The Top 10 Ways to Make Your Employees Deliriously Happy

"If you're good to your staff when things are going well, they'll rally when times go bad." - Mary Kay Ash

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” ~Aristotle

Do you want more productivity out of your team? Then you need look no further than their happiness. Gretchen Spreitzer of the Harvard Business Review, in her article Creating Sustainable Performance, notes that happy employees are not only more productive, but more creative and better team players as well.

When you think about organizations that are truly excelling in their field, you likely can find that they are bending over backwards to make their team feel happy and appreciated. But it isn’t just at the organizational level. When you look at high performing teams within your own organization, would you classify those teams as being “happier” than most others?

These organizations and leaders have discovered the clear link between happiness and better productivity. So what do you need to do to bring out the happiness in your team and reap the rewards? Well, it doesn’t start with money, it starts at a much deeper level of satisfaction. Here are the 10 most impactful ways to bring out the happiness in your team:

Treat them better than your customers – If you want to take care of the customer, take care of the people that take care of the customer. And it doesn’t usually take a complicated effort. First of all, just talk with them and find out about them as a person. Where did they grow up, what hobbies do they have, what motivates them about the job, how do they think the organization can approve? To sell to your customer you need to understand who they are, so why not do the same with your team? And before you say that you already know your team, can you answer this one question which is probably more important to them than anything, “How many children does each of your employees have?”

Once you get to know your team better, you’ll be better equipped to treat them well regardless of what situation arises.

Focus on how important their work is – One of the reasons that companies like Google, Facebook and Apple have grandiose Mission Statements like “Make the world more open and connected” is that it lights the fire of passion in their employees. Your team wants to do important work. Great leaders let their teams know just how critical their work is to the organization. If you’re in a department where this might seem difficult, there is another way to instill a sense of importance: Community service.

The act of giving and serving has enormous value in how people gauge their satisfaction with activities. If you can tie this feeling of serving with co-workers to work itself, then you’ve attached an importance to the job that wasn’t there before.

Give them ownership – Great employees crave ownership over their work. It gives them satisfaction of a job well done and forms their own self-identity about the work that they do. If you don’t empower an employee to do their job, you’ve robbed them of any chance to form this identity. This one thing goes a long way towards the productivity increases that happy employees produce. If you own your job, you want to do good at it because it is a reflection on you.

Treat them like adults – This may seem kind of rudimentary, but it affects some tough issues like work-life balance, trust, and understanding their motivation. Adults take care of their responsibilities, and so do great employees. Understanding that your team wants to do a good job, and backing up that understanding by trusting them to make the right decisions isn’t naïve, it builds trust. When you trust that they will make the right decisions it makes so many other issues easier for you to deal with. Do you let them leave early on Thursdays to go see their kid’s baseball game, or take a two hour lunch so they can go to the Dentist? Of course you do, because you trust that they will get the work done.

Now one thing to mention is that there will be times they come up short in their work. In these cases, STILL treat them like an adult and have a discussion about what happened, how to fix it, and what the expectations are going forward. DO NOT punish them, children get punished, adults discuss things reasonably.

Be OK with the right mistakes – Nobody likes to make mistakes. Fear of making a mistake is one of the biggest dis-satisfiers in the workplace and stifles innovation. The “right” mistakes are ones that aren’t negligent and that you learn from (and don’t repeat). Free your team to take risks and learn and you’ll see them develop much quicker.

Give them the big picture – People want to know what is going on with the direction of the organization. They just do. Part of it is simple curiosity and another part is vanity of being “in the know”. Sharing some big picture things about where the organization is headed can also make them feel more secure in their job since it eliminates some unknowns (even if it isn’t an entirely rosy picture) and is something that increases their feeling of value since you trusted them with the information and were willing to spend the time sharing it.

Care about their career – Do you know where each member of your team wants to be professionally in the next 1-2 years? If not, then you are missing an opportunity to drive motivation and happiness through your department. Happy people are fulfilled, and when we talk about fulfillment at work, career growth is a huge portion of that. Many members of your team will be striving for a promotion. Others are happy where they are, but would like to learn or at least be exposed to some new things. You don’t need to hand out promotions to everyone, you just need to set an environment where they are always learning with a purpose and a goal. A plan to teach and develop new skills amongst your team will not only lead to a better skilled workforce, but a happier one as well.  

