5 Traits of the Perfect Employee
Worried about keeping your job in the current economy? You need to stand out from your peers -- and learn to manage your boss.
I discovered the importance of managing upwards when I picked an argument with my first boss. I was right, and then I was fired. It was a good outcome for all concerned. Learning from experience can be painful.
Instead, it is easier to ask bosses what they expect of teams. The answers from 2,000 bosses I have interviewed and surveyed are surprisingly simple. Here are five things bosses consistently expect from their teams, whatever the economic circumstances.
- Hard work.Sorry, there are no short cuts. One-minute managing may be possible, but one minute working is not. In the real world, real results take real effort.
- Initiative. Bosses want teams which take the initiative and make things happen. This is good news for people who do not want to be slaves to their boss, but want to have some freedom to think and act for themselves.
- Intelligence.This is not about emulating Einstein. It is about being smart enough to deal with day-to-day challenges without always having to ask what to do next.
- Reliability. Always deliver: if you make a promise, keep it. Bosses hate surprises, because they are rarely pleasant ones.
- Ambition. The good news is that bosses encourage ambition. Ambitious people are more likely to make things happen than people with low ambitions, aspirations and achievement.
Curiously, these rules appear to be pretty much constant all the way from the post room to the boardroom. Unless you have a gold medal in incompetence, these are the rules which might just help you all the way to the top.