Developing a good relationship with your manager might be the single most important move you can make at your job. At the most basic level, your boss is the key to your next promotion or raise. A good manager will help you excel on the job, and pave the way for your next career step; a bad boss can cause your 9-to-5 to feel like (or actually become) a 9-to-9 — draining your motivation, damaging your emotional well-being and torpedoing your performance.

The trick with a bad boss is to learn how to manage up, wresting back control of your career by creating a more positive work climate. “The key is to understand the motivation behind your boss’s behavior — good, bad or indifferent. Once you understand that, you’ll have clues as to how to deal with him,” says Vivian Scott, author of “Conflict Resolution at Work for Dummies.”

Here are five of the most common boss types you’ll encounter — and a few tricks for managing them.

The Vague One

Ravi Kathuria, president of the Houston consulting firm Cohegic Corp, says that he once worked for a cagey character who never made his desires clear. “He would say that he likes to keep things ambiguous for his management team,” say Kathuria. “His belief was, that way, they would develop better solutions.” In real life, however, the strategy was a failure: “It created confusion in the management ranks. His team never knew where they stood with him.”

To focus a flighty leader, you’ll need to pin him down and get details. “If he says, ‘I just want us to be successful,’ ask, ‘What would success look like?’” suggests Scott. Ask for as many specifics as possible: how many units you’d need to sell or what profit target you should hit, for instance, or if the deadline you’re working on will meet his goals.

Don’t be shy about touching base early and often. If your boss is sending you off on a fishing expedition, at least know what you’re supposed to catch.

The Micromanager

It can be infuriating to have someone watching your every move. For your own sanity, never forget what motivates micromanagers: “They’re concerned about their own reputation and really care about the final product,” says Scott.

The best way to manage micromanagers is to get out from under them occasionally: Navigate your way onto cross-functional teams, for instance, so you’re dealing with other leaders. Since that’s not always possible, Scott also suggests offering your expertise in an area in which your boss is weak, because he won’t feel like he knows more than you and, if you’re lucky, he’ll come to see your expertise as a benefit to him. “Realize you won’t get him to stop being a micromanager, but try to redirect his attention,” says Scott.

Still getting the feeling there are eyes on you at all times? Ask if he’s willing to agree on specific check-in points for a particular project when you will talk about any issues or concerns. This should make him feel more secure that nothing will slip through the cracks — and allow you to slip out of his vise-like management grip.

The Bully

A bullying boss won’t steal your lunch, but may steal any vestige of joy you get out of your job — which, in turn, will make it hard for you to perform well enough to get a better offer. One PR specialist from Salt Lake City — we’ll call her Gina — says a former boss made feedback personal.

“She treated everyone around her like they were stupid or incompetent. She was extremely negative, rolling her eyes and saying things like ‘Oh my God, what a boring idea,’” Gina recalls. “The assistant account person was scared to death of her, frequently avoiding asking any questions because she would just insult her. It made for a terrible work environment.”

The first step to beating a bully is doing good work that you can stand behind, and then standing your ground. “The bullying boss is very focused on results and wants things done now,” says behavioral analyst Gayle Abbott, CEO of Strategic Alignment Partners in Virginia, who has worked with companies ranging from law firms to Lockheed Martin. “Identify what they want, what they value, and take action. These [types of] people also want you to come to them confident and tell them the truth — even if they don’t like it. Don’t give made-up answers or platitudes.”

One way to handle them: Whenever you’re at a turning point, delegate up by giving them a few options; then let them make the choice. “This works because bullies like to make their own decisions. They don’t want to be dictated to,” says Abbott.

Of course, if you’re being personally pummeled, you can always ask if you’ve done something wrong. A level-headed yet over-stressed boss may not realize how he sounds. And finally, if your manager is just a jerk with a capital J, you may need to start polishing up your resume. Life’s too short.

