instead, companies should have healthy micro market vending options which are becoming very popular in or near the workplace.

4. Soliciting money at work
What is up with people asking for sponsorships at work? If you want to do the breast cancer fun run, fine, but that doesn’t mean it’s my favorite charity. Why do we need to solicit at work for our charities? Why is that socially acceptable? I don’t get it. I don’t need my co-workers to choose my charities. They can choose their own.

Also, what is up with six-figure paycheck types asking me to sponsor them? Hello? Write yourself a check.

I think my bitterness over workplace check-writing comes from a few things. First, I was involved in a United Way campaign in the Fortune 500 where I was actually forced to go to a meeting in the middle of the workday about why it’s important to give to United Way. To me this felt like mixing church and state. I go to work to earn money, not to be told what to spend it on.

Second, I was the number-one girl scout in Illinois for cookie sales two years in a row. You know how I did it? My mom sold the cookies at her office. So I know the genesis of all those parents passing around a coffer for their kids stuff: Guilt. Instead of making your co-workers cough up bucks for your kids’ escapades, try this: Being personally involved. Then you won’t feel so compelled to make up for it with money.

5. The 800-person office party
The only thing a party like this is good for is anonymous hookups with the marketing girl you see in the hallway on Thursdays. Otherwise, there is no point in a party this big. Its way more fun to go out with people you really do work with after work.

It used to be that a big office party was a way to know your company cares. Now you know your company cares if they siphon money off to training programs. And you know what? Good training is so much fun, it’s like a party anyway.

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Five ways to make yourself a workplace superstar

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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 be very hard to replace. Average performers don’t get those benefits. Aim to be a superstar so that you can have more options in your career for creating a life you want.

1. Have gaps in your resume
You want to be known as a good thinker, right? But good thinkers need time to think, and that’s what gaps in resumes are for. Sure, for the unemployable, the gaps are times of financial terror and emotional doom. But if you feel confident that you can get another job, then taking time off to think, get perspective, try something totally new — all these things actually make you more employable.

If you’re in the middle of a gap in your resume right now, and you think it might be the not-so-good kind of gap, and might make you unemployable, then start doing something exciting and rejuvenating with your time while you are job hunting. Then the gap will look intentional and exciting.

It’s all about spin, really, so take time to think and then hire a resume writer to help you turn your resume into the kind that tells the story of a great thinker.

2. Cut corners at work to make time for the gym
Most people who don’t get regular exercise say that job interferes with their exercise time. This is absurd reasoning, because people who don’t exercise do worse at work than people who do.

People who exercise perform better at work than people who don’t exercise. People who exercise think more clearly and are more even-tempered. And the self-discipline that it takes to exercise regularly spills over into other areas of life, making people who exercise more able to reach work goals than people who don’t exercise.

So cut corners at work to make time to exercise. Your work performance will go down a bit at first. But on balance, your performance will go up once you start reaping the benefits of exercise throughout your life.

3. Start a side business
One of the best ways to stand out in your career is to make sure you always have a lot of options. A great way to create options is to build your skill set so that you’re adaptable within your field and on the cutting edge of your specialty.

But there always comes a time when the opportunities all look bad. When that happens, you should know you can start something of your own. Entrepreneurship used to be starting a company in your garage and growing it to be big and take over the world. And most people failed, because not many people can take over the world.

But today, entrepreneurship is often about microbusinesses you can do at home, while you have a day job. And success is about creating a work life that accommodates your personal needs. Success is also about keeping your learning curve high, no matter how much money you make.

For all these reasons, starting a business while you work in a cube at someone else’s business is a smart way to go. It ensures that you’re never stuck. And it’s not actually that hard to do.

4. Turn down promotions
The raise you get when you get a promotion is absurd. It’s usually less than 10% of your salary, and it’s not going to change your life. Surely you can find something to ask for that is more meaningful than that.

Also, when a company offers a promotion, the company says, Here is the next step in our ladder, and we’d like you to climb it. But why would you follow a path laid out for you by someone else? You should customize you career according to your workplace strengths and your personal needs, Laying out a path for yourself is difficult, but necessary. You need to understand yourself, and then you can tell your boss what you really need. Think about mentoring, training, getting on a really interesting project, or asking for flexible hours. These are things that will make a long-term difference in your career.

