The Perils of Trying to Be Popular Your Employees I know, sounds ridiculous. If people hate you, you can’t get their cooperation, you can’t motivate them, they won’t help with reaching the unit’s goals and frankly, it makes for an unpleasant and stressful work place. So there are lots of good reasons why you want to be popular with your employees. But in a management position, you sometimes need to make decisions which aren’t popular wi...

Do You Need to be Likable to Your Employees? The dilemma set out in the previous post is whether, as a new supervisor, you should supervise a change to the work that everyone in your group wanted. You wanted to be likable and under pressure from Candice, your former colleague, now employee, you okayed the change. Candice drops by the next week. Candice: Hey, Mia. We released to the field three weeks earlier than we ever have. Looks like the chang...

Is It Better to Be Respected or Liked as a Supervisor? So, a promotion. Well done. You have taken over your old boss Albert’s job. You will now be supervisor to staff who, until you got this new job, were your colleagues. Honestly, this is a tough way to start in management. I think it’s actually easier to supervise people you don’t know in your first supervision job. But a promotion is a promotion and there is the whole thing about gift ho...

Costs of Taking a Stand Sometimes, you must speak up to maintain self-worth. In previous posts, we’ve discussed how to do that. However, no matter how successfully you pilot through your initial conversation, there will be costs which you need to prepare for and accept as part and parcel of deciding to speak out. Costs you might face Depends on your boss and how open your company is to change. The following list is generally in order of severit...

How to Take a Stand or Defy Convention Whether you take a stand on something is entirely up to you. Only you can decide that. But howyou defy convention can lower or increase the chances of continuing to earn a pay check. Plan Don`t do a spur of the moment, blow your gasket thing. It`s too important. Take a moment to think through what to say. Be clear. Sometimes, moral outrage can be diffuse. What exactly is bothering you? Is it the problem or t...

More Ways to be Successful with your Introversion

More Ways to be Successful with your Introversion In the last post, I discussed how to up your chances to get extra research money by taking a more active role in shaping how things roll out. There are other ways to be successful even with your introversion tendencies. Introversion prevents these extroverted actions Speaking up: There are undoubtedly situations where you have an opinion about how your unit should function. You typically...

Faking Extroversion

Faking Extroversion In the last post, I gave you an example of when introversion can prevent you from being successful even if it’s not about salary or promotions. This is where faking can come in. How faking extroversion helps There were several times during that interaction when your introversion didn’t help you get the extra research money. I won’t replay the whole conversation, but pick some bits to discuss. Narita claims she ...

Being Introverted Can Do You In

Being Introverted Can Do You In As discussed in the last post, being extroverted rather than introverted is more likely to reap the rewards companies have to offer. Even if you are not interested in money or promotions, you may still want to learn to fake extroversion. Here’s an example of what happens if you don’t. YOU are in a meeting with your boss, Jeff, and a colleague, Narita. A limited amount of extra research money has becom...

Can You Be Successful if You’re an Introvert?

Can You Be Successful if You’re an Introvert? Business is the land of the extrovert, not the introvert. It is estimated that 75% of the work population are extroverts. I have some trouble with this stat. Seventy-five percent of the people I know aren’t extroverts. But I can round this square if I amend the statement slightly to say that 75% of the people act extroverted in the work place, even if they aren’t outside it. Why would ...

How to Combine Team and Career Ambition

How to Combine Team and Career Ambition In my post, When Not to Take One for the Team, YOU were told that you had to take one for the team by not attending a conference you really want. You might have felt that, in that post, you gave into your boss Gwen’s insistence too easily. But as I pointed out in Downsides of Refusing to Take One for the Team, you can pay a price in your career ambition for refusing to accept the decision and st...