On Bosses Day, Take Responsibility For Your Own Career
There's a Bosses Day Workforce survey making the rounds that you've got to see to believe. On the surface, the results would appear to show a clear erosion of workers' relationships with their bosses. There are even some good stats to back it up:
- 45 percent of those surveyed say their relationship with their boss has been affected by the recession. And of those, 74 percent say the recession has weakened their relationship with their boss negatively.
- 38 percent say their boss is somewhat or very uncaring when it comes to their career development.
- 45 percent say their boss has taken credit for their work.
- 53 percent say their boss doesn't respect them as a professional equal.
- 43 percent said they would not follow their boss to another company.
You know, if it was just job search sites and staffing agencies trying to stoke the flames of discontent among America's already stressed and financially strapped workforce, that wouldn't be so bad.
But there's also the many creative and novel ways that academics and leadership gurus come up with to rile up employees and sell books. When downtrodden employees aren't being horribly mistreated by bad bosses or a**hole coworkers, they're being turned into zombies by the corporate machine that seeks to destroy their souls and eat their brains.
Look, you can either fall prey to all that fictional BS and join in on the cacophony of whiners acting out on their bosses who, incidentally, have the same issues and problems that you do, or you can realize that:
- If you're a walking litany of complaints and excuses about work, you're just going to end up bitter and angry.
- You're responsible for your own career, success, and happiness.
- Passion, hard work, perseverance, ethics, and luck lead to success in the workplace; there are no shortcuts.
Image CC 2.0 courtesy Flickr user Nieve44/La Luz