Excellent question, Amy. My advice, to save ourselves from management gone wrong, is this: take your career reins in your hands and grow a pair. I’m not sure what it’s a pair of, but probably some kind of household plant. Maybe a pair of petunias? But they have to be very special petunias.
Adopt the Right Mindset
Well, we’ve all been there — forced to work under a boss who doesn’t realize how much they’re making our lives miserable. Or realize how much they’re stifling our ambitions. Or realize...wait a minute. Maybe they actually don’t realize. So the first step in taking control of your career is making sure your boss knows what you want. Your boss doesn’t necessarily care about your career; your boss cares about your boss’s career. You need to care about your career. Adopting a better mindset is the first step of growing that pair of career petunias.
Your new mindset is one of equality. Your boss is not your parent, and you are not their victim. You and your boss have decided to work together in a mutual agreement. That makes you a partner in success. Your boss will likely tell you what they need from you to make them succeed—that’s their job. But it’s on you to tell them what you need from them to help make you succeed. Make your goals clear to them, and if they’re a good boss, they’ll listen.
Now, maybe you’re in a family business, and your boss really is your parent. Or maybe you work for an 18+ Dungeon, and you really are a professional victim. If so, you need to carve out a separate role for yourself in your mind and in your boss’s mind. Check out my episode on Switching Hats for tips on how to keep your different roles from being muddled. At the very least, you need a hat that makes you your boss’s partner. Preferably, you can also agree with them to have conversations where you set aside your real-life family relationship and speak as employee and boss, mapping out your career.
Choose Your Next Career Step and Set the Right Types of Goals to Get There
Once you’ve adopted a better mindset, choose a goal to work towards. What is “career advancement” to you? Do you want a promotion? A raise? A specific assignment?
Getting a promotion, getting a raise, or getting placed on your dream project are all outcome goals. These are destinations you reach over the long term, partly based on your choices, and partly based on outside forces beyond your control. They set a general direction for you to travel. An example of an outcome goal might be getting a promotion to Lesser Grand Poobah.
Process goals, on the other hand, are goals about the process you take to reach your outcome goals. If your outcome goal is a promotion, the process might be to meet every member of the Poobah nominating committee, form friendships with them, and make sure they know about your accomplishments. Your weekly process goal might be to invite one member of the committee to lunch for the first time, and to have a relationship-deepening conversation with a committee member you’ve previously met. Process goals are goals for the effort you must put in to reach your outcome goals. You can see a video here of me explaining the difference for the Harvard Business School Manage Mentor program.
In most jobs, we reward outcomes. They’re big and shiny, and it’s easy to conclude that if someone fails to reach an outcome, it’s their fault. But that's only true for one-person outcomes.
In most jobs, we reward outcomes. They’re big and shiny, and it’s easy to conclude that if someone fails to reach an outcome, it’s their fault. That may be true for one-person outcomes, like painting a picture. But when it comes to organizations, outcomes depend on too many things for outcome goals to be the only tool.
A process goal makes more sense because it’s actually under your control. If Europa, secret ruler of the Eastern Bloc, gives Minion 3845/J the goal, “double Eastern Bloc yields by the end of summer!,” that’s an outcome goal, and a bad one. Doubling crop yields depends on much that’s outside 3845/J’s control: weather, quality of the seed stock, fertilizer availability, and unexpected plagues of locusts.
But a process goal of, “try a different plant breed every month in a different farm, to find one with higher yield,” makes great sense. The process of trying new breeds will eventually lead to higher crop yields, if such yields are even possible. With good process goals, even if outcomes turn out badly, you’ve still made real progress.
“Tested 43 new plant breeds in the last year” is a process achievement, whether or not you found the breed that meets the goal. Then, you document that progress and share your efforts with your boss when you’re discussing your career plans.
Communicate Your Goals and Get Support in Reaching Them
Now, remember that most of the research shows that promotions have very little to do with what you actually accomplish, and virtually everything to do with whether your boss likes you. Except at Google, where it has to do with whether everyone else likes you. So the purpose of all these discussions is only partly to lay out what you must achieve to move ahead. Equally important is getting your boss to feel a stake in your success, so they like you more.
You might even want to make it clear to your boss how good it will make them look, even though they would never be misled by such a transparent attempt to curry their favor. By the way, did you know that social science has found that flattery works, even when the person being flattered knows it’s insincere? I’m not sure why that occured to me just now, but it must be relevant.
If you’re like Minion 3845/J, and you’ve lost opportunities in the past, try to find out why. Learn what you lacked and try to correct for that. Maybe you need to learn a new skill to compete with younger professionals, or maybe you need more experience to be considered for a position that’s usually for senior employees. In each case, ask for support from your boss. If you need to learn something, see if they’ll pay for you to take classes. If they won’t, see if they’ll at least give you time to pursue training on your own.
Once your boss promises to follow through with a reward if you meet certain goals, make sure you get that promise in writing. Even if it’s just an email exchange, you’ll want evidence of your agreement to keep them accountable. Plus, if you get a new boss, they may not be inclined to fulfill old agreements unless they’re in writing. But you will have them in writing.
Once your boss promises to follow through with a reward if you meet certain goals, make sure you get that promise in writing, even if it’s just an email exchange.
Take the Reins if Your Boss Falls Short
If you reach your goals and your boss doesn’t follow through, it’s time to look for a new job. Teamwork and trust are key to a good employee / employer relationship. If you’ve made an agreement with your employer, and you hold up your end of the bargain and they don’t, there’s no reason to continue working for them.
Amy, if your boss refuses to help you achieve your process goals, it’s also time to look for a new job. Meet people inside and outside your current company. Reconnect with old bosses and colleagues with whom you already have a good rapport, and expose yourself to new opportunities. Make it your new outcome goal to find a better job, and choose process goals that help you get there. It isn’t fair that you’ve been passed over, but then, life isn’t fair. And when life isn’t fair, take charge of your own career, and grow a pair. Of Petunias. They are lovely this time of year.
I'm Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. I run programs to help people have Extraordinary Lives and extraordinary careers. If you want to know more, visit http://ift.tt/1l2uWN6 .
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
Photos of strong work team and career goals courtesy of Shutterstock.
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