It Takes More Than Performance HK Introduction Not

It Takes More Than Performance HK

Introduction • Not only doesn’t good performance guarantee you will maintain a position of power, • poor performance doesn’t mean you will necessarily lose your job. • If you upset owners, performance won’t save you. • If you are going to create a path to power, • you need to lose the idea that – performance by itself is enough.

THE WEAK LINK BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND JOB OUTCOMES • There is a lot of systematic evidence on the connections between job performance and career outcomes. • You need to know the facts if you are going to intelligently plot a strategy to acquire power. • In a research, supervisors who were actively involved in hiring people whom they favored rated those subordinates more highly on performance appraisals than they did those employees they inherited or the ones they did not initially support. • What this research means is that job performance matters less for your evaluation than your supervisor’s commitment to and relationship with you.

THE WEAK LINK BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND JOB OUTCOMES • Not only may outstanding job performance not guarantee you a promotion, it can even hurt. • “I’m not going to let you go because you are too good in the job you are doing for me. ” • Thus, great performance may leave you trapped because – a boss does not want to lose your abilities and also – your competence in your current role does not ensure that others will see you as a candidate • for much more senior jobs.

GET NOTICED • People in power are busy with their own agendas and jobs. • Such people, including those higher up in your own organization, probably aren’t paying that much attention to you and what you are doing. • You should not assume that your boss knows or notices what you are accomplishing and has perfect information about your activities. • Therefore, your first responsibility is to ensure that those at higher levels in your company know what you are accomplishing. • And the best way to ensure they know what you are achieving is to tell them.

GET NOTICED • “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. ” • Many people believe this statement and as a consequence seek to fit in and not do anything to stand out too much. • This rule may make sense in some places and at some times, but as general career advice, it stinks (kötü kokmak). • For you to attain a position of power, those in power have to choose you for a senior role. • If you blend into the woodwork, no one will care about you, even if you are doing a great job. • In advertising, one of the most prominent measures of effectiveness is ad recall—not taste, logic, or artistry— simply, do you remember the ad and the product?

GET NOTICED • The same holds true for you and your path to power. • “The mere exposure effect. ” As originally Robert Zajonc, the effect refers to the fact that people, other things being equal, prefer and choose what is familiar to them—what they have seen or experienced before. • Research shows that repeated exposure increases positive affect and reduces negative feelings, that people prefer the familiar because this preference reduces uncertainty. • In order for your great performance to be appreciated, it needs to be visible. • But beyond visibility, the mere exposure research teaches us that familiarity produces preference. • Simply put, in many cases, being memorable equals getting • picked.

DEFINE THE DIMENSIONS OF PERFORMANCE • No one is going to perform equally well on all the dimensions of their work. • What you can do is consistently emphasize those aspects on which you do well. • There are limits to what you can do to affect the criteria used to judge your work. • But you can highlight those dimensions of job performance that favor you —and work against your competition.

REMEMBER WHAT MATTERS TO YOUR BOSS • One of the reasons that performance matters less than people expect is that performance has many dimensions. • Furthermore, what matters to your boss may not be the same things that you think are important. • Many people believe that they know what their bosses care about. • But unless they are mind readers, that’s probably a risky assumption. • Having asked what matters to those with power over you, act on what they tell you.

MAKE OTHERS FEEL BETTER ABOUT THEMSELVES • The surest way to keep your position and to build a power base is to help those with more power enhance their positive feelings about themselves. • People overestimate their abilities and accomplishments • A large literature documents the importance of similarity in predicting interpersonal attraction. • And because people like those who are similar to them, they also favor their own groups and disfavor competitive groups—an effect called ingroup bias and outgroup derogation—and also prefer people from their own social categories, for instance, of similar race and socioeconomic background. • One sure way to make your boss feel worse is to criticize that individual, and this criticism is going to be particularly sensitive if it concerns an issue that the boss feels is important and where there is some inherent insecurity.

MAKE OTHERS FEEL BETTER ABOUT THEMSELVES • The lesson: worry about the relationship you have with your boss at least as much as you worry about your job performance. If your boss makes a mistake, see if someone else other than you will point it out. • And if you do highlight some error or problem, do so in a way that does not in any way implicate the individual’s own self- concept or competence—for instance, by blaming the error on others or on the situation. • The last thing you want to do is be known as someone who makes your boss insecure or have a difficult relationship with those in power.

MAKE OTHERS FEEL BETTER ABOUT THEMSELVES • One of the best ways to make those in power feel better about themselves is to flatter them. • Flattery works because we naturally come to like people who flatter us and make us feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments, and being likable helps build influence. • Flattery also works because it engages the norm of reciprocity—if you compliment someone, that person owes you something in return just as surely as if you had bought the individual dinner or given a gift—because a compliment is a form of gift. • And flattery is effective because it is consistent with the self - enhancement motive that exists in most people.

MAKE OTHERS FEEL BETTER ABOUT THEMSELVES • Most people underestimate the effectiveness of flattery and therefore underutilize it. • If someone flatters you, you essentially have two ways of reacting. • You can think that the person was insincere and trying to butter you up. • But believing that causes you to feel negatively about the person whom you perceive as insincere and not even particularly subtle about it.