Business Without the Bullsh*t
Page 21
The same thing goes for various screwups that are outside your realm of responsibility. Even if you know who’s to blame, it’s not your job to be the office tattletale. The number one rule of business is to mind your own.
3. WHEN YOU’RE ACTIVELY JOB HUNTING.
If it gets out that you’re looking, you might be penalized with either a loss of status or a loss of power. You might even get fired before you find the job you want.
You have a right to look for another job without suffering unpleasant consequences, so feel free to tell any lies you must to keep your job search secret. Trust me, if your boss were looking for another job, he or she would do the same.
4. WHEN YOUR BOSS TELLS A LAME JOKE.
Being a boss means that underlings must laugh at your jokes, even when they’re awful. If you’re the underling, despite your having heard that joke for the tenth time, and its not having been funny the first, you must emit an appreciative chuckle.
Yeah, it’s a bit degrading, but think of it this way: at least your boss is trying to be entertaining. It’s probably a good idea to encourage any attempt on the part of a boss to lighten things up a little. So laugh; it’s not going to break your face.
5. WHEN YOUR BOSS SHOOTS MESSENGERS.
When bosses punish people for telling uncomfortable truths, they’re communicating that they do not want to be told such truths. For example, a CEO who berates a sales manager for providing a realistic sales forecast is asking to be told a lie (“Sales will be up!”).
The only time you should communicate hard truths to this type of boss is after you’ve accepted a job somewhere else. Indeed, if your boss is shooting messengers, your number one job should be finding another boss.
6. WHEN YOUR BOSS NEEDS PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY.
You’re not helping your boss when you communicate a truth that puts him or her into such a position that he or she must lie in order to keep from being fired, or to prevent your team’s budget from being cut.
Here’s the magic question: “Do you really want to know the truth?” If your boss says something like, “No, not really,” you’re being asked to keep your mouth shut. As long as doing so isn’t actually unethical, you should definitely comply.
7. WHEN IT’S NONE OF THE BOSS’S DAMN BUSINESS.
If your boss decides to quiz you on your religion, your politics, your personal life, your sexual orientation, your eating habits, what you smoke, or anything else that doesn’t directly affect your work performance, you have no obligation to answer the question.
In situations such as this you can’t politely decline to answer, because your refusal to answer is itself an answer. Instead you should feel free to tell the boss whatever you think he or she would like to hear.
In most areas of the world, corporations are allowed to monitor everything you do. They can even demand blood tests, which means they can “own” a part of your physical body. So cling like crazy to your last remaining shreds of privacy… even if it means fibbing.
SHORTCUT
YOU CAN LIE TO YOUR BOSS WHEN…
… your job entails lying to the public.
… the boss wants you to rat out your coworkers.
… you’re actively looking for another job.
… the boss cracks a bad joke (laugh anyway).
… the boss punishes people who tell the truth.
… the boss really, really needs you to keep the truth private.
… the boss pries into your private life.
SECRET 49
How to Safely Be a Whistle-Blower
Finally, here’s a situation that I hope you are never forced to deal with: what to do if you discover that your company has done something unethical or illegal. In this case, you have four choices:
1. Shrug and forget about it. As long as you’re not going to be arrested yourself, why should you care?
2. Quit and forget about it. Get out so your career isn’t damaged. Afterward, why should you care?
3. Become a public whistle-blower. You expose the malfeasance, lose your job, and in all probability destroy your career.
4. Become a private whistle-blower. You expose the malfeasance while leaving yourself out of the picture, without damage to your career.
This chapter will focus on the fourth alternative, hence the word safely in the title.
1. ASK, “WILL IT REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE?”
Publicly held corporations are natural sociopaths. They are legally bound to their stockholders to make the most profit possible, even if doing so involves robbery, slavery, environmental destruction, and the death of innocents, including children.
There are only two ways to restrain corporations from sociopathic behavior. The first is to pass laws and enact government regulation that increases the cost of these behaviors so they become less profitable. The second is to publicize these behaviors in such a way that customers, investors, and employees avoid the corporation, simply to escape the taint.
Unfortunately, many governments are hand in glove with business interests and therefore create massive loopholes that allow corporations to avoid fines and arrests that might negatively affect profit.
Similarly, the public has become exceedingly tolerant of horrible corporate behaviors, providing it, the public, is not the direct victim and so long as it, the public, gets the benefit of lower prices.
Therefore, the first question you should ask yourself, before becoming a whistle-blower, is whether anyone really cares. If blowing the whistle isn’t going to change anything, why bother?
2. CONSIDER YOUR POSITION.
Assuming you’ve gotten this far, the dumbest thing you can do is to bring the matter to the attention of your boss, your boss’s boss, your boss’s peers, or anybody else in authority at your company.
Chances are they already know all about it. In fact, your management is probably expending all sorts of mental and emotional energy not thinking about the situation that you’re about to throw in their faces.
Any attempt to deal with unethical corporate behavior through official corporate channels will result in a loss of your status and very possibly the loss of your job. Even if it doesn’t, you’re now marked as the whistle-blower, even if somebody else ends up blowing the whistle.
