Fire Your Boss (10 page)

You can make your position as secure as possible, without spending every waking moment at the office.

You can fire your boss and kill your career…and still be a star in your boss’s eye, winning effusive praise and support.

You can get raises and promotions and kudos, even though you’re actively looking for other jobs.

How can you pull off this apparent dichotomy? Simple: accept the third element in my workplace philosophy: There’s no I in job. That’s my version of an old coaching cliché, which said that there was no I in team, meaning you should set aside your personal interests and instead focus on the success of the team. When it comes to work, you need to (at least outwardly) set aside your personal interests and focus, not on the success of the company, but specifically on the personal success of your boss.

I know this flies in the face of everything we’ve been told or taught. From an early age we’ve been led to believe that helping the company or organization you work for do well will lead to success on the job. The more you contribute to the company, the higher up the ladder you’ll climb and the more money you’ll earn. Everyone from parents to pundits continues to preach this as an ironclad rule. Many advisers actually encourage people to spend their spare time and energy looking for ways to boost their company’s bottom line.
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Once again, I hate to shatter such a pretty illusion, but this truism is nothing of the kind.

8. I have to admit that I too was one expert who preached this, until I saw the light.

Unless you’ve been in suspended animation for three decades you already know that being good at your job doesn’t provide job security, let alone advancement and salary increases. Plenty of people who are very good at what they do have been let go, and continue to be laid off every day. Skill is just about the last thing most employers look at when picking people to fire. Having possible grounds to sue the company and earning less than anyone else are the only two attributes that seem to provide much protection anymore. I said skill was “just about” the last consideration when picking people to terminate, because even lower on the list of factors is contribution to the company.

There is no more justice in the workplace than there is in life. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. People who contribute to the company’s bottom line are fired every single day. Meanwhile, people who generate little if any profit not only keep their jobs but get promoted. Think I’m being too cynical? Well, before you disagree with my assessment, take a moment to think back to all the jobs you’ve had over the years. How many times have you found yourself working for someone who you thought was incompetent? Maybe it was a supervisor who never met a deadline, whose management skills were atrocious, and who never came up with an independent idea. And how many other times have you seen someone promoted who obviously didn’t deserve it? Perhaps it was someone with less experience, enthusiasm, or expertise than the other candidates.

We’ve all been in this situation during our working lives. Some of us have seen it numerous times. Many of us are dealing with it right now. Yet romantic idealism is so ingrained in most of us that we ignore the evidence staring us in the face and instead continue to believe the pundits when they say being a star performer for the company will lead to success. I think it’s time to take off the blinders and deal with the workplace as it really is.

Don’t worry, it isn’t an irrational place impossible to navigate. It’s just that you’ve been using the wrong kind of map. Once you adopt a new map and compass you’ll be able not only to find your way, but to prosper as never before.

For years philosophers and theologians have tried to explain why it is that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.
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The explanations have ranged from the sublime — the ways of God are unknowable — to, in my opinion, the ridiculous — there are some who God has predetermined will prosper regardless what they do on earth.

9. Apologies to Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of
When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Similarly, the handful of people who’ve been willing to admit there’s no justice in the workplace as well have tried to come up with their own explanations. One famous theory is the Peter Principle, which says individuals in an organization will continue to rise in a hierarchy until they reach a position where they are incompetent. This sounds accurate at first, but doesn’t account for those incompetents who continue to advance or those who are competent yet are never able to climb the ladder.

I think there’s a better explanation for why there seems to be no justice in the workplace. Rather than ability or productivity being the vital ingredient for success, it’s really meeting your boss’s needs or wants. Being good at what you do is important, but only for your self-image and personal satisfaction. The same goes for being productive for the company. To be happy and successful on the job you actually need to make your boss happy and successful. By putting your boss’s goals first, you actually put your own goals first.

Truth be told, I don’t think many managers put the interests of the company ahead of their own. Most care primarily about themselves. They want to get as much money as they can for as little work as they can. I think this is true of everyone from a department manager up to the chairman of the board. Just look at the recent corporate scandals. Company officers cared more about their compensation packages than the company’s profitability. Board members and shareholders cared more about the value of their stock than the company’s solvency. The people who succeed in a company are those who realize this and use it to their advantage.

I wouldn’t characterize this as being either moral or immoral. Companies aren’t living creatures; they are amoral legal constructs. It’s the people who work in the company that count, and they behave as people always behave. It’s simply human nature to reward and protect those who help you meet your needs. People at work will help you if you have helped them, or will help them in the future. On the other hand, people at work will try to hurt you if you have, or may in the future, hurt them.

Working long hours won’t make your job secure. Being the best in the world at your job won’t guarantee you won’t be laid off. Generating profits for the company won’t ensure you’ll be rewarded. Conversely, not working overtime won’t get you fired. Being only adequate at your job won’t make you a candidate for future cuts. And not boosting the bottom line won’t keep you from advancing. The only thing that matters is helping your boss meet his or her goals. Do that and you will be the last person your boss lays off and the first person your boss rewards, regardless of the quality of your work or how often you stay late. Ignore the boss’s goals and, no matter how good your work and how often you work overtime, you’ll be a prime candidate for termination. Put your boss first and as he or she advances in the company, so will you. If you don’t meet your boss’s needs you’ll always be one day away from unemployment.