The Narcissist

With some managers, it’s all about me, me, me. “They design the processes around themselves. They network for themselves. They change the rules because they want to,” says Gonzague Dufour, director of executive recruitment and development at Bacardi-Martini and author of “Managing Your Manager: How to Get Ahead with Any Type of Boss.” While working for a narcissist can be frustrating, they’re actually incredibly easy to figure out and please, says Dufour: “If you’re smart, you’re presenting everything from his perspective.”

Tell her how your new software program will save her time; show how your new sales successes will boost her year-end numbers, or simply ask her how you can help her do her job better. And use your boss’s vanity to your advantage: If you make her look good, you’ll be more valuable to her — and she’ll be more inclined to help you perform.

The BFF

Being buddy-buddy with your boss isn’t necessarily a bad thing: The more your manager likes being around you, the more likely he is to keep you on his team as he moves up the corporate ladder. But beware when the friendly small talk turns to personal gossip. Your new best friend may be using you to spy on other members of the staff — and if he’s talking trash about your colleagues, you can bet your next paycheck he’s also bad-mouthing you behind your back.

The first thing to do is figure out your manager’s motivation. “Some people just want to be liked,” says Abbott. But if you suspect spying or even back-stabbing, beware.

“If you gossip, [your manager] can use that against you, because [he or she] won’t trust you,” says Abbott. Whenever the conversation turns to, say, who’s flirting with the intern or having problems with their kids, change the topic to something more benign, like last night’s episode of “Mad Men,” and leave the drama on-screen.

Source: YAHOO! Finance

The dirty little secret of business today: there really are no agreed-upon ways of doing business anymore. Every company does everything differently, and you can’t really compare them because there are no controlled experiments. So it isn’t a science.

But here are five very old rules that I see successful companies breaking all the time. I thought they’d give you some food for thought - unless you’re already breaking all of these– which I very much doubt.

1. Set working hours

Forget 9 - 5. Try to get rid of face time. All your team should have goals they’re accountable for but when and where they’re achieved really doesn’t matter. Some people work well at night, some early morning, some don’t get up til noon. I’ve always told my employees that, as long as they didn’t mess their co-workers around, I didn’t care what hours they worked. No one let me down.

2. Limit vacation time

The communications firm Global Tolerance doesn’t give employees vacation allowances. They just trust people to manage their time on and their time off in such a way that co-workers and clients aren’t disappointed. With a 40% per year growth rate for the last 4 years, this does not appear to have hurt them. To the contrary, it’s one of the things that has provoked high levels of commitment.

3. Agonize over maternity leave

Everywhere I go, business owners tell me that, sure, they want to hire women - but especially in small companies, losing a key employee for weeks or months on end, due to maternity, isn’t feasible. In Europe, where there’s statutory maternity leave (actually there is everywhere in the world except Lesotho, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland and the U.S.), being required to give women time off enrages many men. Every woman I’ve ever employed wanted to come back to work and wanted not to lose touch. With each one, I reached a different agreement about how we’d manage the time off - and in no case was I disappointed. Some did a day a week all through their leave; some wanted to come back early and take time off later. All these formations worked.

By the way, individuals may choose whether or not to have kids but they can’t choose whether or not to have parents. So think about maternity leave as your rehearsal for the day when most of your workforce have elderly parents they need to attend to.

4. Fire slowly

Everyone makes mistakes hiring, whether they are quick and instinctive or slow and methodical. And usually that mistake is obvious in the first 6 months. Do not think you can turn this around. It’s distracting, time-consuming and you will fail. If you goofed, ‘fess up and move on.

5. Skimp on severance

This comes via Jonathan Kaplan, CEO of Pure Digital. “We gave our workers four to six months’ severance, even if they’d worked only four months. You might think that’s crazy. But it was our mistake to hire that person. And it’s not that much money, really.” Of course those employees left the company feeling pretty good about it - and spreading the word that it was a good place to work. Cheaper than headhunters!

Source: BNET

Try not dealing with your inbox for a few hours — then you’ll know exactly what most of your employees would probably identify as their biggest source of workplace stress.

However, a recent study at Boston University suggests that email isn’t necessarily the root of that stress. Instead, it’s the “cultural symbol” upon which we foist all other work-inspired pressure and tension.