Recognition – Is it fun to toil away on a project and not have anyone notice? Is it fun to have your best sales month of the year and have it treated like any other month? Does that sound like a recipe for happiness? Of course not. Recognition of success and effort is one of the keys to leadership and has an enormous impact on how happy your team will be. Great leaders look for any opportunity to celebrate a success because they believe in the saying by Tom Peters, “Celebrate what you want to see more of.” They celebrate group success, individual success, and progress and learning as well. People want to know that you noticed the good things that they’ve done, so recognize them when it occurs.

Have fun – Everyone spends an awful lot of time at work. It’s important to break up the day to day routine with some fun from time to time. It could be anything from celebrating birthdays or holidays, hosting a pot-luck, random dress down days, or just a fun activity on a Friday afternoon. Making the association between fun and work helps ease stress and help people get through difficult tasks. It has also been shown that breaking up a day with a fun activity spurs creativity as well. So if you’re lacking some innovation, maybe it’s time to find a reason to throw a party.

Have goals – People like to have something to strive towards. Do you ever play games where there isn’t a means of tracking progress, keeping score, or another method of determining who is winning? Of course not, and you shouldn’t set up your department without goals either. The most effective have both public team goals and private personal goals for each of their staff members. Working towards something gives meaning to even mundane tasks as they can be recognized as a necessary means to an end.

Striving to make your team happier has little to no downside for a leader. Many of the principles listed above directly affect productivity and the others support it. So if you found that you may have had a few “holes” in the above recommendation, then look to address one of them this week, with another following the week after, and so on. And don’t forget; having a happy team helps the leader be happy as well.

10 Ways To Get Yourself Promoted

"Big jobs usually go to the person who proves their ability to outgrow small ones." ~Theodore Roosevelt

"Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity." ~Reed Markham

How is it exactly that some people seem to get promotion after promotion, while others who seem to show plenty of potential just stay right where they are? It’s because there are tactics that successful people use on the job to ensure they are in the discussion of candidates and are ultimately selected.

One method that is often talked about in working towards that next promotion is to ask your boss what they are looking for in a candidate for promotion. This sounds like rock-solid advice, but the problem is that bosses almost never give a constructive answer to this question. They say things like, “Just make sure you make your numbers and give 110%.” What successful people do is answer that question for their boss and take action on those things. They don’t work haphazardly on being the best at things, they work on being the best at the things that matter.

If you are able to work these tactics into your routine on the job, you too could find yourself in the crowd that keeps getting looked at to rise through the ranks.

Worry about what your boss worries about – Have you ever taken work to your boss only to have them ask about something else? That’s the opposite of what we’re looking for here. Aligning your priorities with your boss’s priorities ensures that you’re not only doing what they want, but shows that you know how to set the right priorities yourself which is critical in any leadership position. While your boss may not clearly relay what their priorities are, successful people pay attention to what their boss talks about and focuses on, and over time are able to fill in the blanks and align their actions accordingly.

Always be acquiring new skills – If you’re not learning you’re dying in your career. People who get promoted show their value not only in the skills required to do their job, but in a variety of skills outside the scope of their current job. Surprising your boss with knowledge you have reassures them that you have the ability to learn which is key to success in any position. If you’re able to match some of those skills to the job you are looking for, then all the better. You can pick up skills anywhere you like in the organization simply by paying attention to how other people do their job, whether that’s Marketing, I.T., Finance or any other. Simply pay attention and ask questions, most people don’t mind a break in the day to walk you through some of the basics (especially if you entice them with the idea you might be able to do it yourself next time and save them work). Other skills like Excel, PowerPoint or other systems your organization uses can almost always be supplemented with online learning, or even a course that your organization covers.

Ask to help – Those who get promoted are a resource for their boss. If you want experience in doing “next level” work, why not ask to help with some. Your boss likely has tasks that match with your skillsets on some level and it gives you even more exposure to them and their work. Just ask your boss, and then ask them a few more times so they know you’re serious.

Self-promotion – Successful people don’t wait for things to just “happen”, they take action to make things happen. The first thing you want to do is to let your boss know that you are interested. This is where asking your boss that question, “What are you looking for in a candidate for promotion?” serves you as it puts them on notice that you are interested. The other thing you want to do is to publicize your successes. I’m not talking about bragging; I’m talking about making your boss aware of “progress” that is being made in the department. There are dozens of ways to ensure your successes are brought to the attention of others without being seeming to be out of line. Find some.

