people skills 20

[dpark247]

I'm an engineer trying to go to the next to the next level in my career but am finding people skills is my biggest road block, any advice or recommendations on books to help?

I am a very competent technical employee and get excellent performance appraisals, but I'm afraid my relationship with my boss is preventing any further advancements. After about a year working with him I had asked for a letter or recommendation for promotion (typical in my company) and outlined the companies requirements for that position and how I've exceeded those requirements under him (I would still work under him with the promotion). In political nice words he said no not right now but agreed with me with how I've meet the requirements and offered no additional suggestions on what he'll need to see from me to feel comfortable before he issues a letter or recommendation, except for keep doing what I'm doing. 2 years later and a couple follow up conversations and no progress. on top of this I see him as a B-rate manager and bad leader...gives tasks with deadlines and very seldom gives private encouragement and never public encouragement and does anything towards team leadership or motivation.

I'm finding my failure of getting a letter of recommendation for promotion (even though I've been getting stellar performance appraisals that seem useless to me at this point) leaving me with a passive manipulative attitude with him and end up being short and if not difficult with him. I think I also have a critical view of authority and see him as not worthy of managing which probably makes it worse for me. Ultimately I know I need to be a joy to work with (especially to my boss) and am looking for advice or book suggestions on how to not have this reaction and be supportive in such a situation.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Read Dale Carnegie's book.

Then stop pestering your boss for a letter of recommendation.,
I never believe them, and I hardly ever give them.
( I think two in fifty years )

The other managers should already be aware of the glowing performance reviews, and of your public behavior. ... which is probably undermining you already, since your private contempt for your boss is inevitably reflected in your behavior toward him in subtle ways (to which managers are extraordinarily sensitive).

If you would prefer tasks without deadlines, you are in the wrong business. I don't know what business would give you, or anyone, open-ended tasks.

If he gives you _any_ encouragement, public or private, he's well over the 50th percentile of managers.

As you suspect, _you_ are the problem, and I hope also the solution.
Try a little private role play at home; how would you respond to supervising you?


Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[IRstuff]

I agree that recommendation letters tend to be useless. We once hired someone who had GLOWING recommendations; it turned out that they were desperate to get rid of her, who was supremely skilled at pushing the sexual discrimination button anytime she was on the verge of being reprimanded or marked down for bad performance. Natch, the company had crappy HR policies, so she had lots of latitude to play with. She couldn't figure a simple shift register, even though she had 20 yrs more experience than me, at the time.

OK, "I think I also have a critical view of authority and see him as not worthy of managing which probably makes it worse for me."

This is a problem with YOU. Lousy managers abound; you would be a lousy manager for thinking so of a subordinate. A good manager makes do with what they have. You are unlikely to ever have an entire cadre of superior employees, so you need to learn to deal with it. Likewise, having a good manager is a rare thing as well. Most engineers suck at managing, because that's not where their interests lie; if it were, they would have majored in business. Even good managers suck sometimes.

By the above, I obviously would suck as a manager as well.

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529

 

[MacGyverS2000]

If your boss agrees you went above and beyond but still refuses to offer the "standard" letter after 2-3 years of such work, I think the problem is with him, not you. Two possibilities: 1) He found a good employee and (selfishly) doesn't want to lose him, or 2) He's clueless.

Either way, it's time to get out of there.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[truckandbus]

The Carnegie book is good advice.

Take a step further back and determine if this is an issue just with you boss or with other people as well - if this is a trend in your business relationships than you might want to try a 'working with difficult people" seminar. I've sent a couple of engineers that type of class even though they were the ones perceived as 'difficult' and the results were positive and impressive as they picked up strategies that allowed them to manipulate (for lack of a better term)coworkers into a better working relationship

 

[tygerdawg]

And now, time for an alternative opinion. Having grown up with my father who was a Carnegie-crazy zombie who was always spouting the mantra "Never complain, criticize, or condemn. ACT enthusiastic, and you will BE enthusiastic! TODAY is the BEST day of my life, and TOMORROW is going to be EVEN BETTER!" OK, so there might be some merit in that. So I read those books. Some of it I thought could be very useful. A significant portion of it struck me as "how to be a backstabbing charlatan and manipulate other people to do what you want them to do." But there I go again with the "condemn" thing again. Pick and choose what ol' Dale has to say.

