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Tag: Development

  • Best Strategies for Dealing With a Bad Boss

    Best Strategies for Dealing With a Bad Boss

    There’s an age-old cynicism about having a bad boss that has resulted in countless memes, jokes, TV show plots, and more. But the truth of the matter is, whether you have a great or horrible boss, it is in your best interest to impress them and do your best to make them appreciate you and your work. You should be actively thinking of ways to make your boss see your value, actually even more so if you think they are a “bad” boss. I’ve had amazing bosses and truly awful ones in the course of my career, and frankly, I wasn’t able to keep to this goal all the time. But now, with a lot of working life under my belt, I think those of you who are struggling with bad bosses can learn from some of the lessons I’ve learned and strategies I’ve developed.

    Don’t take things personally
    If you really do have a bad boss, you and everyone else around you probably knows it. Sometimes it may feel like you are being singled out or taking the brunt of the criticism, but try not to take it personally. This isn’t about you, it’s about them. It can be frustrating when you are working hard and doing your best, but your boss doesn’t recognize it, it may even feel like your co-workers and other leaders won’t notice either because of all the criticism you are taking. But more than likely they do appreciate your good work, it is just hard for them to stick their neck out on your behalf.

    If you are able to let the criticisms and way your bad boss treats you go it won’t take such an emotional toll on you. In fact, you may be able to see it as a positive, if your boss didn’t see you as capable, or even as a threat, they likely wouldn’t pay so much attention to you at all. Or on the other hand, if they treat everyone the same way, then it really isn’t personal and you can let it go. At one of my jobs, I got yelled at by my boss on my second day, she was explaining how a system worked to me and I asked a follow-up question using standard industry terminology. She instantly started berating me and acting like I was stupid because that wasn’t the phrasing they used at this company. I felt horrible for a long time afterward, especially because this happened in the middle of a sea of cubicles and I thought everyone else agreed with her and thought I wasn’t an idiot. It wasn’t until later when I became closer to some other colleagues that they told me how ridiculous she was being and I shouldn’t feel bad.

    Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

    Rise above the noise
    With a bad boss, or in any toxic workplace, it is easy to get bogged down in petty drama that doesn’t matter. Especially if you are junior, you can get pulled in many different directions and now know where you should be putting in your efforts. I’ve found that it is best to pick one or two areas you know you can make measurable and visible impact in and focus your efforts there. Do the minimum to do what is required in other areas, but make a bet on these keystone projects and be sure to see them through to a successful conclusion. 

    If you have chosen the right projects, other teams and leaders will see your success, and even if your boss resents it, you will have accomplishments under your belt and have gained good experience. If you can combine this with the last strategy of making your boss look good, then it will be a win-win for everyone and may even start to turn the tide of your relationship with them.

    Become indispensable
    This is good advice even if you have a great boss, but if you have a bad boss it becomes even more important. And this doesn’t just mean kissing ass and becoming a lackey for your boss. But become a trusted indispensable partner for the teams you collaborate with as well. Honestly, there are enough bad workers in the world, it doesn’t take much to be someone people love to work with. Be polite, respond on time, be proactive, don’t shove responsibilities off on others, bring ideas and your expertise to the able, and you’ll already be far ahead of most people.

    If you become seen as someone who is reliable and indispensable to getting things done in your function, even your bad boss won’t be able to get in the way of you being recognized by the overall team. Of course, it also helps to build the relationship with your boss as well, with both bad and good bosses I have done things like going the extra mile to help them with urgent projects, stepping up to do things that don’t fall under my scope and made sure to deliver what they need. You don’t want to be walked all over by a bad boss, but sometimes by doing a little more at the right time, you earn their trust and ease the relationship bit by bit.

    Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash

    Adapt to them
    This is also actually true for both bad and good bosses, but much more vital for the poor ones. Jocko Willink has said “Sometimes you just have to play the game.” and I completely agree. If your boss has some request that isn’t logical or there is a better way, you have to judge which battles to fight, and a lot of the time it isn’t worth it to be right, it is easier and helps your relationship more just to do it the way they ask. 