In her study “Email as a Source and Symbol of Stress,” Associate Professor Stine Grodal calls email a “red herring.” The study, conducted in partnership with Stanford University, looked at the relationship between stress and communication among three different groups of employees working in large, high-tech organizations.

Her findings: The messages piling up in our inboxes are a physical manifestation of the myriad other responsibilities weighing us down. While many participants cited email as the reason they worked long hours, the data actually suggest that long hours are more often tied to other workplace activities: time spent in meetings and teleconferences, for example.

“It’s the time spent in those assemblies that makes one feel that email is stressful,” explains Grodal. “While people are in meetings they can’t process their email, and when they return to their offices, they’re faced with a flood of messages.”

Grodal does not, however, suggest that email is free from blame. She identifies a number of ways it contributes to workplace strain:

• Time over volume: It isn’t necessarily the amount of email we receive that overwhelms us, but the time it takes to read and respond to dense, cryptic or outright incoherent messages.
• Nebulous rules: Because emails don’t interrupt us like phone calls do, there are no rules around appropriate and inappropriate times to send emails. In this way, “email begins to blur the lines between work life and home life,” says Grodal. “It comes at all times of day — late at night and early in the morning.”
• Response time: Further complicating the rules, most senders have come to expect a reply within two hours, explains Grodal. “That puts a lot of pressure on people to respond to email outside of the work day,” she adds.

So how can the small business owner combat what’s become not just a workplace issue, but a cultural one as well? Grodal suggests first looking at the root causes. “Business owners can begin relieving workplace anxiety by reexamining the way they’re using time during the workday, she says.” That means reassessing the number and duration of meetings, among others, as well as reevaluating who really needs to attend.

As for email itself, Grodal underlines the importance of establishing rules that govern emailing outside of the workday. “Be very clear about what is expected from your employees in terms of responding to email, including while at home,” she says. “It will help reduce the ambiguity around responsiveness and consequently their stress.”

Mike Song is CEO of GetControl.net, a company that helps people use email more effectively. He agrees with Grodal that it’s often the quality and clarity of the email that attributes to stress. “It’s incredibly frustrating and time consuming to rifle through vague and verbose email,” says Song. What’s more, it’s costly.

According to his data, over 80% of email requires clarification because it’s so poorly written. That’s almost two hours a day and roughly $1.2 trillion in wages a year that are wasted mismanaging email.

Song’s suggestion: Tell employees to keep it simple. “Summarize and use bullet points,” he says. “Make it clear what you want the email to accomplish by putting the action requested by your reader right up front.” They’re small adjustments that can have a huge impact on efficiency.

Source: BNET

The subject of this column isn’t new. And what I’m about to say has been said before, but it all bears repeating. Most of the people I’ve spoken to who sift through cover letters tell me that way too many are just boring, vague or ineffective. Those land in the trash.

So what does a cover letter need to get noticed? Here are 7 tips:

1. Remember to sell yourself. A cover letter is a sales pitch. And while you may think you are too good to sell yourself, get over it. All of us who believe in something important are selling – be it a proposition, an idea, or maybe ourselves. This, by the way, doesn’t mean you steal credit–just that you emphasize your very real accomplishments.

2. Demonstrate interest in the job. Sounds obvious, right? But so many people don’t bother to do homework on the company at which they are applying. Reference something about what you have learned in your cover letter. This is where you can tailor the needs of the company to the capabilities you offer.

3. Be declarative. A good cover letter is a page. Get to the point quickly, telling what you’ve accomplished. “This is what I have accomplished…”

4. Omit the conditional. Avoid statements such as, “As conditions warranted..,” or “Given the circumstances…” Conditionals detract from the power of your message. Drop them.

5. Avoid the passive voice. Using the passive voice makes you sound like a bystander. Instead of “Our effort was led by me,” write, “I led our effort.” Remember, you are the initiator.

6. Proof it. Take it from me, a Class D proof reader: don’t click send until you have a trusted friend or your spouse read your letter over to check for clarity – did you mean to say that? — and typos – Oops!

