Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead_. But Gutsy Girls Do - Kate White [52]
What you don't want to do is cross the line into making yourself look gushy or needy or desperate for approval. The key is to keep the focus on the work, not yourself.
There are some bosses who just don't like face time, from anyone. What can happen is that the more you try to work your way into the inner circle, the more she'll pull back. “It's not unlike the dance lovers do in which one person is the pursuer and the other the distancer,” says psychotherapist Marjorie Lapp. “The harder the pursuer pursues, the more distance the distancer attempts to place between the two of them.”
If you keep your antennae up, you'll notice it. Your boss may seem irritated by your having popped into her office or exasperated with some of your questions. She may actually try to create some physical distance, moving back or going behind her desk. The best strategy is to pull back a little and create some room.
The Secret Thing Your Subordinates Want: PASSION
In this case, their own passion. They want to come alive, be in love with what they do, and it takes a certain kind of boss to foster that.
Now, if you were to ask people what kind of boss they like best, they might very well describe a Barney boss—someone who sets up one of those kinder, gentler work environments. Don't believe them. As I said before, the Barney approach not only prevents people from performing at the top of their game, it also, I've come to believe, fails to inspire the fierce adoration you might think it would.
Why not? Consider this scenario: You are about to marry and you are allowed to determine which kind of marriage it will be:
A. a safe, predictable, fuzzy slipper of a relationship, with okay sex, rated PG
B. an exciting, sometimes unpredictable union with the sexiest sex, rated R
Wouldn't you go for B?
I think it's the same with bosses. Deep down most of us really want a boss who will help us discover our professional G spot, who will find what we're most passionate about and let us run with it, who will give us a sense of our own power and importance. That doesn't happen in a fuzzy slipper of an environment, but rather in a setting that is sometimes pressured and hectic.
The best way to find that G spot?
• Ask individual subordinates how they would do things. Listen not only to their answers, but what it reveals about their thinking, their interests, their desires.
• Charge them up not only about their specific responsibilities but the overall mission. Warren Bennis, author of Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge, said people yearn to be “part of a worthwhile enterprise.”
• Challenge your subordinates to solve their own problems. When they turn to you unrelentingly for advice, tell them you want them to get back to you with possible solutions. They may look wounded initially but solving their own problems will turn them into grown-ups.
• Don't feel you have to be one of them or play down your own powerfulness in the organization. They like it because it rubs off on them.
• Create task forces of several people in your department to generate ideas or solutions.
• Have periodic crunch projects that call for staying late and ordering pizzas.
• Don't reveal everything. Keep them curious.
• Ask them to help on special projects and don't feel you have to reward them. In his fabulous book Hardball: How Politics Is Played Told by One Who Knows the Game, Christopher Matthews says that “the little secret shared by smart politicians is that people get a kick out of being propositioned. The smart politician knows that in soliciting someone he is not so much making a demand, but offering the person the one thing he himself