    I think this is also really important in a more general sense of your boss’ working style and priorities. In my last two roles, I went from a boss who was very big picture-oriented, they didn’t care how I got things done as long as they were done correctly. And the projects they were attracted to were big and ambitious, things that would be highly visible and make a splash. My next boss was extremely detail-oriented and wanted to know everything down to the tiniest element. They were also super conservative and wouldn’t give the go-ahead for any initiative that didn’t have an almost 100% chance of success. Going from these two extremes took me a lot of time to adjust to, but when I was finally able to adapt to the new boss our working relationship got a lot better and we were both happier.

    Make your boss look good
    This can be painful, especially if you and your boss really don’t like each other, but it might be the most important strategy. This can be little things, like when you are talking to people about your projects, use “we” instead of “I”, even if your boss or coworkers didn’t do anything on it. I also have made it a point in several of my roles to find awards and recognitions I would put my boss up for, I tried to make them look good by giving them PR opportunities in media, having them highlighted internally, etc. This also may be harder if you have a bad boss, but it feeds their ego, which is the source of a lot of problems for toxic managers. In the end, if your boss looks good, you end up looking good too. And even if they don’t admit it out loud, they will see you are making efforts to up their status and will appreciate it. 

    With all this being said, sometimes when the boss is bad enough, you just have to cut ties and get out of there. But I believe with these strategies a lot of “bad boss” relationships can be improved enough to at least make them tolerable to the point you can keep progressing in your career and experience even if you are stuck in that role for a while. If you liked this article, click here to read about The Worst Career Advice I’ve Ever Heard.

  • The Worst Career Advice I’ve Ever Heard

    The Worst Career Advice I’ve Ever Heard

    I’m sure you’ve heard it as well, “Underpromise and over-deliver.” This phrase is commonly said to get you noticed by leadership, build your personal brand, pave the road to promotions, and make you the best teammate ever. But I think it’s bull. Sure, it sounds good when you first hear it, at a glance, you will be more successful and do better work than people expect, so you’ll look great. But if you really think about it, it’s not only unrealistic, but if you live by this motto you will frustrate your managers and are likely too egotistical to be a great teammate. Don’t follow this horrible career advice if you don’t want your career to go up in flames.

    The first part of the saying “under promise” is a surefire way to ruin your reputation. Let’s say your boss asks you to complete a report in 5 days, you underpromise, telling him you need 7. Does that sound like a good way to do things? In other cases, it isn’t even possible to underpromise. If you are delivering an event and you play down the expectations for how great the content and decorations are going to be, what good does that do you? I think this phrase appeals to people with imposter syndrome, who aren’t confident in their skills, or want an out if things don’t go well. If you consistently tell your boss that you can only deliver a percentage of what they are asking you to, you aren’t going to have a great relationship with them.

    Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash
    Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

    The second part of the saying “over-deliver” sounds nice, and it would be great if you could always do that. But it just isn’t possible, realistic, or in some cases even wanted. Honestly, if every time you outperform what you said you can deliver, first of all, it becomes pretty obvious what you are doing, secondly it means your predictions are wildly off-base and you probably don’t have the expertise or handle on your time management that you should. For salespeople, they often need to set forecasts of how much in sales they expect to bring in the next quarter, if they consistently under-forecast, something is wrong and their boss will work with them to fix it. It is nice once in a while to have a good surprise, but consistently being wrong in your forecasts just shows you don’t know your business well enough.

    In my opinion, much better career advice would be to “Manage expectations and deliver high-quality work.” But that’s not nearly as catchy. There are definitely times when you need to manage expectations when you know from your expertise that what you are being asked to deliver is unrealistic. It is an important skill to communicate that clearly and effectively while not sounding like you are making excuses or not willing to work hard. If you follow the second half and consistently deliver great work with measurable impact, you will be on track to outperform the vast majority of other workers.