7. Be humble. This is a caveat to the first item on this list. You are pitching yourself but remember that as a leader you achieve good results through the efforts of others. It is always good to mention how you work well with and through others.

For those of you who were just checking to see that you already knew what I was going to write, give yourself a pat on the back. For anyone else, I hope these tips point you in the right direction.

Good luck, and good writing. Your next job may depend upon it… but of course you already know that.

Source: BNET

The best working environments are those which are multi-generational. Here are a few reasons why.

1. Every generation has its blind spots.

By having a multi-generational workforce these blind spots can be avoided to a large degree. A clear example is the issue of technology. The young bulls (of whichever gender) want to have technology, technology, and more technology. The older bulls (of either gender) can put a quash on making the company technology based for technology’s sake. This vital tension means that essential technology will be implemented, but non-essential technology will not…at least ideally.

2. Each generation appeals to a different set of customers.

Some people want to do business with the young hotshot, while others want the greybeard. This is just human nature. By having a workforce which is predominantly one generation, businesses can miss out on some customers.

3. It is better legally.

If there are people of every generation at all levels of your company, a discrimination suit by someone you’ve had to let go is much less likely to go anywhere. After all, how can an elder worker claim you’re discriminating against older workers if two of them are in upper-management, with other scattered throughout the company.

4. It allows each generation to safely shine.

In my experience, younger workers are more likely to take risks that can benefit the company if there is a “safety net” of older workers to catch them if they fall. Conversely, older workers can rapidly fall behind the times and be beat by competitors if they don’t keep up. A multi-generational workforce lets each generation do what they do best, without a fear that something will be missed. This leads to greater creativity and a better flow of ideas within the company.

The multi-generational workforce can be a real challenge, especially if each generation is vying for the most recognition. A good manager will utilize the tension rather than fear it or try to gloss it over. The most important thing is for the younger generations to value the experience and wisdom of the older generations, and the older generations to value the skills and innovation of the younger generations. So long as everyone operates with mutual listening and respect, the multi-generational workforce will kick butt over a workforce that is predominant in one generational demographic.

Source: CAREEREALISM

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little more control over your job search? It’s frustrating applying over and over again for jobs and never hearing back.

When you apply online, the odds are against you unless your qualifications exactly match what the employer wants. (In other words, unless you are applying for the job you already have.) It’s not impossible to land an opportunity via an online application; many people do find jobs that way, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re not likely to get hired from a resume drop.

What should you do instead? Stop looking for a job. Start looking for a company.

You may be surprised, but it may be the best career move you never considered. Instead of spending all of your time searching for appropriate job descriptions and targeting your resume to apply for them, you should consider shifting some of your efforts to identifying organizations whose goals are in line with your interests and whose problems you know you can solve.

Hannah Morgan of CareerSherpa.net suggests several steps to take rather than pursuing job postings:

• Create a list of potential employers who need your kind of problem-solving abilities.
• Be armed with research on these potential employers to understand their issues and how you can make a difference.
• Prepare examples of your work in both story and written form.
• Be able to present yourself as a solution. Know what makes you special and stick to it. Don’t waiver.

How should you make lists of employers? Start with companies you know about and where you might want to work. Don’t worry if they don’t have openings, this research focuses on places you’d like to work-not companies advertising for jobs.

It’s a good idea to steer your research to include companies where you already have networking connections. Where do your friends work?

• Use BranchOut (a Facebook application) to help identify where your friends (and their friends) work or have connections.
• Use LinkedIn to research organizations. Use the top toolbar, select “company.” Then narrow your search by location, industry, and other factors (such as size, and even by companies where you have first-degree relationships).

Some great resources to research companies and keep up-to-date in your field:

• Smart Brief has more than 100 industry newsletters that keep you in the know. Their tagline, “We read everything. You get what matters,” is the perfect answer for any busy professional.
• Jim Stroud publishes the Hidden Jobs Report. He highlights industry trends, movement, and possible new opportunities in a variety of fields. Subscribe to his newsletter for information you probably wouldn’t find elsewhere.

