Live.Awake

Being a Good Employee

// March 11th, 2007 // Christian Living

I’ve had an interesting career journey. I began as an English teacher and now I’m working as a computer tech support geek at a medium-sized Civil Engineering firm. I’ve worked a variety of jobs at a variety of income levels, but when it comes to being a good employee not much changes. I’ve discovered that whether you work in blue collar, white collar, or no collar many of the challenges are the same. I’m not a perfect employee by any means, but I have learned a few things along the way. In hopes that I might save you some trouble, here’s some of what I’ve learned.

1. It’s all about your boss. Be an armor bearer. Warriors of old had soldiers that would stand a few paces in front of them to carry their armor (the story of David and Goliath in the Bible is an example). It was their job to guard the warrior from attack so that they could focus on the offensive. They carried the weight so that the mission could be accomplished. Regardless of what your job description says, you get paid to make your boss look good. You are there to make your boss’ life easier and his job more successful.
2. It’s not about being productive, but rather being perceived as productive. That’s sounds awful, I know! Have you ever wondered why some incompetent and lazy people get promoted while other more competent and hard working people get laid off or ignored? Your boss (and especially his boss) probably has no idea what defines “competence” in your job. Nor does your boss have an accurate idea of who is working hard and who isn’t. It’s very rare to have a boss who is current and competent in your daily job as well as adequately involved in the “trench work” to know who is performing and who isn’t. If you want to get noticed, you have to do things to get noticed! Volunteer for special projects, come through in a pinch, be the employee with the solutions and none of the problems. Talk to your boss like he is a normal human being. When it’s time to hand out the raises, you want your name to be the first one to come to the boss’ mind before he ever looks at the numbers or does the first performance evaluation.
3. Read your boss’ mind. It can be done if you are observant. Your boss is scared. Your boss has a list of problems in his head that he doesn’t have answers for. These are big problems that most of your co-workers are completely unaware of. Things like: “We are inefficient in the way we work and it’s causing our budget to leak. If we don’t get more efficient in the way we do things, I’ll have to make cuts and I have no idea where the leaks are.” or “XYZ problem keeps coming up over and over and nothing I do seems to fix it.” or “I’m constantly having to do XYZ task and it really should be done by someone else but I don’t trust anyone to do it right.” If you will work to understand the business you are in, the goals it has, and root causes of it’s problems you will become a vital part of your boss’ team.
4. Your job description is only the baseline. There are always things that don’t get covered by anyone’s job description nor are they on anyone’s workflow charts. It’s in the job description gaps that you can thrive! Become a smart thinker and problem solver. When you recognize and solve more problems than you create, you have job security (at least as much as can be had these days).
5. Get on your boss’ “resource team” and stay there. There are always a handful of “go to” people that your boss looks to when he needs something done right or when he needs a solution to an important problem. I’m not talking about fellow members of management. You won’t find this group on any org chart. These are the real Subject Matter Experts. These are the people that the boss trusts to always come through in a pinch. These are the people that have a respectful, yet peer-like relationship with the boss. You get on this “resource team” by doing the first 4 points well.
6. Don’t speak the lingo. Every profession has it’s own set of acronyms and back-office lingo. Avoid it whenever possible. Some of that language is necessary, but whenever possible communicate to everyone (experts and novices alike) with good old fashioned English. You will ALWAYS appear smarter, better adjusted and more confident that way. And you will avoid making your boss (and his boss) feel stupid.
7. Follow the unspoken rules. This one is hard. Every boss and company has two sets of rules. There are the rules that you get in your employee handbook when you are hired. Those are important. But know there is a set of unspoken and unwritten rules that you must learn as well. For example, some bosses hate laughter. They think it’s unprofessional and they assume that if you are laughing, you aren’t working. Other bosses hate seriousness. They think that if you don’t ever laugh, then you must be hiding something. Some companies don’t allow personal phone calls. Some encourage it. Some companies expect people to work late, other’s assume that if you are working late that you aren’t working hard enough during the day (when I was at Nortel Networks you got disparaging looks if you left right at 5pm). Some companies encourage coworkers to talk with each other during the day, while others expect it to be silent and “heads down” all day. This is what makes being a new emloyee so hard. It takes time (and maybe some trial and error) to learn these things. The best way to get through the learning curve is to make a friend on your first day…
8. Be Yourself. You’re Momma was right. Bring your personality into your work. Being professional doesn’t mean you have to be 2-dimensional.
9. Be Genuine. Self-serving flattery will get you nothing but the disdain of your boss and your co-workers. If you act like a political upstart you will not only dislike yourself for it, but so will everyone else.
10. Leave it at work. You work for one reason only. To make money so you can live your life. If they didn’t pay you, you wouldn’t be there. You can stop disagreeing with me, because I don’t believe you. Ministers and charity workers aside, you work to eat. There’s no sense in allowing your work to invade your life. That’s the fastest road to depression and lack of motivation at work that I know of.

Soon I will be posting some things I’ve learned about dealing with unreasonable bosses. Most of these 10 tips I’ve told you about here are assuming that you have a boss that has some modicum of sense and personality. We all know that isn’t always the case. I’ll be addressing that in an upcoming article. What have your experiences been? Do you have any tips to add? Leave them for us in the comments. [tags]employment, boss, job, unemployment, career, advice, tips[/tags]