Not convinced? The process of giving someone a promotion is usually watching them succeed in one type of work and then giving that person new responsibilities that they do not necessarily have talent for. And that is why a promotion is more stressful than a divorce. So ask for other rewards instead. Really.

5. Start a blog
Superstars distinguish themselves from everyone else by being known for their ideas. This doesn’t mean they sit in a room and think all day. Execution matters. But you need both. That’s why a blog is so great for putting you at the top of your field.

A good blog presents your opinions on a wide range of issues within your chosen specialty. If you can post regularly you show not only that you have the self-discipline to produce, but you can make a plan and execute it over time, and, most of all, you show everyone the way that you think about issues in your field.

One of the most exciting things about specializing is taking part in a high-level discussion about cutting edge topics. Someone needs to lead that discussion, and increasingly, it is the bloggers who are doing that.

So, here are some easy instructions for starting a blog.

As with many things in life, it’s harder to make the mental commitment to seeing yourself as a superstar than it is to take the steps to get there. The core of being a superstar is not about what you do in your work, it’s what you do in your head: Believe in yourself and your ability to stand out for your ideas and then focus on being that person in whatever you do.

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Office politics encourages self-improvement

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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 another.

To that end, being good at office politics improves your ability to meet goals while also adhering to your core values. Here are five reasons why.

1. Office politics reward people who are genuinely kind.

The people who think office politics is about kissing up are the ones who don’t understand being nice.

Being nice is taking the time to figure out what’s important to someone and helping him or her get what they want. This requires empathy, compassion, and an intention to do good. Who can argue that this isn’t positive stuff?

People who try to do favors without taking the time to understand what others actually want are brownnosers. It’s empty favors and vapid praise that give office politics a bad name. But there’s justice in this world: People who attempt office politics without the empathy and compassion it requires actually do very poorly at them.

2. Office politics reward good time-managers.

To be good at office politics, you need to take the time to understand other peoples’ work so you can give them help when you can (after getting your own work done first, of course).

You shouldn’t expect others to take time to teach you what they do. Part of doing a good deed is not requiring extra work from someone in order to perform the good deed for them.

So only good time-managers succeed at office politics, because only the highly productive can feel comfortable enough with their own workload to take on tasks that require lots of mental energy but aren’t on their to-do list per se.

That said, if you think you can be good at your job without making time for office politics, you’re wrong. The hardest workers aren’t the ones who get promoted. It’s the people who are most liked at the office who get promoted.

3. Office politics is the answer to burnout.

It’s very fashionable to complain about feeling burned-out at work. Fortunately, office politics is a way to solve the burnout problem.

Burnout doesn’t come from too much work — it comes from doing the wrong kind of work. So you can solve your burnout problems by figuring out who has the power to give you rewarding work. Figure out how you can help that person, and once you’ve made their life better ask them for help making your life better. People like to help others who’ve helped them.

You might argue that it’s better to do good deeds without expecting anything in return, and that’s true. So go do some. But you can be both altruistic and political at the same time. They’re not mutually exclusive — doing both just requires more time and energy.

4. Office politics is a road to self-knowledge.

Some people are easy to read. You see your boss’ weakness, say, and jump in to help overcome that weakness. Or you see when a co-worker is scared and offer support at just the right time.

But some people are baffling. One or two will always misinterpret what you say, or always think you’re annoying, or always exclude you from office activity. These are the people you can learn the most from, because you have to examine your own weaknesses to see why you can’t connect with them. And you have to challenge yourself and stretch your strengths to meet them on their own terms.

Don’t tell me some people are too difficult — being good at office politics means being able to get along with anyone. Aim to be that kind of person and you’ll be more likable and more capable in work and life.

5. Office politics is about honesty.

Why are you at work? To grow, to learn, to support yourself, and to have fun. How do you meet these goals? By carefully setting yourself up to get what you want from the people you spend your day with.

It’s absurd to think that you go to work only to meet company goals. That’s not enough, because you won’t stay with the company forever. Be loyal, sure, but be loyal to the idea of doing good work for whoever employs you. And be loyal to your own goals — to the idea that you owe it to yourself to find paths to grow.