Have solutions to problems – You will come across problems, you will make mistakes, but successful people have solutions, they don’t bring their problems to their boss without an idea of how to solve them. If you want a promotion you need to learn to be responsible for finding solutions to problems that arise. That’s what a leader is largely responsible for. While you don’t want to wait to bring issues to the attention of your boss, spending at least a little time thinking about possible solutions before stepping into their office is often all it takes. And if you can’t come up with one you like, you can always present the solutions to your boss for consideration. That is the next best thing.

Quantify results – One thing that all leaders have in common is that they hear a lot of “fluff” about how good things are all of the time, but they know that talk is cheap. What you need to do is to put some numbers behind your accomplishments to give them substance. The ability to put together a report to track progress changes your talk into reality. One of the keys to doing this is to think about it as early in the process as possible. Oftentimes if you wait until the project is over, it’s too late to be able to measure the effect.

Act as if you’re already there – The most common application of this principle is to dress for the position you want to have, not the position you currently have. But it goes much further than that, you need to carry yourself like a leader. That means you have a positive and constructive attitude, you don’t get caught up in the drama of other coworkers, and you know what is appropriate in the workplace and what is not. If you need examples, just look to the leadership of your organization. While they might individually still have some faults, collectively you can piece together what you need to do.

Create your path – Here’s a secret: many of the people who are promoted, are promoted into positions that didn’t exist before. The way that they accomplished this is by creating and adding value to their current position to the point that it warranted a redefinition. They volunteer to take on extra duties, they come up with innovations and bring them to life, and they use their strengths in new ways to help the organization. The next time a new project comes up, volunteer to take it on even if it doesn’t fall exactly in your area of responsibility.

Work hard AND smart – Perhaps the most obvious tactic for promotion, but one that always bears mentioning as there are no shortcuts. It isn’t just about working hard or working smart, you need to do both. You want to emulate the work habits of those who are already successful in your organization. That means that you put in the hours to get the work done, but you also prioritize important tasks over small ones, and that you are always looking for ways to improve processes and procedures so that even more work gets done.

Create a plan – Having a goal is great, but what you really need is to create a plan to get there. Successful people create action steps that bridge where they are with where they want to be. Utilizing these tactics is fine, but coordinating how you use them to reach the promotion you are looking for can separate success from failure:

·         Where are you? Every map has a starting place, and you need to be clear on where you are starting before you start taking “lefts and rights” toward your destination.

·         Why are you there? What skills do you have in your “toolkit?” In other words, what strengths do you have that got you to where you are?

·         Where do you want to be? Just like being clear on where you start, you need to be crystal clear on where you are going. “Getting promoted” isn’t specific enough, you need to be clear on exactly which position you are shooting for so that you can figure out what traits a successful person in that position has and align your strengths, address any weaknesses and start filling the gaps.

·         How do you get there? Not all skills are created equal and not all of these tactics are going to be weighted equally in you reaching your goal. You need to clearly lay out the priorities of what you are going to do and going to work on to get the promotion. Actions with deadlines will be the key things to come out of this exercise and the stepping stones to the next level in your career.

People who get promoted do so through willful action. If you are able to put these tactics in place alongside already excellent work performance you will be well on your way to climbing the organizational ladder.

10 Simple Ways to Bring Out The Best In Your Employees

"A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and those who are doing well to do even better." ~Jim Rohn

"The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players." ~Blaine Lee

Great leaders don’t become great through their individual achievement. They get that way by working through their team and nurturing their talent.  If you want to make a HUGE impact in your organization, you can’t do it yourself. But if you build up your team and leverage their abilities, together you can move mountains.

The wonderful thing is that the traits that great leaders use to bring out the best in their team aren’t particular complicated or unfamiliar, they are just consistently applied on a personal level:

Recognition – Great leaders know that they need to reward what they want to see more of. People want to be successful and want to be a part of winning teams, but that isn’t enough to truly bring out their best, for that employees want their hard work and contributions recognized. Providing recognition for successes both publicly and privately on an individual basis helps to build the expectation of success amongst everyone.

Focus on strengths – Yes, you want to minimize weaknesses, but leveraging your team’s strengths should be the first priority. When everyone on the team is working from a position of strength the team can move forward with greatest ease. If you think about sports teams, players are almost always working in a way that maximizes their strength. They don’t neglect or avoid their weaknesses, but they play to what they are best at. When employees work from positions of strength it builds their confidence which will help them act quicker, more decisively and with an eye towards opportunities.

