How To Win At Work: Try This Business Philosophy On For Size

Back in 1999, I was looking for a job. More to the point, I was looking to make a career transition into the copywriting field. The challenge? I had been working in the compliance department at an insurance firm! I had lots of personal experience in writing (books, novels, articles, etc.), but had no professional experience in the marketing arena. What were my chances?

I’ll tell you this: I am convinced that one phrase I uttered in my interview withMarsh & McLennan MMC +1.23% got me the job, despite my being a rookie. The interviewer – my future boss – asked me what my number one goal would be if I got the job. Without hesitation, I replied,

“My job is to make your job easier.”

A few days later, I was once again gainfully employed.

“My job is to make your job easier,” should not only be used in an interview, but also used as a lifelong career goal to reach success.

Why did this phrase have such a powerful impact? Because it communicated clearly that 100% of my energy, my attention, and my initiative would be focused on my boss, my job, and my company. Not on me. Not on furthering my career. Not on lining my pockets. Not on trumpeting my successes. My efforts would be the means to a specific end, and that end was making my boss’s day a breeze. Now that’s what it means to talk about benefits in an interview!

But I have to tell you something. I didn’t say this because it would “sound good” during the interview process. Believe me, people have a fantastic BS meter, and if you are just trying to be a “suck-up,” they will know it and show you to the door. I said this because it is truly my approach to my job.

You see, I didn’t forget about that statement when I left the interview. It continues to be my goal every day of my working career. It was my commitment when I worked in corporate, and it has been my guiding light in the ten years I have operated my own copywriting business.

Let’s take a closer look at the meat behind this simple phrase. If you say – to your boss if you are in corporate, or to your clients if you are self-employed – that “My job is to make your job easier,” here’s what it’s going to look like:

• You are serious about deadlines, delivering on or before final due date.
• You are fanatical about quality, refusing to give less than your best.
• You will support a team effort, whether that involves internal or external people.
• You communicate clearly and consistently, keeping all stakeholders “in the know.”
• You act in a professional manner, even when other people don’t.
• You are responsive to requests, never leaving someone hanging.
• You stick to the budget, since no one likes surprises on the final invoice.

Think about it: wouldn’t you like to have all your employees and vendors act like that? You let people know what you need, and they go and do it. You don’t have to worry about quality, hound them to hit the deadline, or all the rest of it. It’s the human equivalent of “set it and forget it.”

You might say, “Wait a minute! If I’m always focused on making my boss’s or client’s job easier, what happens to my career?”

What happens to your career? It stays on the upward spiral! Trust me: when you prove that you are someone who is dedicated, professional, and responsive … someone who delivers high-quality services on time and on budget … you’re going to get the promotions. The salary. The recognition. The rewards. If there was ever a single goal that created a win-win situation, this is it!

So tell me – what’s your goal on the job?

Source: Paula Marolewski is a trainer in stress management tools and techniques. She offers practical, skill-based video tutorials through “Thrive Now!”  (www.thrivenowseminars.com) to enable you to tackle stress, worry, and anxiety head on and reclaim your life.

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Stress On The Job: 5 Ways You Are Mentally Sabotaging Yourself

Being stressed on the job is a fact of life these days. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a position that you loathe, or are fulfilling your lifelong career dreams. Work is stressful. As my dad used to say, “If work were fun, we’d call it play!”

When people comment on their work stress, they tend to attribute it to things like long hours, conflicting priorities, tight deadlines, demanding bosses, difficult co-workers, hectic commutes, etc. And all these are absolutely true: every single one of them contributes to a person’s stress on the job.

But there is another major stressor that I almost never hear mentioned. And that is the mental sabotage we do to ourselves by living with irrational beliefs.

An irrational belief is one that – when you look at it in the cold light of day – you recognize to be false. But in day-to-day life, you act like it is true. You emotionally respond to it, and you make decisions based on it. Here are five irrational beliefs that regularly wreck people in the workplace:

“I have to be perfect.”

Irrational? You bet. Nobody is perfect – you know it; I know it. But we act like we should be flawless in the office. For instance, we are defensive if someone corrects us. Humiliated when we are caught in a mistake. Terrified that our boss will fire us (or at least deliver a scathing annual review) if we screw up. We have to be on-time, on-target, on-demand, and on-tap all the time.

Stress on the job is inevitable at times, but setting irrational expectations for ourselves only creates more pressure.

“I have to be omniscient.”

I have a very high-performing friend. She is in a position of significant responsibility, and she delivers. Period. But every so often (maybe three times in the past 20 years?) it happens that she misses something small and six months later the omission comes to light. Invariably, it causes her to emotionally stress out to the max. When I ask her, “Did you do the best you could with what you knew at the time?” the answer is always “Yes.” But doing her best isn’t enough for her: she feels obligated to be omniscient so that there are never any surprises down the road. Perfection and omniscience are close cousins; they often go hand-in-hand.