Office politics is the process of meeting these goals — for yourself and for the company you work for. Those who are most dedicated to productive, honest, and meaningful work are also most dedicated to the art of office politics.


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How to be likable to people who are complaining about you

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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 recent study by SkillSoft tells which factors employees see as most important to their wellbeing. Here’s the list:

1. Flexible working hours
2. Working with people I like
3. Having enough annual leave
4. Having time off on short notice
5. Enjoying the job
6. Getting along well with colleagues
7. Feeling liked by my colleagues
8. Getting along well with my boss
9. Being trusted by my boss
10. Having a clear understanding of my goals

Five of these top ten factors of workplace happiness have to do with interpersonal relationships. So it seems that most people understand the importance of being well liked at work.

But not everyone knows how to achieve this. And to be fair, it’s not easy. Being well liked at work means taking a lot of risks, and when it comes to deciding to make a risky move, we are inherently reticent. Daniel Gilbert’s research shows we are way better at seeing the downside than the upside.

Good social skills start with being vulnerable. If you want to create a relationship with someone, you need to open up a little piece of yourself so they can see inside and find something to connect with. Some relationships will be close, some will be casual, but all will be based on you figuring out how to open up just a bit. Keith Ferrazzi gave a great step-by-step approach to this process in his book, Never Eat Alone, and he gave the Cliff’s Notes version when I interviewed him. But the bottom line is that in order to make a real connection with someone, you have to take a real risk.

Most of the mail I get about social skills at work is from people who feel like they’ve messed up. When it comes to social skills – and any skill, really – you can judge your own competence by how well you manage yourself in a mess.

Eric Dezenhall is a publicist who specializes in managing situations where someone has messed up and the author of the book Damage Control. He says, “So much of crisis management comes down to basic likability. Do we like you?” Dezenhall says mental gymnastics to craftily shift the blame have unimpressive results. “It doesn’t matter how smart you are. What matters is if we like you.”

When things go wrong, the first thing you should consider is apologizing. Saying you’re sorry is powerful. “The public is enormously forgiving of genuine contrition,” according to research about bouncing back from a career mess by Jeffrey Sonnenfelt at Yale School of management. For example, medical malpractice suits go down significantly when a doctor is willing to apologize for a mistake.

However an apology only works when you are truly sorry. Dezenhall points out that an apology made just to make a problem go away often does more harm than good because it is, in fact, inconsistent with who you are and not believable.

This advice brings to mind the reaction to my panel discussion at BlogHer last weekend. Not during, but after. The room was totally packed, and there were questions flying the whole time, and I answered questions how I usually do: Short and direct.

Later I saw the online aftermath of the panel, and there were a few bloggers who were very upset.

Of course, no matter what I say there are always a few people who are upset. And some weeks there are a few thousand people upset. In general, I read the comments, learn from those that I can learn from, and move on. I asked some friends what I should do about the unhappy BlogHer bloggers. All my friends told me to ignore it. “It doesn’t matter,” is what they said over and over.

It is at this moment – when you find out that someone doesn’t like what you’ve done – that determines how well liked you are at work. You can’t bow to every complaint about what you do, but you do need to get good at figuring out which people to address and which to ignore. Both decisions are risks.

Here’s what I learned from the criticism about me at the blog Suburban Turmoil: It is more effective to be short and direct in writing than it is in person. The comments section on the blog post complaining about me was already boisterous. So I thought I might get trounced again for adding my own comment. But I took a chance and apologized because I could do it with honesty.

On the other hand, I received nearly 100 personal emails from people attacking me for the last column I wrote on Yahoo Finance, and I am ignoring them. Well, except for this one, which I can’t resist publishing, from Eduard Bauer:

“Please stop giving horrible advice. Your detachment from reality is hurting the American economy.”

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10 Tips for the new workplace etiquette

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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 news is they have no idea that they’re breaking all the old rules.

Here a list tips to help people who aren’t used to living an authentic, transparent work life flourish under the new rules.

1. Forget the exit interview.
An exit interview won’t help you, and it’ll probably create bad will. If you have people to thank when you leave a job, do it at lunch. If you have ideas for how to improve the company, offer to consult. Of course the company will decline, because they don’t care. Otherwise you wouldn’t be quitting, right?

