Five Must-Don’ts:
Withhold praise/credit from co-workers.
Sometimes we become so focused on presenting our best self that we forget to acknowledge the efforts of others. Alternatively, concern that pointing out others’ achievements means our own could be overlooked sometimes keeps us from expressing our thanks, or offering praise, for others’ work.
The trouble is that when we neglect to acknowledge others’ contributions, we send a message to those in charge that we’re not ready to be part of a team—and you don’t get to the executive level without understanding the importance of being part of a team.
Consequently, during these one hundred days, actively cultivate the habit of thanking others for their ideas and their work, and make a point of telling those in charge about their achievements.
Sulk.
Sometimes you contribute 110 percent and still have your efforts overlooked. When this happens, it can be difficult to accept gracefully. It’s possible you might find yourself visibly or vocally disgruntled in the moment. Or, you might take this chance to log a few sick or personal days in order to recover.
The trouble with this is, it rarely goes unnoticed. Placating you might have to become the focus of the meeting, or your behavior could become fodder for post-game, water cooler gossip.
With this in mind, then, take care to vent your frustrations and resentments in such a way that there’s no chance of their harming your future. There’s truth to the saying: you may have lost the battle, but you can still win the war.
Work inside a goat’s stomach.
One of the most memorable comments I’ve ever heard came from a boss who stepped into my co-worker’s office, looked around at the scattered papers and bulging files, and said, “This office looks like the inside of a goat’s stomach.” My colleague was fired a month later. No kidding.
What does this have to do with you? Well, one of the biggest misapprehensions I run into is people thinking that visible signs of activity: messy offices, breathless voice mail greetings, abruptly terminated phone calls, makes them seem busy and important, when, in fact, they send a message that things are somewhat out of control.
So, organize your office, record a welcoming and authoritative voice mail greeting, and take the few extra seconds needed to end your phone calls gracefully. Remember, it’s easy to make it look hard. What’s hard is to make it look easy.
Gossip.
Gossip is all-pervasive. It headlines celebrity magazines on every newsstand, provides content for hundreds of blogs on the web, and has the potential to waste the time [not to mention destroy the reputations] of countless office workers across the country. And of these three, office gossip can often seem the most exciting, as we intimately know the players involved.
But when we become involved in the conversation—either by actively participating, or by passively listening as others let fly—we send a message to everyone around us that we can’t be trusted. All of which can leave your boss thinking, “If I can’t trust him with the small things, how am I going to trust him with the big?”