“Mistakes are the end of the world.”

If you feel that you have to be perfect and omniscient, you also tend to believe that mistakes are the end of the world. I call this catastrophizing. It goes like this: “I made a mistake. The project is ruined. The future of the company is ruined. My career is ruined. My life is over.” Actually, most mistakes are correctible to a large degree, the project will likely continue, the company will be fine, and your career will not be blackened. Relax. Your life is not over.

“Everyone will think badly of me.”

Heavens, what if you are not perfect or omniscient and you make a mistake? Along with all the other catastrophes, everyone will think badly of you! They will look at you down their noses and say, “There she goes – what a terrible person! She screwed up. I used to think she was perfect, but I was sorely mistaken. I’m going to write her off.”

Irrational beliefs create a nasty double standard … and not in your favor!

Let me ask you this: when someone in your office makes an honest mistake, do you think to yourself, “I can’t believe it! He’s not perfect! He is less than omniscient! This is going to ruin everything completely! What a loser!”
Of course not. In a company, we’re all working on the same team, and we know that nobody is perfect. So when – not if – mistakes get made, we all pull together to fix things. In fact, I’ll bet you’ve encouraged a co-worker who has messed up to not worry about it and to pull out of their funk. You’ve probably told them, “Hey, we all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. You can’t anticipate every eventuality. It’s not the end of the world!” So let me ask you: if you treat others with grace and compassion, why do you treat yourself so harshly?

You’ve probably invested a good deal of time and effort trying to decrease your stress in the workplace. Perhaps you’ve taken advantage of time management courses, conflict resolution seminars, communication style questionnaires, team building exercises, and all the rest of it. But I’d encourage you now to invest in a little “mind management” as well. Take a self-inventory to identify the irrational beliefs that are sabotaging you day-in and day-out, and learn how to replace them with truths that liberate.

I assure you, when you stop mentally sabotaging yourself on the job, you’ll be less stressed every day!

Paula Marolewski is a trainer in stress management tools and techniques. She offers practical, skill-based video tutorials through “Thrive Now!”  (www.thrivenowseminars.com) to enable you to tackle stress, worry, and anxiety head on and reclaim your life.

When Hiring Employees, Look For A Track Record Of Failures, Not Successes

When I first interviewed at Sungard Availability Services, my future manager asked me to give him examples of my past successes. I gave him a couple. Then he asked me for some examples of my past failures. I asked him, “How much time do you have?”

He laughed and said, “That long a list, huh?” After he listened to my failure stories, and to the lessons I had learned from them, he said to me, “I’m surprised you are honest enough to admit your mistakes. Most people don’t. I respect that you are clear-eyed about your past screw-ups, and I think you can bring your lessons learned to your next company for their benefit.”

Honestly, I think being candid about my failures during the interview is what got me the job.

Many hiring managers look only for a track record of success. It features prominently in most job requirements: “A demonstrated track record of success in such-and-such and such-and-such.” In my view, that’s a problem, because success is not a fertile ground for self-reflection. Why bother doing a post-mortem, when everything has gone swimmingly? Failure, however, offers ample opportunity for growth, self-awareness, and personal development. Those who do take this opportunity emerge as better employees – they are humble, teachable, thoughtful, and more likely to succeed the next time they try something.

“In other words, I value a track record of failure in a potential hire, because I know what failure has done for me.”

What I Learned From My Own Failures

The biggest professional failure of my own life was the day spa business I bought with my best friend in 2003. It set me back financially to pre-college levels. Literally, I was worth more the day I graduated from high school than the day I closed the spa down in late June of 2010. We had made several crippling mistakes on Day One, and we simply never recovered from them.

Mistake #1: building overly optimistic pro-forma financial forecasts. It’s easy to show hockey-stick-like growth in a spreadsheet. But in real-life, you need working capital and the ability to spin off enough excess cash to invest in marketing. That didn’t happen, primarily because of Mistake #2: signing an onerous five-year triple net lease agreement that prevented us from making a profit in all but 5 of the 79 months we operated. In the spa business, you have to bring in 8x to 12x your rent in revenues just to break even…a small fact we did not figure out until AFTER we’d already signed the lease.

Mistake #3: being under-capitalized and deciding to pay ourselves too much. With my life savings in the business and my partner’s home serving as collateral for our small business loan, everything we had was tied up in the spa, and we needed to pull cash out of it…fast. As it turned out, we pulled cash out way too fast. My partner had quit her job to work at our business, so she needed to replenish her income in order to continue paying her mortgage. It was a real cluster of a situation, affirming the reality of the maxim: Cash is King.

