Six Job Killers
Business Directions 20 Nov 1996
Looks like I have just murdered another job. Apparently gaffed it right into intergalactic oblivion. I know this because yesterday a bit of research cyberhype zapped this into my email, and if its electronic, it must be right - Right?
According to the latest Mercan (not Strine, not Cnajun, not Brish) career counselling for professional advancement, I have not only shredded my professional image but also obliterated my chances for any and all advancement. And I hardly felt a thing.
Seems there are these six corporate social faux pas just waiting to endanger our professional life, liberty, and the pursuit of yuppiness.
Some miserable (probably marketing) pundit once moaned that misery loves company. I will share this latest research so that you, too, will recognise your career is over and we can sob together on each other's non-advancing and besmirched power-padded shoulders.
Maybe we could form an email Support Group to share-and-care our sobs away through email networking. Turn our : ( to : ) WWW. Job Killers Anonymous? Friends of Job Killers?
Get your pencils ready to tick the boxes, because here come the Jean Ann Cantore (director of development at Texas Tech University's College of Engineering) Six Social Job Killers. Your future may be at stake here, but crisis counselling will be available for you high scorers hitting 4 or more out of 6. Email: wecare@anything4.a.buck.com.au
Just to set the right tone (helpless panic), we will begin with the trickiest one.
- Ignoring the cues to acceptable behaviour.
Or: fitting into the corporate culture. Now, we all know that your future corporate survival requires creative lateral thinking and rapid responsiveness to changing client demands. We also know that the greater your individuality at work, the greater your creativity. You must also, however, adapt and fit in to the pervading norms by correctly interpreting the verbal and nonverbal cues about acceptable behaviour. Fit in. Get it wrong, bozo, and you've just committed Gaffe #1. - Isolating yourself from colleagues. Or: Muck in. Here is another
fine line to tread, between beavering quietly away to get the job done
well or hanging out at the cappuccino machine cum gossip post. One side
of the line says Good-O, you are a great professional with a great career
ahead of you.
The other side says Boo-Hiss, you are a self-absorbed snob too good for the rest of us, a lousy team player, and destined for rapid self employment. Also, if you don't hang out at the watering hole, how will you get the latest goss about who is really doing what to whom and what's going down in the meantime?
In other words, you will be out of the in-the-know loop and won't have the latest info to make the best decisions for you or your boss or your organisation. So if you miss the happy hour (4 to 7 Fridays) or the daily rituals to God's caffeine and gossip, then tick another big one - Rear vision mirror orientation. Although we all know that we are the sum of our experiences, including the chemical overkill from all those 4-7 Friday happy hours, we must be very diligent about focussing on the future. Who cares what you did or who you did it with at your last job? It is how you perform right now that counts. If you hear yourself saying "we did" - referring to the last group you worked with - then better put another ticko in the box.
- Turf tromping. Another tightrope. Multiskilling, cross-training, job-sharing, etc all mean that job demarcations are blurring and territory lines are getting fuzzy. Very tricky to not overstep boundaries and unknowingly commit Gaffe #4. Sort of like stepping in it. Best check the lie of the land before boldly going where no-one has gone before - and lived. Ask trusted colleagues their opinion on boundaries and follow the most conservative advice. Unless you want to practice your latest corporate martial arts, in which case tick all the boxes right now and sharpen your chi energy for the corporate ninja confrontations ahead. Ask for Buddhas guidance. Tick the turf box.
- Romancing the Rumour Mill. Some liaisons with co-workers become
legally-enhanced long term relationships (marriage). Most don't. Chances
are yours won't. So what happens when a romantic high crashes to ground
zero? Nuclear fallout. High mortality rate for those in the immediate
vicinity. Continuing corporate disease and negative impacts for the whole
crew within the fallout zone. And yet the workplace is where you so easily
meet your kindred souls.
So try to keep the relationships fun but business oriented. Andrew DuBrin, PhD, management professor at Rochester Institute of Technology in his book Your Own Worst Enemy: How to Overcome Career Self-Sabotage (truly) says to "use our common sense," whatever that is. If socialising with a co-worker, says PhD Andrew, proceed with caution. (I say that nowadays, when dating anything, proceed with caution).
DuBrin suggests asking ourselves how the organisation will view the relationship. Will the rumour mill scream stupid Cupid and be concerned with conflict of interest or will the organisation just want peace and love and warm fuzzies all round. Love is blind, a friend closes one eye, but the corporate vulture sees 20/20 post relationship and predicts the body count. If you are dating a co-worker, Gaffe #5, tick the box. - Baring the soul. Sharing personal problems with your colleagues
is yet another tricky sticky bit. It is nice to let everyone know that
in spite of all indications to the contrary, you are a warm caring imperfect
human being with galactic-sized problems on the home front, just like the
rest of us. It is not nice, however, to let everyone know that your problems
are so incredibly special as to justify interference with your professional
job. Somehow find the balance between chatting friendly-like with colleagues
and dumping the woes of your world on their already tired shoulders.
Unlike Mercan Oprah-Winfrey-esque tell-alls, Aussies tend to err on the side of secretiveness and pretence that all's well on the domestic front. Not until death appears imminent, and then only maybe, do we let on that World War III - which began last Friday night after cheerily arriving home at 2am from the 4 to 7 Happy Hour, having somehow misplaced both your suit jacket and the car - is redefining the Cold War and rewriting all concepts within the Geneva Convention. (If only you could get the script down as software, you would be discussing figures and world-wide release with Gates right now.) If you find yourself discussing personal problems uninvited, you have gaffed again. Tick the box.
How did you score out of six? Four or more and you've earned either a Kamikaze medal (posthumous) or a Double 0 license to kill jobs - yours in particular.
But then again, with the rate of change accelerating so rapidly, maybe today's social job homicide is tomorrow's job survival tactic. Maybe I should zap this thought to everyone on my electronic mailing list - then it would have to be true, wouldn't it?
Or is that Social Job Gaffe #7: swallowing cyberhype or believing anything you receive electronically?
Gosh, gotta dash - you have new email is flashing on my screen....
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