Having said my two cents' worth, all the advice above is very good. MacGyver makes a good point. The times that I have been "stuck" in an unchanging situation with no perceived avenue of advancement, my courses of actions were:
[ul]
[li]Diligently gathered my data about salary levels, years experience, reviews, skill sets, etc., to show my value. Requested a meeting with boss (whom I thought was a chowderhead, but...so what?) and calmly & professionally stated my case for a promotion of some sort in order to advance my career. Else I would be forced to start looking for that advancement somewhere else. They advanced me to a R&D position which lasted a couple years, then laid me off when the economy tanked on the next economic cycle. I probably would have been laid off if I had not sought promotion anyway.[/li]
[li]No perceived route to advancement. Boss was non-degreed, insecure, topped-out in the org chart, and never going anywhere, ever. I left the company.[/li]
[li]Due to org chart changes, was assigned to work for SheWhoMustNotBeNamed who was as incompetent a management buffoon as I have ever suffered through. We all knew we were in deep soup when she publicly made the Idiotic Manager Quote of the Century "I will always support my Management, even when I know they are wrong." My last six months there I had my annual goals changed nine times in six months in Brownian motion fashion. Met all the goals, still got a "Does Not Meet Expectations" rating and would not discuss the data I had gathered showing otherwise. I quit at first opportunity.[/li]
[li]I asked about opportunities for advancement in a sucky economy like the one we are in right now. There's nothing available because the economy is in the dumpster. I waited until things picked up and the opportunities returned.[/li]
[/ul]

Sometimes it simply isn't fair and there's nothing you can do except either wait it out or move on.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

Speaking of 'people skills' here's one that may be a bit obtuse...

Learn to stand-up and speak confidently in front of a group.

This is something that many engineering grad's never learn but which is a skill that will serve them well during their career. Even in this age of video-conferencing and social media, being able to make presentations and sell your ideas to others is a valuable tool to have in your arsenal of skills.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[oldestguy]

After only a year or two working, you are expecting too much. Most starting engineers don't even pay their way for about 5 years.

No job is perfect and no boss is perfect. Get used to the real world. Do the best you can and that will take care of the future.

Your performance will become evident to others time goes on and you won't need any letters of recommendation.

As a supervisor of many through the years, I'll say expecting them to be "a joy to work with" never came up. Getting a job well done was what I expected.

 

[Maui]

It sounds like your boss does not feel as though you have matured enough in your role to the point where you should be promoted. Instilling this type of confidence in the management ranks requires you to not only perform your job competently, but also to demonstrate substantial improvement in your people skills. And if you feel as though you have a critical view of authority figures, this very likely is revealed in the way that you respond to others when you are given projects or tasks. And as IRStuff pointed out, this is something that managers are tuned in to hearing quite clearly. If they don't like your attitude, you probably won't get promoted. And if your attitude is bad enough, when the next round of layoffs comes along you may find yourself on the short list of candidates that they decide to unload regardless of your stellar job performance. I have personally seen this happen. It is a very predictable outcome. Managers are people who often struggle with conflicting priorities, unreasonable management demands (especially regarding time pressures), their own personal limitations and biases, and people problems. Don't be one of their people problems. They have enough of those already.

Maui

 

[ornerynorsk]

LPS for John R Baker. This is huge, and a skill that relatively few possess.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

 

[1gibson]

Right or wrong, if you're worried too much about a promotion then the perception is you're not focusing enough on your current job/tasks. Keep that in mind next time you are about to spend time preparing your arguments for a promotion. At some places, you just need to do your best and put in the time.

Your pay check is all the encouragement you should need to do your job, and that should be enough unless the environment is very negative. Next time you're about to come to your boss with another problem (your lack of promotion) consider going in there and asking if he needs help with anything he's working on.

 

[geo6]

You should watch House of Cards...not crap like Carneige

 

[berkshire]

dpark247
Check out the one minute manager by Ken Blanchard, also look around you area, and see if you have any chapters of the National Management Association NMA
They run a 12 part course as a service to their members , " Introduction to management" which is a solid guide to management techniques.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[oldestguy]

One more point. Notice that no one here agrees with your "argument" for promotion request. Advice from experience of many.

 

[MortenA]

It seems like a lot of the advise is "be content", "work hard and you will prosper" and the like (oldestguy, berkshire etc). I dont think thats nescessarely right, and it also seems to assume that you are quite young, something that is not evident, since it only says how long you have been in this position.

To me it seem like that your manager might actually be holding you back because you are an asset to him - and if you moved to a new position he would loose you. This is quite possible and therefore you should consider your options. WOurk out if it really is by intention that he wont recommend you for promotion, wher do you want to go? and is your next position in a new company?

 

[moltenmetal]

Tygerdawg: that Carnegie title has oft been translated as "How to Buy Friends and Manipulate People"...