Once you identify organizations of interest, start learning all you can about them. Luckily, this is much easier today than it ever was in the past. Examine the company’s complete digital footprint. Many firms post videos, and manage Facebook pages and Twitter feeds touting their organizations and why you might want to work there.

Study each company’s website and blog if they have one, and search for their employees on Twitter. Use FollowerWonk to search Twitter bios for company names. (A lot of people list where they work in their Twitter bios.) Look in LinkedIn for groups related to any company that interests you to identify people who work there and for industry specific groups where you’ll meet people who work in organizations of interest.

Learn what you can about the organizations and their issues by keeping up-to-date with their online materials and by connecting with their employees. Move online relationships to in-person or telephone conversations to learn all you can. Share information about you with people who work in the organizations you’re targeting. Informational meetings are key for career success.

Target your materials and prepare samples of your work to address those needs. First, be sure your resume focuses on the organization’s needs. It shouldn’t be a rehashing of “stuff” you’ve done in the past; make it about your future. Your LinkedIn profile should be completely filled out to indicate your expertise, especially the summary and specialties sections.

Create a social resume, or personal website to showcase your expertise and to tell your career story. You can use different pages on the site to highlight your experience in various areas and to focus the reader on the reasons you are well suited for the organization. When people you meet online Google you to learn more, or click through your profiles to find out about you, a well-written, in-depth social resume helps ensure they see exactly what you want them to learn about you.

Presenting yourself as the solution is easier once all the other pieces are in place. Try these approaches for a few weeks as part of your job hunt to see if it makes a difference for you!

Source: YAHOO! Finance

On some level, it’s fun to quit a job. It’s fun to remind people that they don’t own you. It’s fun to feel that burst of freedom as you walk out the door. But it’s no fun if you don’t quit right.

Before you quit, you need a semi-plan for what you’ll do next: You will either work or play. Pick one. You cannot pick sitting in front of the TV because it is lame and you will be sorry.

If you pick work, then get another job lined up before you quit, because getting a job while you have a job means that your company paid you to job hunt.

If you choose to play, make sure you have enough money to play in a way that will actually be fun. One of my most misguided attempts at play was when I took a trip to France and ended up earning room and board by chopping off chicken heads.

Before you quit you also need to make sure the job is the problem. Maybe you are the problem and you are blaming everything on the job so you don’t have to look at yourself. The Occupational Adventure offers a good way to take a look at your life to see what’s really holding you back. Do an honest assessment. If your job is not holding you back, then deal with what is, while you’re gainfully employed. Self-examination is always easier to do when you can pay your rent.

If you really do think quitting is the right decision, here’s how to tell your boss:

1. Be kind, even if you hate your boss, because your boss is not your boss anymore. She is part of your network. And some people who are jerks to work for are actually nice and fun outside of work. You don’t know until you try. So hedge your bets and be gracious on the way out, even if you don’t feel that way.

2. Make sure your boss knows that this is a good move for you. Even if you’re not sure if it’s a good move, tell your boss that it is. We all need to believe in ourselves, or else who will?

3. Put it in writing. Why are there six thousand examples of resignation letters on the Internet? You are not Winston Churchill. You can write one sentence: “I’m leaving this company on [date].” If you want to tell your boss how much you hate her, see rule number one. If you want to nail your boss for illegal behavior, see a lawyer. Don’t tell the company how to fix itself. You are leaving. If they care about your input so much they can pay you as a consultant. Which they will not, because they do not care.

4. If you want a counter-offer, give your boss enough notice to come up with one before you leave. A counter-offer is much less likely to come after you’re gone.

5. Show gratitude for what your boss has done for you. A personal thank you note is a good way to leave because your boss can reread it all the time and remember only the good things about you. This will help when you call your boss for a favor – like when you need a reference.

Also, people who express gratitude are happier than those who don’t. The National Institute of Healthcare Research reports, “People who regularly practice grateful thinking reap emotional, physical and interpersonal benefits.” So find something nice to say about your boss and you’ll feel great as you walk out the door.

Source: penelopetrunk.com