Infuriate Your Boss???
Want to anger your
boss, harm your chances for promotion or a raise, and generally lower your
value in his or her eyes? Here are 10 things that are guaranteed to frustrate
your manager.
1. Don’t take
responsibility for your mistakes. Reasonable bosses know that no one is perfect and that mistakes
will sometimes happen. What they care about is how you follow up on a mistake.
If you make excuses, get defensive, or deny responsibility, your boss won’t
trust that you understand why the mistake happened in the first place and what
you need to do to prevent it in the future.
2. Be too sensitive
to take feedback calmly. If you routinely get upset, offended, or angry when your boss
gives you feedback on your work, you’re making it hard (and painful) for your
boss to do her job. Worse yet, she might start avoiding giving you important
feedback that you need to hear. You need to know what you could be doing
better, and you’re more likely to hear it if you don’t make it difficult for
your boss to tell you.
3. Don’t take notes
during a discussion of work that you’ll be doing. When you’re having
a nuanced discussion of a project, your boss wants to see that you’re capturing
the details. If you’re not writing things down, she’s going to wonder how
you’re really going to retain all of it. It comes across as cavalier and not
taking the project seriously enough.
4. Guess instead of finding
out an answer for sure. Guessing means that some of the time, you’ll be giving out wrong
information. And your boss isn’t asking you questions just to pass the time;
she’ll be making decisions or taking actions based on the information you
provide, so it needs to be right. If you’re not sure about something, say so—and
then say you’ll find out.
5. Don’t disclose your
biases. It’s fine to have
biases; we all do. But if you hide your agenda or biases from your boss and she
eventually finds out, you’ll have destroyed your credibility with her. On the
other hand, be vigilant about owning up to your biases, and you’ll earn real
and lasting credibility.
6. Regularly vent
about your frustrations without bringing them to your manager. Everyone vents
about their job (or their boss) sometimes. But if you find yourself routinely
complaining to other people, it’s time to either talk to your manager or start
keeping it to yourself. Eventually, your complaints will get back to your boss,
and she’ll be unimpressed that you weren’t professional enough to address your
concerns head-on.
7. Treat a coworker
badly. You may be 100
percent in the right when it comes to the substance of your stance, but if
you’re rude, hostile, or disrespectful with colleagues, you’ll harm your
manager’s ability to back you—and will shift the focus to your own
behavior.
8. Use email for
complicated, sensitive, or heated topics. Yes, it often feels
easier to stay behind your computer to hash out difficult subjects. But
sometimes you just need to pick up the phone or talk to people face-to-face,
and your boss wants to know that you have the judgment to recognize those
times.
9. Make your manager
follow up with you to ensure things are getting done. If you don’t do
what you say you’re going to do—whether it’s because you’re disorganized
and don’t keep track of what you commit to, or because you never thought it was
a good idea in the first place—your boss will conclude that she can’t
count on you to keep your word.
10. Hide things. Hiding things—work
that isn’t getting done, an angry client, a missed deadline, the fact that you
don’t really know how to use that software—is the kiss of death. If your
boss isn’t confident that you’ll give her bad news directly or be forthright
about a problem, at a minimum you’ll destroy her trust in you and signal that
she needs to dig around for what else you might be hiding. And it might even
get you fired.
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