When managers don’t handle problems but complain about one employee to another, our trust erodes. We don’t want our managers to talk to us about our coworkers. We expect our managers to have difficult conversations with those who need them. To set and uphold standards. To name what isn’t working. To offer support and correction.
That’s leadership.
Continue reading Hey Boss, It’s You
You’re the human shock absorber between her disengagement and the consequences. At the moment, she isn’t paying for your withdrawal. Your manager isn’t. You are.
Quiet quitting thrives when others quietly compensate. Think of it this way: if someone leaves her trash in the hallway and you keep taking it out, your manager doesn’t realize there’s a trash problem. Continue reading When You Sit Next to the Quiet Quitter: How not to be become the office life support system
Every workplace has at least one employee who quietly keeps thing from falling apart. These employees find the good in each manager. They patch over awkward processes with time, emotional energy and problem-solving. They translate confusion into action. They make dysfunction workable.
Until one day they don’t.
Continue reading I’m Done: When the Employees Who Keep Things From Falling Apart Call It Quits
If your workplace resembles a ghost town on Fridays, you’re not alone. White-collar professionals, particularly those allowed to work remotely, increasingly start their weekends early. One recent analysis found that remote and hybrid workers shift hours earlier in the week, hollowing out Fridays. Continue reading Skipping Out on Fridays
You work for a manager who keeps his employees divided, rattled, and demoralized so no one pushes back. Unfortunately, because Brad delivers bottom-line results, your senior leaders have situational blindness. They see the numbers, not the wreckage.
Here’s how to protect yourself, regain your footing and stay effective.
Continue reading Tactics for Dealing with Toxic Leadership
No one should be asked to work in an environment that requires swallowing hate in order to belong. Nazi imagery and praise signal exclusion, intimidation and threat, especially to Jewish employees, people of color, LGBTQ+ coworkers, immigrants and anyone with a basic grasp of history. It poisons the workplace and creates a hostile work environment. Continue reading When Extremism Walks into the Workplace: 3 steps
Your boss: charismatic, confident and allergic to being challenged. He mistakes dominance for leadership and disagreement for disrespect. The hardest part of what’s happening comes from the way it changes you. You’ve started rehearsing sentences before meetings. You’re editing yourself in real time to avoid setting him off. Over time, this chip away at your confidence.
Continue reading Dealing with an Arrogant Boss: Strategies for Success
For decades, college-educated employees built a career on the assumption that if something went wrong: a bad job fit, a stalled role, a difficult manager, they could fix it. Today, as hiring slows and layoffs ripple through white-collar sectors, that assumption again erodes, this time more persistently.
Continue reading Spooked by AI: Clinging to Stability in a Shifting Job Market
Number six: drown in a vat of burnt office coffee, slow, bitter, company blend.
Number seven: death by paperclips, swallowed one by one.
Number eight: Lock Willy and Ken in the conference room with a malfunctioning speakerphone; feedback shrieking, brains scrambled, meeting finally useful.
Office fridge salmonella surprise. HR report: “unfortunate potluck accident.”
Continue reading 16 Ways to Kill Your Managers (Metaphorically, Mostly)
I’ve had five managers in four years. Each turned out to be unethical, cruel or a slacker. I don’t want to keep job-hopping, I just want one emotionally stable manager who won’t derail my career. As an applicant, I fill out applications. How do I vet the mangagers? Continue reading Tired of Speed-dating Managers