Empathy – Great leaders understand their employees better than average and poor leaders. This helps them customize coaching and instruction, recognize issues quickly, and see opportunities for growth. This understanding is always built over time spent communicating with the team and paying attention when things are occurring. Since great leaders naturally spend a lot of time communicating with their team, this trait comes much easier than for others.

Empowerment – If you want to build up your team you need to empower them to do more on their own. Pushing them to learn and take responsibility for increasingly important tasks is central to getting the best out of them. This requires the leader to have a greater tolerance for mistakes and failures, and a willingness to accept those short term losses for the long term gains of having more experienced and skilled employees.

Foster trust – Trust is a requirement for highly-effective teams, but it is also an extraordinarily powerful tool on an individual basis. Do you remember the feeling of when someone trusted you with something really important? Do you remember the sense of pride you felt? Do you remember how focused you were on responsibly handling what you were entrusted with? Would you say that you were at your best with whatever it was? Great leaders recognize this and therefore demonstrate trust and emulate trust as often as possible.

Give – You get what you give. Great leaders pour into their team by tirelessly working for them, modelling honesty, and providing them tools and training. When they do that they get more effort from their team, they get honest and straightforward feedback and they get heartfelt application of new skills in return. In short, they get hardworking, honest and skilled employees in return.

Explain things clearly – If you want the best, you are going to need to clearly explain what your goal is in a way that your employees can understand and work towards. Your team can’t be at their best if they don’t understand what you are asking. Going into the details is also something that develops the team by giving them more insight into what you view as important and also shows that you value them enough to take the time and effort.

Listen – Showing your team respect by listening to them builds up their confidence by demonstrating that their feedback and ideas have value. Great leaders will often kick this practice into a higher gear by asking questions that give the employee further validation that their feedback is of value and helps the leader bring more depth to the conversation.

Care about their career – Employees work best when they care about their work. Great leaders nurture this feeling by working with the employee to better their career. Whether that is giving them the exposure and skills to be promoted or to make a lateral move into another area that they are interested in. The employee will give more when they feel that they are getting something out of it, and it is yet another way for the great leader to practice empathy and build trust.

Expect the best and support it – Great leaders create a culture of excellence by pushing their team to be their best and not tolerating less. This doesn’t mean that they are aggressive or rude, it’s just that they set the bar high and TRUST and EMPOWER the team members to meet that expectation. They are partners with the employee in making sure they can bring their best to every task.

The quality of a staff is the best reflection on the quality of the leader. Working through your people is key to your success in leadership. The extent to which you are successful in bringing out their best will determine whether you are a true leader, or a leader in title only.

The Top 10 Reasons Performance Reviews Don't Work

"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism." ~Norman Peale

"How you measure the performance of your managers directly affects the way they act." ~Gustave Flaubert

Performance reviews are among the most nerve-racking and uncomfortable exchanges in most organizations. Even when they are all positive and “fluffy” they are still terribly awkward for both parties. And this is the crux of where mistakes get made.

Because performance reviews are uncomfortable and awkward, they are susceptible to mistakes that increase awkwardness and ineffectiveness from people who usually wouldn’t find themselves making those mistakes. Given enough mistakes it can render this vital exercise a liability to the performance of the employee instead of an asset. Below is the list of the 10 biggest mistakes leaders make when conducting performance review. Look to avoid these the next time you are due to give a review:

Not doing them – The first mistake organizations and leaders make is not having a performance review at all. Because performance reviews are uncomfortable, many organizations and leaders avoid them entirely. This misses one of the best opportunities to improve performance and develop employees. When considering this I always keep in mind that most things that really improve operations take a lot of effort, performance reviews are no different. They open the dialogue between employees and management and set a baseline for performance expectations. If you’re concerned about conducting them, just look at the remainder of this list and you’ll be warned against the worst mistakes.

Too vague – Have you ever received feedback from a boss like, “I need you to be better at _____?” Of course you have. Did you get better? Well it depends on what “better” meant, and that’s the problem. If you want to affect behavior and performance you need to get specific. You need to have specific things that employee did right, you need specific things that the employee did wrong, and you need hyper specific goals. If you get all of these things ready ahead of time it is much easier to discuss them.

