Friday, January 17, 2014

Wanna Succeed? Be a Solution-Giver, Not a Problem-Bringer



It’s tempting to blame your Bad Boss for all the misery in your job and the impediments to your career advancement. And certainly, your Bad Boss deserves a good chunk of the blame.

However . . . you may be contributing to your lack of forward progress, too. I know, hard to acknowledge, but bear with me here.

Let’s say you have a problem--with a co-worker, a project, whatever--and you go to your boss with it. Logical, right? But here’s the thing, if all you go to your boss with is your problem, your boss--whether a Good Boss, Mediocre Boss, or Bad Boss--is going to get fed up with you, pretty quickly.

As Todd Cherches, CEO of Big Blue Gumball, said to Catherine Conlan, Monster.com Contributing Writer, in discussing things bosses hate:

“Your job is not to create more work for your boss, it’s to create less and to help your boss be successful. You are not expected to have all the answers, and you may not be empowered to make the final decision and/or take action. But when you go to your boss, you should come prepared with two or three viable options, the relative pros and cons of each, and your top recommendation.”

Anyone can come up with problems. Only a Work Pro, that most valuable of employees in any business, comes up with solutions. Whether those particular solutions are adopted or not, isn’t important. What matters is that you made the effort to suggest reasonable, doable solutions. That’s what sets you ahead of the pack.

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