Stop focusing on the exit interview and focus on how to quit like a pro. When you get a new job, your old boss is part of your new network. It’s up to you to make sure that parting ways goes as smoothly as possible so that you can shepherd this person into your network of supporters.

2. Don’t ask for time off, just take it.
When you need to leave work for a few hours or a few days, you don’t need to ask for permission — you’re an adult, after all. Make sure your work is in good order and send an email to the relevant people letting them know you’ll be gone.

This will seem discourteous to older people, who expect you to ask rather than tell. So be sure to give a reason why you’re cutting out. People like to know they matter and where they stand.

3. Keep your headphones on at work.

If you use social media tools, you’re probably good at connecting with people and navigating office politics — good enough that spending all day at work with headphones on won’t hinder you.

If you don’t know what what social media tools are, then you’re probably not innately good at making connections and need to take those headphones off before you’re crushed by office politics.

4. Say no to video résumés.

This is one of the dumbest recruiting trends ever.

Any human resources person in their right mind would hate video résumés. If there’s a stack of 100 paper résumés, the hiring manager will spend 10 seconds on each to decide which ones belong in the garbage. So how annoying is it that it takes 10 seconds just to launch a video résumé?

And it’s not just that they’re totally inefficient. Video résumés open up HR departments to a whole new level of discrimination accusations. There’s a reason why newscasters are all good-looking — it’s because we favor the good-looking on-screen. So if you don’t get hit on every time you step into a bar, forget about the video résumé. You probably look better on paper.

5. Invite your CEO to be a friend on Facebook.
That’s right, Facebook is for everyone now. And although the youngest members of the workforce are a little worried that having the adults there will ruin things, adults are psyched to be there. No one wants to miss out on all the fun.

So there’s a good chance that your CEO is registered, and it’s likely that she’ll really want to hear from you about what to do on Facebook, since she surely has no clue.

6. Do reconnaissance on your probable boss.

This tip comes from 20-something Hannah Seligson, whose book, “New Girl on the Job: Advice from the Trenches,” gives great tips on getting through the first years of work — most of which comes down to etiquette.

Seligson recommends you find out all the dirt you can about your future employer, because the best gauge of how a company will treat you is how it treated other employees. So asking people directly is fine.

Remember that it’s often the boss who makes the biggest difference in the workplace, so try using LinkedIn to search for someone who had the job you’re interviewing for. Former employees will always give you the most candid comments.

7. Don’t try to improve a coworker.

If you work with a jerk, just avoid him. We already know from dozens of studies that thinking you can change someone doesn’t really work.

Companies know that getting rid of difficult employees isn’t worth the cost and headache, too. So if the jerk isn’t moving and the company isn’t moving, you need to get moving with your job hunt.

8. Don’t blog under a pseudonym.

It’s enticing to hide your name when you blog, because you don’t want to get fired, or harassed, or held accountable at work for the opinions you have at home. But the truth is that the majority of adults who blog are doing it for business reasons.

Writing a blog that people can actually find among 77 million blogs is very time-consuming. It’s a big commitment to write about what you know on a single topic, but blogging will help your career a lot. So why bother doing it if you’re not going to take credit for it where it matters most — with potential employers who haven’t met you?

9. Call people on the weekend for work.

With the Blackberry going where work has never gone before, it’s no surprise that the lines between work and not-work are blurring. The people who grew up being super-connected don’t differentiate between the workweek and the weekend, so they don’t mind working over the weekend on bits and pieces leftover from the week.

Of course, this also means that people are going home early all week long at random intervals. The result is that the weekend is fair game for phone calls.

If your coworkers don’t like being called on the weekend, they can tell you. But remind them that a flexible work schedule lets you put relationships first all the time, and a work schedule that cordons off five days a week for work and two days a week for a personal life means that the personal life takes a backseat every week of the year.

The best way to get a life is to stop being so rigid about the distinction between time for work and time for life.

10. Be nice like your job depends on it.

In fact, your job does depend on you being nice. The old days of office politics as a means of backstabbing are dead — young people are bringing their team-player, I’m-competing-against-my-best-self mentality from their self-esteem-centric homes into the workplace, and there’s nothing you can do except be nice back.

Anyway, the truth is that the most likable people get promoted, so this is an instance where following the unwritten rules really can save your career.

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