Everything is great until it’s not – Too many times performance reviews are little “love fests” where everyone is told that they are doing great in all areas, and are rated “Meets Expectations” and “Exceeds Expectations” on all of the bubbles on the form. Yet two months later, all of a sudden the employee finds themselves midway through the progressive discipline process and facing being let go. The time to address these issues was two-months ago and the leader did their employee a horrible disservice by avoiding the topic and being forced to address it through another mechanism that uses the poorest forms of motivation.

“Recency” – Many performance reviews are biased towards things that happened most recently. If it’s a quarterly review, they are focused on what happened in the last month. If it’s a weekly one-on-one it might be biased towards what happened today or yesterday. This myopic point of view wastes all of the learning that could take place by looking at the past performance and reviewing it. Part of the reason this occurs is a lack of preparedness on the part of the leader, who doesn’t spend the extra time to look into issues that aren’t “off the top of their head” and requires them to look into past e-mails, projects, calendars, etc. If you do your homework and prepare, this phenomenon disappears.

Overly negative or positive – There needs to be balance for the message to get across, regardless of whether the employee is exceeding expectations or is falling short. Every employee has strengths and weaknesses that can be called out, only by addressing both will you get maximum productivity out of them. In an effort to make their point about negative matters, many leaders will focus on the negative and drive it home with more negative. On the flip side, the easiest thing to do is to talk solely about the positive, which lets the leader cruise through the review. Both tactics fail to properly leverage strengths to address weaknesses, which is one of the keys to moving performance forward.

No follow up – Your yearly performance review is done, so no need to worry about that for 12 months. Right? If there is no follow-up until well after the fact, then you’ve likely just wasted everyone’s time. When you hear about or see ineffective performance appraisal processes, this is likely one of the primary culprits. Even if the employee sets about to institute changes, they are likely to be somewhat ineffective given that they are not reinforced or constrained to what the leader requested.

No career development – One of the items chronically lacking from performance reviews is what the employee wants to do with their career. For the sake of the employee and the organization, one of the goals of a performance review should be to continue to develop their skills until they are ready to make greater and greater contributions to the organization. How will you know what those contributions are, and how to help get them there, if you don’t ask the employee?

No measurable goals – What does great performance look like? If there are no measurable and specifically quantifiable goals for the next review, how do you know they succeeded? And let me reiterate that we aren’t talking about goals of “better” we are talking about goals that are quantifiable in “black and white” that you can both review and both agree on next time. This is a common improvement that can be made to review programs.

Waiting for the performance review to give feedback – This is just lazy or fearful leadership. If you’re looking for excuses to not give feedback to your team, then you aren’t a remotely effective leader. Other than the obvious loss of time to improve, the other issue is that it undermines the power of the feedback. The employee will (rightfully) wonder, “If it was that important, why didn’t you mention it before.” This leaves the leader with lost performance because they didn’t address it until after the fact and undermined impact of the feedback to boot.

Not listening – Performance reviews should have a two-way street of dialogue. The employee should be allowed to explain their thought process behind their behavior and performance, as well as be able to ask clarifying questions. Great leaders foster this dialogue so that they can get the maximum amount of coaching into the session as possible. There is no reason that the dialogue shouldn’t be split 50/50 during the review as both parties look to learn and clarify.

Most people who have been in the workforce for more than a few years have run into the performance review process, and sadly, can relate to most of the mistakes listed above.

Make no mistake, conducting a performance review takes a lot of work on the part of the leader. But if you put in that work, prepare the right way, are mindful of the mistakes above, and put more work in after the fact, the performance review can be the crown jewel of your leadership skills. 

11 Simple Ways to Fall In Love With Your Job

“The law of work seems unfair, but nothing can change it; the more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make.” ~Mark Twain

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." ~Aristotle

Part of human nature is to get dissatisfied with the status quo. That job you couldn’t wait to get to every morning during the first month after you were hired, for some mysterious reason becomes the job you curse at yourself for driving to after two years. While there are a lot of reasons why people fall out of love with their jobs that they can’t control, there are just as many (if not more) that they do have some control over. To put it succinctly:

Loving your job is a choice

It’s a choice because we can take actions to at least stem the tide of the things that cause us to dislike the job. And it goes beyond just “choosing your attitude” as every self-help guru states. There are a number of specific things that you can do that effect your surroundings, the job itself, as well as your own outlook. So let’s take a look at those.

Broaden your focus – There are plenty of duties and tasks you perform that you enjoy. There are also aspects of the job that you enjoy. What happens much of the time is that you start seeing the “negative” in certain aspects of your job and pretty soon it’s all that you notice that you are doing. Spend some time focusing on the tasks you enjoy and the aspects of the job you like, and you can put a halt to this cycle.