The "act enthusiastic and you will be" bit sounds more like Tony Robbins, encouraging people to feel GREAT "get really excited about today!". There was a Tony Robbins addict who used to call on us as a technical salesman, and he irritated our receptionists so much that he soon lost any access to the facility, and had to get really excited about selling to other people. There are some psychological underpinnings to the manufactured happiness bit- we evolved ways to become satisfied with what we ended up with, rather than pining after what we didn't get. Regrettably, some of us are less successful at manufacturing meaningful happiness than others. People who say that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade- which of course presumes that life has ALSO handed you bags of sugar, or that everyone has the ability to manufacture sugar from thin air- and that's truly something that many of us utterly lack. My own advice is, I think, rather more practical: when life hands you sour grapes, make vinegar- you need no sugar for that, just the will to keep going.

To the OP: I don't discourage reading anything and sifting through it to find out what works for you. Regrettably, I don't see that approach as likely to be effective in your situation. After three years, your boss is unlikely to think differently of you irrespective of what books you read. If I re-read your post correctly, you met (in your mind) the criteria for promotion after a year, and two years later (three years in total) you're in the same position, despite excellent performance reviews? Your best option is to seek another position, either laterally in the same organization or, more likely, outside of it entirely. It would appear that unless your current boss goes away, you're going to be in the same place next year, and probably the year after. Three years in, even if this is your first job out of school, you're going to be viewed by others as a potentially valuable commodity IF you actually are what your performance reviews are telling you. Note however that talk is cheap- it's easy to give a glowing performance review than a frank and accurate one. Sometimes, the only way to have your own value realized is to go away from the people who, for whatever reason, fail to acknowledge your value in a meaningful way.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

I found a calendar for my wife that has some great monthly sayings... the one on the cover is:
If life gives you lemons... squeeze them in someone's eye.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[monkeydog]

MacGyverS2000,
That is Funny!

 

[desertfox]

I remember reading Sir Alex Ferguson's book on his football career at Manchester United and how he had to tell Ronaldo (now at Real Madrid) " Son it doesn't matter how good you think you are, you will only be great when the crowd think you are good"





“Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater.” Albert Einstein

 

[andriver]

I'm not sure why many of the responses to OP's question are negative. OP does not indicate how long he has been in his career, and he states it is typical in his company to get a letter of recommendation, which sounds like a requirement.

I am a young engineer; I am on my fourth year and will be taking the PE this October, so take my advice with a grain of salt. It does sound like some of the older guys assume you are young, and have a perception that a younger generation expects raises and promotions without earning them. This may or may not be true, but we have to at the minimum assume OP is being honest with us. He is doing solid work and deserves a promotion. Something else is holding him back.

I believe that Carnegies book is something worth reading, and I am not the self help type. It may come across as "how to buy friends and manipulate people" as stated by Molten...but so what? And this may irk some of the older guys, but you need to look out for yourself. The company does not care about you, you need to do the things that will make YOU successful in life. Most often your needs and the companies needs are in line, you need to perform well technically and affect the bottom line. Adjusting your personality to others, in a way that benefits you, or encourages others to do/give you something you want, is not something that should be looked at negatively. If a car salesman treated you like crap, you would not buy from him, just as a simple example. His demeanor towards you is because he wants something from you. Everyday you need to act like you want something from people in your company, be helpful to others and pick up their slack when your work is slowing down. Also, show leadership qualities by helping train new/younger engineers. You need to do more that just request more responsibilities, you need to constantly look for opportunities to do more.

I am not a typical design engineer, I am an anomaly when compared to most. I am aggressive, and I have no problem speaking in front of people, nor do I have a problem letting people know how I truly feel. I have always been a very social person so this is natural to me, and I am able to convey myself for the most part without offending anyone. People genuinely like to work with me, and due to my aggressiveness I have been promoted once in my young career, and just recently in my annual review, I expressed I wanted more leadership opportunities to be able to grow into a management position. This was acknowledged by my superiors, and they agreed that I was on pace for a leadership role.

I will admit there are many other much smarter guys around me, they knock out a design more efficiently than I do. The difference is I have actively pushed for opportunities doing things other than design work. I'm on a committee for safety in design in our company, I recruit engineers at university job fairs, and I am an instructor on a first year training course. I don't want to design for the rest of my life, like I said there are those better than me at that. I am technically minded, and can communicate with others, so I am pushing to be involved in all aspects, and would love to do more of the business side because that is how you move up in this world.

I would recommend trying to spend more time with coworkers outside of work, and be the person who volunteers for that random task even when you're slammed. Most importantly be a joy to work with, make people WANT to come to you. You will essentially create your own "clientele" within your company if people enjoy working with you. These guys will come to you directly, not your boss, when they need something because you become their point of contact. Also, train your replacement, seriously this is a big one.

Sincerely,

young but ambitious engineer.