It’s odd how some of us get stuck in a rut of not understanding who we are. Being told to go in a direction that is antithetical to our core, we work where what we have is not what they want. For most people, this is probably nuts. If you aren’t one, maybe a tale from my past will help.
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Top Reasons Why Your Resume Says “Career stalled”
Have you ever considered that your career path is a lot like a movie? Film scholar Chris Simmons, a colleague of mine, lectured once on the massive blockbuster, Titanic. He showed how everything in its visual language spoonfed what the director wanted you to see, know and feel. The director made deliberate choices to make it easy for us as …
Luck Does Not Determine Your Essential Character
I like to point out idiocy by “experts” when I see it. And management writing in Harvard Business Review is usually such a fertile field! Today, let’s look at idiocy about luck and being a great strategist from Hans H. Hinterhuber and Wolfgang Popp (“Are You a Strategist or Just a Manager?”, Jan-Feb 1992). As Moltke observed, the good strategist …
Putting Flattery to Work by IT Staffers: Flatter 4 Success, Part 4
Flattery really does work and it works in real life and not just for politically savvy types. We’ve seen that flattery works, that flattery has no upper limit and works even when they know you have an ulterior motive, and that the people who poo-poo flattery as only useful for the politically savvy are full of it. I told you …
Flattery Only Works For the Politically Savvy, Which Is All of Us: Flatter 4 Success, Part 3
I’ve been telling you this week that flattery works, and that it’s not just researchers who believe that flattery apparently has no real upper limit. Most of you haven’t really believed this and you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. So here’s those caveats I’ve been talking about:
Flattery Will Get You Everywhere: Flatter 4 Success, Part 2
I know that flattery doesn’t work on you, as you some of the world’s more intelligent people who see right through such things. But the rest of the world isn’t as savvy as you. You can get much more and be seen as much more effective at work by simply flattering your boss. Yesterday we saw how Prof Chatman’s unpublished …
Be a Suck-Up at Work and Get Ahead: It’s Flattery Science!
You’re a smart person with great ideas. Other people may not see this but I do. It’s because of this that I want to tell you about a key way to get your boss to like you. Because a boss who likes you will give you better assignments, more time off, and better pay. Even for the same performance. It …
How Simply Being BIgger (like a Hidden High Potential) Gets You Arrested
When you are bigger than everyone else, you are much more likely to get hammered for irritating people. It doesn’t matter if that’s physical size or “work” size, where you have the capability to do a larger job than the people around you. This is one of the key problems of Hidden High Potentials (HHPs). Work comes in different sizes, …
Forget, Then Forgive to Move Forward (and not the other way around)
In my lessons on the Tao of Joe: Redeeming Our Stories, I’ve pointed out that the patriarch’s model was to forget well before he ever forgave. Forgetting not only the wrongs, he forgot those who had wronged him (in his case, his brothers). Joseph named the firstborn Manasseh (Forget), saying, “God made me forget all my hardships and my parental …
Why GenerationX Didn’t Get Mentors
Last time we looked at why you don’t have a mentor, and focused on the Hidden High Potentials. Today, let’s look at the generational parts of Why You Didn’t Get a Mentor. This is specific to the United States, but you may find it applicable (or not) if you live elsewhere. It turns out that those born from around 1961 …