Avoid the “water cooler” talk – If you want to love your job you need to stop hanging around people who hate their jobs. You know who they are. They are the people that can be counted on to find the dark cloud in every silver lining. No matter how positive you are, almost everyone has limits to how well they can hold up under a barrage of negativity. You don’t need to avoid them, just find limits. Your enjoyment of your work demands it.

Break up the routine – Challenges, new projects, different workflows. If you want to feel excited and energized about your work, then you need to break out of the routine. The routine is predictable, secure … and boring. It can be as simple as taking some breaks occasionally to get out of your desk, but the biggest rewards come with the biggest risk when you raise your hand to volunteer or ask your boss for that new project. We like to feel growth and accomplishment and if we aren’t getting any of that it’s tough to feel any passion.

Mind your workspace – If you want to love your job, make sure that you get as much enjoyment out of your workspace as possible. Two things that jump right out are to declutter your desk regularly and to add some personalization. Just like it is nice to have your home clean and organized, your workspace (and by way of that your work) is always nicer when it isn’t a mess. Just straightening it once a week can have a huge impact on how it looks and feels. Add to that a few personalization touches like family or inspirational photos and you have a space you can enjoy coming to every day.

Laugh more – Whether it is exchanging jokes or checking out that funny Youtube video with a co-worker at lunch or laughing at your last mistake, try to take the edge off of the seriousness at work. Finding ways to have more fun cuts through the dreariness and recharges you for those tasks you don’t enjoy.

Improve outside of work – You have undoubtedly had times where what happens in your personal life has a negative effect on work life. Well, the same thing can happen with positive things as well (and I bet that if you thought about it you’d find it’s happened to you many times). If you are having a tough time enjoying work, try working to cultivate your hobbies and enjoyment outside of work. Work/life balance is meant to keep our life vibrant as well as our work, not in spite of our work.

Gratitude – Cultivating a spirit of thankfulness for what you have will help fight back that sense of complacency that can slowly erode our appreciation of what we have. Find just one thing every day to be thankful for on the car-ride into work. It can be the job itself, the friends you have made at work, the lessons you have learned (good and bad), and the skills you have developed. There was a time you were thrilled to have this job, get back in touch with some of the thoughts you had back then.

Talk to your boss about how you feel – One of the best places to go when you are feeling a little “blah” about the job is your boss. While they aren’t usually who you would want to go to as a shoulder to cry on or to vent, they can be a great resource for new duties, inspiration and information. One of the things that many people don’t realize is how much their lack of understanding of how the organization is doing and where it is going effects their mood. In the information age we don’t like unknowns. When you communicate with your boss, you will find answers to questions that you didn’t know that you had.

Ask what happens if you aren’t there – It’s hard to feel loved if you aren’t valued. Want to give a boost to your sense of self-importance? Ask yourself what would happen to the organization if you just disappeared one day? Detailing out how vital you are to the organization can lift your spirits and give you a profound sense of self-worth, which helps set the foundation for enjoyment and appreciation.

Set goals – We are almost all happier when we are working towards a goal. Setting daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals can give you a sense of accomplishment when you otherwise wouldn’t have it. Goals track progress and growth as well as focusing our efforts. Ever find that the day just flies by when you get focused on something? Goals can help regain that feeling.

Look for the newbies – Newly hired employees are a wonderful resource for the organization and the team. One of the often overlooked reasons is that they are full of energy and positivity towards the opportunity they have just been given. Spending time around them can be the “kryptonite” to the “water cooler” crowd. If you want to kick it up a further notch, volunteer to be a mentor for them. Giving back to others always provides a sense of accomplishment and gives you the satisfaction of helping to shape the department. So run to help the new hires, they might help you out even more.

Everybody goes through those times when they dislike, or even hate, their jobs. There’s nothing wrong with that IF you look to take charge with some of the steps listed above. If after trying all of this you still can’t fall back in love with your job (and that’s a pretty big IF considering the positive effect of many of the things listed above), only then would I advise looking elsewhere. You owe it to yourself to give your current job a shot, but you owe it to yourself even more to take charge of your happiness. And if you can’t find it at your current workplace, well …

10 Things You MUST Do If You Have a Terrible Boss

"Either you deal with what is the reality or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you." ~Alex Haley

"Deal with the world the way it is, not the way you wish it was." ~John Chambers

More than half of workers, whether in leadership or the front lines of the organization, site a “bad boss” as the worst part of their current job. The reasons for the prevalence of bad bosses are numerous; lack of training, poor fit for the position, lack of accountability from their boss, poor emotional intelligence, etc. Bad bosses also come in a variety of “flavors” from the angry boss, to the aloof boss, to the micromanager, and even a clueless boss.

