Interesting Conversation Starter at HarvardBiz on how to
sell yourself when you job may be at risk. In this climate, everyone’s
job is. Here are the main points:
Send an e-mail to your boss praising a young employee’s work on a recent project. You’ll look like a team player – and a thoughtful manager – while drawing attention to your group’s success. It’s a nice thing to do for your direct report, too.
Ask your boss for feedback on your priorities (rather than your performance). Make a list of your key projects and goals for the next six months, and walk through the list together. Message to boss: I’m both thoughtful and action-oriented.
Find a teaching moment. Gossiping with your peers about the subprime mess doesn’t demonstrate leadership. Taking the initiative to get all the recent college hires in your department into a conference room and explain what “subprime” means does.
Get in early. Don’t work longer hours, just earlier ones. Senior people tend to be early birds – and they’ll notice if you’re there. Remember, you don’t know who’s making decisions about the names on that dreaded list.
I would add a few more manager-specific of my own:
- Take on a high-impact back-burner initiative and see it through– Maybe there is something that would help your company capture lost revenue, but with the press of daily events has been relegated to the back burner. If you can find a way to get one of these items done it, will raise your profile and show you are adding value.
- Do not report, act –t is one thing to keep your boss in the loop of what’s going on in your team, it is another to report what you have done to “push the peanut further” before asking for your boss’s help or input.
- Communicate, communicate, and communicate some more– This is not the time to keep any news to yourself. Be up-front as early as possible if you have bad news (e.g., an angry client complaint, or an impending missed-deadline). Avoid giving your boss unwelcome surprises when it’s too late to fix them! This one should go without saying, but in scary times as these, it can be tempting to hold onto bad news as long as possible in hopes you can smooth it over. In most of these cases, bad news can morph into catastrophic news.
- Back up your team – This goes along with the article’s first point, but takes it a little further. Always sell your team’s accomplishments, but do not shift the blame back to them when things go wrong. Taking ownership of your team’s performance is a “for better or worse” deal.You can also delegate (but not “dump”) one of those back-burner items to someone on your team so they have a chance to shine as well.
- Be prepared for your one-on-ones with your boss — Another no-brainer, but it’s easy to think you have a handle on everything that’s going on and then forget to mention the big accomplishment or, worse, the early notification of bad news when the conversation starts flowing. Write your talking points down and, better-yet share them with your boss before your meeting.
Does anyone have any others?