We ran out of cash in six months. My partner left the business in nine months, and with more than four years left on the lease, I took full control of daily operations. Why didn’t we just belly up, you ask? Well, because of Mistake #4: putting my brother on the lease as guarantor. If I didn’t find a way to continue, he’d be on the hook for 52 months of rent.

People rarely ever try to learn from their successes, but learning from your failures can make you a better employee and manager.

I went on to commit more mistakes over the years. There were times I failed to lead well, expecting my employees to get on-board with my vision and strategy simply because I was the owner and “I said so.” There were times I didn’t communicate well, leaving bafflement and ill will among my staff members. There were times I didn’t listen, operating with the misguided conviction that I was always right. There were times I misjudged a candidate’s character and hired too quickly. There were times I let a toxic employee linger on too long and terminated too slowly (or didn’t terminate at all).

From these spectacular failures, I’ve learned to think ahead and weigh risk scenarios. I worked out the rough spots that a lot of managers struggle with when trying to lead. I learned to communicate better, and to have a smaller “transmit” button and a bigger “receive” button. I became humbler. I acquired a teachable spirit.

In other words, I value a track record of failure in a potential hire, because I know what failure has done for me.

Examining Past Failures Nets You A Better Candidate

I’m not saying you should hire someone who never gets anything right. Of course you’re looking for a competent, skilled individual to fill your position. But one of those competencies should be the ability to learn from mistakes. While interviewing, you can explore a person’s failures to discover:

• Are they candid and honest about their failures?
• Can they draw lessons learned to apply in future situations?
• Do they show a sense of humility and self-awareness?
• How have they grown and changed as a result of failure?
• Do they accept responsibility for their failures?
• Have they developed confidence and resiliency as a result of their failures?

I don’t need an employee who’s going to get it right all the time. I need someone who’s willing to admit when they’ve been wrong, learn from their mistakes, and get up and do it better the next time. That’s a person I can trust. That’s the person I want to hire.

Source: Forbes

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How To Solve A People Problem: 6 Tips For Managing Difficult Employees

No one ever said managing people was easy, but trends in today’s work environment often make it harder still. While employees used to be able to retreat to their offices or cubicles when the need arose–whether because of an interpersonal conflict or just a desire to focus uninterrupted–today’s open office plans and glass walls offer little respite from co-workers. In addition, the employees at any one company may hail from many different countries and cultures, creating the potential for misunderstandings and misinterpretation.

Yet, one of the biggest challenges for managers has remained consistent over the years: dealing with a lone, difficult employee. The woman who behaves imperiously with teammates. The man who grumbles over every assignment. The new recruit who refuses to communicate. The variations can be endless, with experts identifying categories as various as “Space Cadets” (as described by Marie McIntyre, founder of the Web company Your Office Coach COH +0.14%), “Volcanoes” (in Inc magazine) and “Splicers and Dicers” (according to Vicky Oliver, a Manhattan-based career adviser).

Managing people is not easy! Here are six tips for dealing with the especially difficult employees…

Fortunately, most people who work at creating harmony in offices–from seasoned managers to career and personal coaches–believe solutions can be found by following a few standard (if not always simple) steps.

Mercedes Hoss-Weis, a project manager, coach and trainer with more than two decades of experience working in the pharmaceutical sector and as a consultant in South America, the United States and Europe, provided some recommendations for today’s work environment.

1. Listen.
It doesn’t matter what kind of interpersonal issues you’re dealing with, the first step toward resolving a problem involves assessing the situation, and the best way to do that is to ask open questions and really listen to the responses. You may discover that the person you thought was the problem was in fact just reacting to a bullying team environment–or even to your own management style, which you may not have realized was provocative.

2. Give feedback – and coach.
A good manager will make sure that if a team member is being obstructionist or lazy, that person will be told–clearly, and with evidence to hand. It is unfair to escalate a problem to HR behind a person’s back. Moreover, sometimes simply alerting an employee to an issue and suggesting ways to improve can be enough to initiate change.

With that said, giving feedback might be harder to do today than in the past, given the fishbowl-like conditions in which many of us work. Hoss-Weis says you need to work around this challenge, even if it means pulling an employee aside for a coffee, because location matters. “Get into the habit of giving praise in public and placing blame in private,” Hoss-Weis said.

3. Avoid personalizing conflicts.
Marriage counselors often encourage couples to use the statement “I feel…” when working through problems. Don’t try this at work. When coping with a difficult employee, it is important that you focus on the issue at hand–assignments not getting done to a certain standard, for example–and not on the personality of the employee. “There is nothing wrong with liking or disliking someone, but you need to work with them regardless,” Hoss-Weis explained.