It gets worse. Now that you’ve identified yourself as a troublemaker, you’ll be marked as somebody who can’t be trusted. Your managers may even try to set you up to take blame if the secret gets out.
If what you want to expose is heinous enough, the sacrifice may be worth it. However, consider whether you truly want to be a martyr. If so, maybe being a whistle-blower is more about your needs than about those of whoever would be helped. Just something to think about.
3. GATHER INCRIMINATING DATA.
Let’s suppose you’ve decided to go forward. What’s needed now is data that proves the unethical behavior is actually taking place, with the knowledge of those who could have stopped it (i.e., management).
As you gather this data, your main goal is to keep your fingerprints (digital and otherwise) off everything you gather. This can be difficult because your company can probably track back to you everything that happens on your computer or your phone.
For example, if you forward an incriminating e-mail to a government agency, the e-mail contains hidden information that can tie it back to you. Same thing if you take photos on your cell phone.
And make no mistake about it, there’s probably somebody in the government agency who will share with your management that you were the source of the incriminating data. This is not paranoia, but simply a recognition of how things work in the real world.
Therefore, the only safe way to gather incriminating information is to put it through an analog step that destroys any hidden digital identifying information. This means using only photocopies and photoprints.
4. LEAVE, THEN LEAK.
Now that you’ve gathered the incriminating evidence, it’s time to leave before everything blows up, because if yo
u remain, I absolutely guarantee you’re the one who’s going to be damaged.
Hopefully, the moment you realized you were working for criminals the ethically challenged, you started looking for another job in a company that doesn’t share the same business model as your current employer.
Wait at least two months after you’ve left the company. Anonymously send copies of the material you gathered to any of the following that are relevant:
News sources that do exposés (they do still exist).
Government agencies with authority over the malfeasance.
Law enforcement agencies responsible for policing these crimes.
Take the anonymous part of anonymously seriously. Mail the material from a post office far from where you currently live and/or work so the postmark doesn’t suggest you might be involved. Do not include a way to get in contact with you.
If the reporter, government official, or law enforcer has skills at all, he or she will be able to use the material you provided to find out more. Warning: no matter how careful you’ve been, there’s a good chance you’ll be outed.
SHORTCUT
BLOWING THE WHISTLE
BLOW the whistle only if it will truly make a difference.
IF you complain directly to management you’ll suffer.
SECRETLY gather documentation of the abuse.
LEAVE the company before you leak the documents.
Acknowledgments
This book exists only because of my agent Lorin Rees, who encouraged me to develop the concept, and my editor Gretchen Young; Rick Wolff, publisher of Business Plus; and assistant editor Allyson Rudolph. They helped me hone the message of this book into something more original and pertinent.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to the excellent and talented editors I’ve worked with at Inc.com: Nicole Carter, Rachel Elson, Nicole Richardson, and Editor in Chief Eric Schurenberg, who brought me along when he moved from CBS to Inc.com.
There are some people who deserve special recognition:
The chapter about annoying coworkers grew out of a series of blog posts that riffed on Sylvia Lafair’s excellent book Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success. The categories in this book are based on my own experience, but the idea of segmenting coworkers in this way comes from Sylvia.
Similarly, the chapter on dirty office politics, though based almost entirely on my own experience, is indebted to Mike Phipps and Colin Gautrey, whose book 21 Dirty Tricks at Work: How to Beat the Game of Office Politics reminded me of all the times I fell for those tricks when I was first starting out. In addition, the chapter about lying with statistics has its roots in Darrell Huff and Irving Geis’s classic How to Lie with Statistics.
The chapter on working a room is based on ideas about elevator pitches that Barry Rhein shared with me. My thoughts on coaching are heavily influenced by Linda Richardson. Art Mortell taught me about coping with rejection, which is wisdom that’s reflected throughout this book.
The chapter on management fads owes a lot to my pal Jeff Pratt, who regularly fills me in on the management activity inside the company in which he’s worked for the past quarter century (a significant achievement on his part).
As always, my copy editor Lauren Ruiz of Pure-text.net has been helpful in reading drafts and providing suggestions and corrections.
My friends Larry Jacobs, David Rotman, and Gerhard Gschwandtner have provided encouragement and inspiration throughout this process, as have my wonderful wife, Natalie, and my equally wonderful children, Alexander and Cordelia.