    So don’t underpromise and over-deliver in the hopes of making yourself look good. Look good by being good, and you’ll go far.

  • 5 Ways to Get The Most Out Of Marketing Interns

    5 Ways to Get The Most Out Of Marketing Interns

    Over the course of my career, I’ve had the chance to mentor interns in several different roles. I’ve also had full-time employees reporting to me, but I feel the role of mentoring interns is a bit different, so today I want to dive into the lessons I’ve learned and the best ways I found to make their internships productive for both of us. In Singapore, it is common for university students to have multiple internships of 3-6 months before they graduate, so it can be a great way to supplement your team while you are in the growth phase. Longer internships are definitely better, but if you follow these lessons, you can feel great even about shorter time frames.

    Utilize their strengths
    Although interns don’t come in with much work experience, they do have transferrable skills from school that you can put to use on day one. I’ve found that research and writing projects are especially good to start with because not only will the intern be able to learn about your industry and solution at the same time as doing the work, it is also an easy kind of project to monitor and provide feedback on. I’ve had all of my interns research and write blog posts as some of their first tasks, and eventually, they even came up with topics I hadn’t thought of before. Competitor research was another area that I had interns work on, and since something like a battlecard has a fixed format, it is easy for them to replicate.

    Let them try a variety of projects
    I’ve heard from my interns that in some experiences, they get tasked with doing the same thing, like data entry for the whole internship. That’s not an ideal situation for anyone. First of all, if they are bored and feel under-utilized, they won’t be motivated to do good work. Secondly, you should be fair to your interns and give them a chance to learn new skills while they work with you, not just pass off work that no one else wants to do. Thirdly, as interns are new to the working world, neither of you knows what their strengths are or what they might excel at. I had one intern who I started having edit videos, and even though she had never done it before, ended up doing an amazing job.

    Photo by Headway on Unsplash

    Leverage their new perspectives
    Interns come in with fresh eyes and a different outlook than other employees. If you play your cards right, you can translate that into new ideas and ways of doing things that break the mold of what you’ve already been doing. Since it will likely be the first time they are doing a lot of tasks, they can come up with out-of-the-box ideas that we have blinders to, just because “it’s always been done that way”. In one of my roles, we had a lot of customer queries coming in, we had a system in place to rotate the responses, and it worked well enough, so we hadn’t bothered to improve it. After a few weeks on the job, a new intern came to me with an idea to streamline the process and make everything more trackable, after working out a few kinks with her, we gave it a shot and it worked great.

    Provide guidance, not instructions
    When you’re experienced at doing something, it is hard not to tell someone you are mentoring exactly what to do step-by-step. But doing that isn’t going to get you the best results, and it isn’t good for your intern’s development either. It is much better to provide the goal, the parameters of what you need the outcome to be, some suggestions on how to get started, and then let them go to work. Check in regularly to answer questions and provide feedback if needed, but don’t micro-manage, let them figure things out on their own. During the pandemic I had an intern who I tasked with creating paid ad campaign reports, I showed her an example of what I had been using, let her spend some time on training resources, and told her how I was using the reports, and sent her off. Within a few iterations, she had more comprehensive and readable reports than before, and we were able to make some critical decisions based on what they showed.

    Create opportunities to work with different teams
    I view an internship as a two-way street, you are getting the benefit of an extra pair of hands without the cost of another headcount, and they are getting experience and exposure in a role they wouldn’t qualify for full-time. I feel I owe them the opportunity to see different parts of the business and learn how other teams work, not just keep them stuck in a marketing bubble. This will help them later on in their career and may even change their career path. In marketing there are always good opportunities to collaborate with sales, business development, product, and customer teams. By having interns involved in projects with some of these teams they will not only be able to better understand how marketing impacts the business, they will also see what other functions they might be interested in, and give those teams fresh perspectives as well!

    So these are the best lessons I’ve learned about making marketing internships most beneficial for both sides. I hope you learned something and have success with your future interns!