4. Look for root causes.
It’s easy to assume that what you see in a person is what they essentially are–grouchy, obdurate, or easily distracted. And sometimes that is the case. But those negative character traits are often brought to the surface by the situation at hand. At the office, this often means by the content of the work itself. People avoiding teamwork might be doing so because they don’t feel up to tasks being tackled and don’t want their weaknesses exposed. Employees who complete assignments in a perfunctory fashion might be bored and in need of more challenging projects to keep them engaged.

On discovering this sort of mismatch, said Hoss-Weis, a good manager will try to find or create a more appropriate role for the worker on the team. But if that’s not possible, the best option might be a shift to somewhere else within the company–or outside it. “Don’t make false promises about what you can give them,” she said. “Don’t string people along.”

5. Consider culture.
Never before have workplaces been so international, and that can exacerbate the challenge of dealing with problematic employees. A person from a culture that leans toward straight may not realize he is offending a co-worker brought up in a culture that is focused more on diplomacy.

But company culture must also be taken into account–even unique cultures that have developed within a department or team. Hoss-Weis said one flash point for conflicts at work is when a new manager inherits an old team. Expectations on both sides of the boss-employee divide need adjusting, and some people are slower at adapting than others. Her main tip? Ask for clarification–often. You may think you understand what others want from you, but asking them to clarify those desires may reveal gaps in your understanding.

6. Don’t be afraid to cut the cord.
Being a manager involves making tough choices, and these might well include deciding that a co-worker’s benefits to the team or organization do not outweigh the problems he or she creates. Just as important as having the courage to make this call, however, is the preparation that goes into it. Make sure you understand what you need to do ahead of time in terms of company policy and your country’s labor laws. The only thing worse than a forced exit is a messy forced exit.

By following these six guidelines—and applying them in different ways—managers may find that handling difficult employees isn’t their most challenging assignment because there will be fewer issues to have to manage.

Source: Rose Jacobs has worked as a copy editor, features editor, news editor and, most recently, as an FT business reporter covering transportation.

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Six fastest growing careers in India

You want to know about the most wanted careers in India? The job market right now is a little awry, but it would soon get back with promising careers for the coming generation of geniuses.
Here is a peek into the future jobs with the maximum growth potential in the Indian market-
1- Event Manager- India has become a global arena for a myriad of events, meetings and conferences held every day across the country. If you are one of those pursuing a degree in communication, hospitality or public relations this is the place for you. The subcontinent is abuzz with new event management companies entering the industry by the minute and creating jobs, the jobs therefore, are plenty.
Annual salary- 1.35 – 8.17 lakhs per annum
2- Analytics Professional- Analytics is a profession which spans across various industries from healthcare, banks, e-commerce and marketing to information technology and biotechnology. It involves analyzing business strategy and devising or streamlining the organizational structure. All business want to stay ahead of their competition, this very factor creates jobs for the analytics professionals. A Bachelors or a Masters degree in business or finance is required.

Annual salary- 1.79 lakhs to 9.80 lakhs per annum.
3 R&D Professionals: Research and Development is a progressive field in India. R&D professionals are engineering technicians, who use their knowledge to assist engineers and other scientists to create, design and construct new products or equipments that will be then marketed and sold to the consumers or specific industries. R&D professionals are also responsible for testing and conducting experiments on the product, bringing together data and recording outcomes, to spot if the product is operational or would it be profitable.

Annual Salary- 3 lakhs to 30 lakhs per annum.
4 Interior Designer: A new house needs building and designing, both these tasks were completed by contractors in old days. The scenario is changing with time, as people are employing interior designers to add a touch of beauty to houses and make them tastefully theirs. You can work under an agency, open your own or simply work as a freelance interior designer, it’s pretty flexible.

Annual salary (greatly varies) estimate- 91,000 – 5, 58,000 per annum.
5 Civil Services: India is on the brink of change and the change maker is the young generation. One of the most sought after careers in India, civil services provides you with a platform to make a difference. A public sector profession it makes for one of the most well paying jobs in India. All you need to do is clear All India Examination for Civil Services, which is said to be a tough nut to crack.
6 Medical Professionals: There is a perpetual demand for doctors and specialized physicians; they are needed all the time no matter where the national economy is going. A doctor gets astonishing returns depending on his qualification. Surgeons earn the highest as they come with higher degrees and specialized practical experience.

The average salary estimate is around 1.30 lakhs to 12 lakhs per annum.
Are you planning to be any of the above?

 

CareerBuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions, helping companies target and attract their most important asset – their people. CareerBuilder’s team of career advisers, editors and writers are experts in job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues. Get daily job advice on www.thecareermuse.co.in, follow CareerBuilder on Twitter at www.twitter.com/careerbuilderin and become a fan of CareerBuilder on www.facebook.com/careerbuilderindia

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