If you have a great boss now, then fantastic. Odds are, however, that at some point in your career you will face off against a poor leader. How you handle that boss will go a long way to determining how far you go in your career. If managed poorly, a horrible boss can drain the life out of your career.

So what do you do to ensure you are able to continue to progress even with the handicap of a leader who doesn’t support you effectively?

Keep talking to them – It is natural to simply not want to deal with a boss who is angry or incompetent, but isolating yourself from your boss cuts you out of any benefit you can gain from them, and often arouses suspicion on their behalf. You need to stay engaged with them, even if they aren’t putting forth the effort. Your boss has access to information on where the organization is going, what opportunities are out there, what the expectations are, and a myriad of other information that is essential for your career. Limit access to that at your peril.

Focus on yourself – If you want to be successful in the employ of a bad boss you need to make you’re your own performance is exceptional. Your role doesn’t change based on the quality of your leader. If you want to overcome a bad boss, you need to maintain your high standards. For those under a boss who suffers from fits of anger and perfectionism this might seem somewhat obvious, but one of the worst traps an employee can fall into is excusing their own poor performance by referencing the poor performance of the leader. Lowering your standards at any point is stalling your career.

Know what they care about – One of the main reasons that certain bosses are terrible is that they are naturally poor communicators. This creates huge conflicts in priorities as nobody understands what they should be working on. This is an instance where you can take control over your surroundings by working out the clues of what your boss finds important. Ensuring that you take care of the things that are important to them helps you prioritize your work and builds trust between you and your boss.

Find a mentor elsewhere – While your current boss should be your mentor, there is no reason you can’t look elsewhere. It may be a team leader, an exceptional peer of yours, or a peer of your boss’s. As mentioned in the opening paragraph, one of the reasons that poor leadership is so pervasive is that nobody receives any training. Finding a mentor is essential to your career development and helps to ensure that you don’t fall into your boss’s category of leadership.

One other note; it is common to not be able to find a mentor in an organization. In those cases, I always recommend that you “pick and choose” traits from potential members that they are particularly strong at. There’s no reason that you can’t have the best of all worlds.

Cover their weaknesses – It’s easy to start griping and whining about your boss’s weaknesses, it’s quite different to do something about it and help them address them. Poor organization, difficulty making decisions, lack of trust, are all very common weaknesses of bad bosses, and are ones that you can help address through your behavior and preparation. The surest way to get a promotion is to help your boss be successful and take over for them when they move on. Don’t sit back and whine about how bad your boss is, do something about it and seize the opportunity to be indispensable to your boss. Being a resource for a bad boss often alleviates many other issues you may face under their employ.

Speak up and don’t cower – Bad bosses often resort to intimidation. It’s important for your long term health in the organization to not just “cave” as soon as they put their foot down. We aren’t looking for defiance either, just a bit of a backbone behind your actions and ideas. You won’t gain their respect by cowering to their every whim, you will only encourage them to bully you more.

You also want to make sure that them not listening doesn’t dull your willingness to share ideas. Leaders in the making have ideas, and whether your direct boss hears you or not, your peers will and that will eventually disseminate through the organization.

Keep back-up – Of course you will keep your e-mails, but it is also worthwhile to keep notes of your boss’s requests and directives. Bad bosses suffer from constant and convenient memory loss on things (especially those things that aren’t going well). Having the back-up will show to them that you are organized, follow directives and aren’t as incompetent as they may have been insinuating. Obviously you don’t want to just throw it in their face, but finding a way to reference what was said before is usually more than enough. Once you’ve done this a few times, the need to reference the back-up usually decreases.

Set reasonable boundaries – For the boss who wants to be too much of a friend to the boss who wants to interrupt your vacation, you owe it to yourself to set boundaries with every boss. This ensures a healthy environment at work for you. Now part of having “reasonable” boundaries is the need to have some flexibility built into them for the natural flow of business, and they also need to have exceptions built into them for emergencies (but of course these need to be true exceptions). Too often we encourage this behavior in our bosses by responding to e-mails after 9pm and on vacation. Encourage reasonable boundaries instead of giving control over to your boss.