The following subscribers to my newsletter were kind enough to review the draft during the writing process: Katja Ahokas, Ann-Marie Antic, John Banks, Cat Barnard, Iain M. Bates, Kim Blair, Kevin Boswell, Gustavo Brum, Paul Burkhardt, Yvonne Burns, Sara Byfield, Vito Carrozoo, Bernard Chege, Leslie Clements, Larry Coppenrath, Michelle Craft, Nathan Craven, Lori Crider, Tim Cromwell, Otmara Diaz-Cooper, Troy Draper, Laura Carrington Duckett, Ahma Duranai, Stephen Eltze, Jonathan Fearon, Kirstie Fiora, Olivier Fontana, Sue Garvan, Henry Gertcher, John Giartonia, Nicole Green, Steve Hamburg, Paul Herring, Rob Hill, Peg Hosky, Mary Hume, Lori Humphrey, Kathi Hunt, Franklyn R. Jarine, Tanya Jovan, Brian Keller, Wayne Killns, Pat Kinnison, Professor Linda Maria Koldau, Kevin Land, Lorelie Lewis, Lorenzo Martelletti, Dale Martin, Ryan McCartney, Bob McIntyre, Grant McNulty, Srinath Mitragotri, James Napier, Samuel Nebel, Jim Newkirk, Eric Noack, Tom Nosal, Ivo Oltmans, Dawen Peng, Christer Pyyhtia, Stephanie Quaile, Stephen Revel, Tony Roach, Ray Roberts, Lanny Rootenberg, John Rowe, George Scherma, David Schmidt, Lauren Selikoff, Eric Shefferman, Dan Spacek, Alex Spletter, Confidence Stimpson, Andrei Stoica, Jakub Szrodt, Tim Taggart, Lauren Talbot, Adam Tillman, Paul Troisi, Lee Tucker, Susan Tyson, Lahat Tzvi, Rick Valdeserri, James Vos, Ryan Waterstradt, Troy Williams, Steve Windham, and Tad Woolley.
Finally, this book is dedicated to the millions of readers of my blog whose selection of posts to go viral helps me hone my ideas and understand what people really need to know to be successful.
—Geoffrey James
About the Author
Geoffrey James’s award-winning blog has appeared on CBS Interactive and Inc.com. His writing has also appeared in Fast Company, Wired, Men’s Health, and the New York Times.
ALSO BY GEOFFREY JAMES
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Document Databases
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Introduction
PART I HOW TO MANAGE YOUR BOSS
SECRET 1. The Twelve Types of Bosses
SECRET 2. How to Keep Any Boss Happy
SECRET 3. How to Get the Best from Your Boss
SECRET 4. How to Use Your Performance Review
SECRET 5. How to Ask for a Raise
SECRET 6. How to Handle Unreasonable Requests
SECRET 7. How to Cope with a Bully
PART II HOW TO MANAGE YOUR COWORKERS
SECRET 8. How to Earn Respect from Your Peers
SECRET 9. How to Play Clean Office Politics
SECRET 10. How to Recruit a Mentor
SECRET 11. The Ten Types of Annoying Coworker
SECRET 12. How to Handle Corporate Lawyers
SECRET 13. How to Use Social Media
SECRET 14. How to Shine in a Meeting
PART III HOW TO MANAGE YOUR EMPLOYEES
SECRET 15. What Truly Great Bosses Believe
SECRET 16. How to Be a Better Boss
SECRET 17. How to Hire a Top Performer
SECRET 18. How to Hold a Productive Meeting
SECRET 19. How to Offer Criticism
SECRET 20. How to Redirect a Complainer
SECRET 21. How to Fire Somebody
PART IV HOW TO MANAGE YOURSELF
SECRET 22. How to Achieve Career Security
SECRET 23. How to Have Enough Time
SECRET 24. How to Find Your Dream Job
SECRET 25. How to Land a Job Interview
SECRET 26. How to Ace a Job Interview
SECRET 27. How to Make Failure Impossible
SECRET 28. How to Become More Optimistic
PART V HOW TO COMMUNICATE
SECRET 29. Five Rules for Business Communication
SECRET 30. How to Have a Real Conversation
SECRET 31. How to Write a Compelling
E-mail
SECRET 32. How to Give a Memorable Presentation
SECRET 33. How to Work a Room
SECRET 34. How to Negotiate an Agreement
SECRET 35. How to Handle Alarming E-mails
PART VI HOW TO HANDLE EMERGENCIES
SECRET 36. What to Do If You Hate Your Job
SECRET 37. What to Do If You’ve Screwed Up
SECRET 38. What to Do in a Personal Crisis
SECRET 39. What to Do If There’s a Layoff
SECRET 40. What to Do If You’re Stressed Out
SECRET 41. What to Do If You’re Fearful
SECRET 42. What to Do If You Feel Rejected
PART VII HOW TO COPE WITH EVIL
SECRET 43. How to Thwart Dirty Office Politics
SECRET 44. How to Cope with Management Fads
SECRET 45. How to Spot a Workplace Lie
SECRET 46. How to Identify a Bogus Statistic
SECRET 47. The Eight Lies Most Bosses Tell
SECRET 48. The Seven Times It’s OK to Lie to the Boss
SECRET 49. How to Safely Be a Whistle-Blower
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Geoffrey James
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
This publication is designed to provide competent and reliable information regarding the subject matter covered. However, it is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering legal, financial, accounting, or other professional advice. Laws and practices often vary from state to state and if legal, financial, or other expert assistance is required, the services of a professional should be sought. The author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability that is incurred from the use or application of the contents of this book.