No More Mister Nice Guy?
Nice guys earn significantly lower salaries than less agreeable men (though still more than women, regardless of their agreeableness) reports a new study by Timothy A. Judge, Beth A. Livingston, and Charlice Hurst in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Whether you are surprised or unsurprised, dismayed or vindicated, you may be wondering whether this information should lead you to try to change your workplace behavior or persona. Bottom line: if you want to get a raise, should you act like a jerk? No. Instead, the authors of the study recommend that we adopt a “flexible...
Read MoreThe Benefits of Over-Communicating
When in doubt about who’s doing what, OVER-COMMUNICATE. Ask questions. Air assumptions. Clarify, clarify, clarify. Frequent, direct communication prevents you from assuming that your colleague is going to do something, only to find out when it’s too late that he thought you were responsible. (Remember the old saw that when you ASSUME it makes an ASS of U and ME? It’s true.) Over-communication of this kind also prevents you from stepping on your collaborator’s toes when you take action that you thought was obvious without discussing it with her first. Explicit...
Read MoreIt’s Not Just For Kids
The very best parenting manuals translate to other aspects of life, as well. In her classic parenting guide, Positive Discipline, Jane Nelson asks, “Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse?” It does sound crazy when she puts it like this, doesn’t it? But this belief is at the core of a discipline strategy that depends on punishments, blaming, and shaming to stop undesired behavior rather than trying to address the cause of the behavior. Meanwhile, my own experience tells me that feeling good usually...
Read MoreLaw School Grads — Where Did Our Drive Go?
“I don’t expect to love my job. There’s a reason they call it ‘work.’ That’s why they pay me for it,” my friend said to me at lunch yesterday. She is a senior associate at a big San Francisco law firm, and like many in her position, she is overworked and stressed but doesn’t know how else she can support her family. What has happened to all of those bright-eyed, eager law school graduates who were intellectually excited by their work, who wanted to make a difference, who loved the challenge and the puzzle of figuring things out? Far too...
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