If you recall from chapter 1, Janet Crosetti is a thirty-seven-year-old client of mine who returned to work as a schoolteacher after her daughter went to school. She landed a job as an English teacher in a suburban junior high school. Janet’s natural enthusiasm and zeal led her to try to energize a department made up mostly of older teachers very set in their ways. She had six years of pent-up teaching energy and she wanted to use it. During her first few months on the job she was like a tornado, constantly suggesting new lesson plans and, during department conferences, pushing for the use of more multimedia. She was stunned when her first evaluation was mixed, at best. Her department chairman clearly was unhappy.

After Janet told me about her situation, I explained what I thought was happening. I said Janet was focusing on the needs of her students. What she needed to do was to concentrate on the needs of her boss, the department chairman, instead. That didn’t mean not helping her students. It just meant doing so in a way that very noticeably met her boss’s goals as well. What Janet had to do was figure out what her boss’s needs and goals were. We’ll get back to Janet’s story later in this chapter, but first let’s explore how to figure out a boss’s needs and goals, since that’s your next step as well.

You can’t simply ask your boss what he or she needs and wants. Rather than hearing the truth you’ll instead get some platitudes about the company’s success or your giving 100 percent, platitudes that probably fly in the face of the facts all around you. Instead, you need to do some intelligence gathering.

Find yourself a small notebook or pad that you can surreptitiously use while at work. On the first page, write a to-do list for yourself, and on the second page compile a shopping list for a trip to the grocery store. These pages serve as camouflage for your real notes, diversions you can show to people if they ask what you’re writing. On a subsequent blank page, start keeping track of the things your boss does during the day. Again, forget about what he or she says and instead fixate on actions; it’s deeds not words that matter. Make note of your boss’s mood swings during the day and what he was doing just before his mood changed. Pay careful attention to what she does to please her own boss and how she reacts to those demands. Don’t ignore nonwork issues. If your boss is always looking for people to go to lunch with him, that’s an important signal.

Try to compile a week’s worth of observations. If you feel it was, for some reason, an unusual week — say your boss’s boss was on vacation — take notes for an additional week. After taking notes for one or two weeks, read them over. Now, think back over your past experiences with your boss. If there are any typical scenarios that come to mind that you haven’t noticed in the past week or two, add those to your list. When you’re sure you have an accurate picture of your boss’s actions, you can stow your little notebook for the trip home.

Set aside an afternoon at home to analyze your observations. Take out the pad you used for the exercises in earlier chapters, and head a blank page My Boss’s Needs and Wants. Go over each observation, asking what your boss got, or tried to get, out of every action, and write down your analysis on the pad.

Let’s say your boss asked someone to pick up his lunch on Monday, someone else to drop off his dry cleaning on Wednesday, and you to give him a lift to get his car at the service station on Friday. What did your boss get from these actions? Help with his personal chores. So you would write down that one of his needs is to have someone be his personal assistant, not just his work assistant.

Perhaps you notice that your boss gets into a funk every Tuesday afternoon just before he has to attend the weekly meeting of department managers. You’d be safe to write down that one of the things he probably wants is to get out of going to those meetings.

By the way, if you simply can’t figure out what your boss’s needs and wants are, study your boss’s boss. Whatever his or her personal wants, every boss needs to please the person above, just as you need to please him or her. So if you can help your boss please his or her boss, you’ll be providing a great service. Just make sure your efforts don’t come as a surprise. You don’t want to appear as if you’re going over his or her head.

The list of possible needs and wants is huge, but let me offer some general examples clients and I discovered when analyzing observations. I’ve developed six general personality types to help you spot your boss’s needs and wants. While needs and wants do tend to fall into these groupings, there are no ironclad rules about what bosses are like. You may find your boss fits none of these characterizations, or has needs or wants from two or three different types. This isn’t an exact science. Feel free to draw on all of these types, or none, and to mix and match as you’d like. I’m just trying to offer some examples to help you get started in developing your own custom profile of your boss.

The buddy.
This is the boss who just wants to be one of the guys. He’s always asking people to go to lunch with him. Whenever groups of employees gather he wants to be a part of whatever is happening. He wants to join in outside activities and sometimes will even organize. He talks a lot about his personal life, and wants advice on personal matters. He may love to hear himself talk and not be much of a listener, so he needs an audience.

The loner.
This is the boss who just wants to do her job and not be bothered with everything else. She’s miserable about attending social gatherings or meetings that don’t directly pertain to what she does. She issues directives to subordinates and wants not to be asked questions or to have to do any hand-holding. She’s wants to avoid small talk and wants new challenges to tackle so she can keep busy.