Learn what not to do – Every leader you have is a tutor. And if you’re paying attention, every single one will teach you things you should do and shouldn’t do. Sometimes it’s actually harder for us to learn from a boss who does everything right because it comes across as easy. A horrible boss is apt to make more mistakes, which allows you to learn from them before you make them yourself.

Be ready to leave – Life is too short to go to a job that makes you miserable every day. So at least prepare to leave, take a look at your job duties and see if there are any areas where you could gain experience while you are there. Listen for other opportunities in the organization. There is something to be gained in every situation, you just need to find it.

Every difficult situation has opportunities within it and your employment under a horrible boss is no different. If you are able to capitalize on those opportunities by dealing with the situation in the right way, you can ensure that your career path doesn’t skip a beat.

Top 20 Questions Every Great Leader Asks Themselves

"A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements." ~Bo Bennett

"Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers." ~Tony Robbins

The questions we ask ourselves and the answers we come up with shape our future. When we look back on this process we tend to focus more on the answers, and less on the questions. After all, the answer is where we made the choice between alternatives and that choice, good or bad, had its effect on us. But there are no answers without questions, and we all have far more flexibility in the quality of the questions than we believe.

One of the reasons that great leaders are great is that they choose the right questions to ask and the frequency with which they ask them. This practice forces them into coming up with the right answers, at the right time.

So what questions are great leaders asking themselves?

1.       What is everybody thinking, but nobody has the courage to say? The proverbial “elephant in the room” can be a barrier that halts communication and progress until it is removed.

2.       What do you need from me in order to help you reach your full potential? Great leaders serve their team by providing the right tools to do their job and developing team members into the leaders of the future.

3.       How can I learn from this? A question to be asked during a struggle or a success so that you can develop your own leadership.

4.       If we weren’t going to behave, what would we do? Some rules are outdated and need to be cast aside. Some systems and processes are the same. Often they are just waiting for the right reason to be changed, and this question can inspire that reason.

5.       What skills will my team need in 6 months to a year? Continuous development of the team to meet the goals of the organization helps ensure the success of those goals.

6.       Is this the best use of my time? Priorities are at the heart of time management and productivity.

7.       What if it was an AND, and not an OR? Too many times we are making choices when we don’t need to and slowing down the progress that we could achieve.

8.       Have I publicly acknowledged and recognized a team member’s success today? As Tom Peters says, “Celebrate what you want to see more of.” Your team member’s individual success leads to your success as a leader.

9.       What can we do better? A leader’s job is to improve things, not maintain the status quo. And there is always something that can be done better.

10.   If someone was going to come along and put us out of business, what would he or she do? Organizations are often most vulnerable when they are at the height of their success. Always be looking to the next thing, because someone out there is as well.

11.   How is the energy level on the team, myself included? Passion fuels great effort, and a by-product of passion is energy. Keep a pulse of the energy and you’ll see when you need to re-ignite everyone’s passion.

12.   Am I being patient or indecisive? There’s a difference, and it’s easy for a leader to slip into the wrong one.

13.   What if we did the opposite? A great question to ask to open up brainstorming and innovative ideas.

14.   What do you think about _________? Great leaders ask this question constantly with team members, peers, customers, and their boss. This question empowers and values others and ensures you have as much information as possible to make the right decision.

15.   Are we having fun? People can’t be at their best if they aren’t enjoying the challenge. Sometimes you will need to lighten the mood, and sometimes you just need a better challenge.

16.   What are the three things that are holding us back right now? Address them and your progress will naturally speed up.

17.   How can I help you?  Great leaders serve…EVERYONE!

18.   If there were zero chance of failure, what would we do? The classic brainstorming question, but one that great leaders ask in all situations to focus on making the most progress possible and getting the best out of their team.

19.   If we could start over with a blank slate, what would we do differently? “Sacred cows” are those things in organizations that everyone understands can’t be changed (systems, locations, personnel, products, etc.). The thing is that they can all be changed if the reason to do so is strong enough. Don’t constrain your thinking too early, you can always reign it in later.

20.   Why? When you don’t know what to ask, this is always a great choice. There is also a classic leadership maxim that if you are presented with a problem and ask “Why” through five layers of depth you will always come up with the answer.

Based on this list you might think that great leaders spend their whole day asking themselves questions. And you know what? You’d be right.