photo credit: Anna Gay

When you quit your job — to take a new one — there are great temptations and great opportunities. The temptation side of quit your job is all about “take this job and shove it.” Considering the usual motivation for leaving is bad stuff happening at your current job — managers, management, layoffs, risk of going out of business, the bullying coworker — it is tempting, in fact, emotionally satisfying, to just tell the work world to shove it and get a life.

But, you know, I wouldn’t quit your job that way. Really.

If you accept that you want a good corporate experience, you understand that this one, the one where you quit your job, is not the experience you want. So you leave. Not leave by cutting a swath of destruction as you go.

No, if you were really the Captain and Commander of your career — and Cubicle Warriors resemble that description, right? — then you leave your job with grace, professionalism and thankful for the (intense) learning opportunity the job had become for you.

You do it the right way.

Quit your job and gather personal contact information from everyone

Everyone you want to stay in touch with, who you would love to help find a job and who respects your work. Even if you don’t necessarily like someone, it may be a great idea to stay in touch because the person knows what they are doing and they respect your work even if they don’t necessarily like you either.

You see, all those nice people will still be working when you are looking for the next big opportunity in your career. And they will probably be working at the very company that looks like the next big opportunity for your career. To blow them off, because they work at the place you decided is crap, is not a very smart thing to do.

Besides, you could just as easily help them find the next big opportunity for their career and a mutual admiration society will undoubtedly develop.

Business networking — having a wide range of people in multiple companies who you know and support — is the holy grail of finding the next opportunity. Throwing out the business networking baby with the corporate bath water just makes no sense.

Quit your job and get an agreement with your manager about your work

What you will complete before you leave? What you will transition while you are still there? And what you won’t do and what won’t you transition?

You see, leaving without taking care of business is rude. The very worst thing you can do is dump the work on whoever is left, walk away and do the happy dance while you’re doing it. Then one day you apply for a job, the manager — who now manages the coworker you did the happy dance on when you left — asks for an opinion on how great you are to work with, and you get dumped on big-time with the new manager because you happy dance.

Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold and you just got served frozen on your new job. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

But the very, absolute best way to get a job is to have the internal employee you used to work with go the the hiring manager and tell that manager, “If you don’t interview this person (you), you will make the biggest hiring mistake of your life.” Golden.

Because you took the time to transition the work the right way.

Quit your job and send thank you notes to the people who meant the most you you

Yes, this sounds incredibly stupid. But acknowledge the people who made the biggest (good) impact on you and how you did the work at the company. Usually, they have no idea they did so much for you and will be appreciative — and amazed — that you took the time to thank them.

Don’t do that 1000-person e-mail blast saying your leaving and here is your information and “hope you all stay in touch.” Instead, send 50 or 25 or 10 e-mails to the people you genuinely admired and appreciated while you served your tour of duty with the company. Personal loyalty is paramount in today’s job market and a note of appreciation can go a long way to cement the personal loyalty.

Quit your job for another company is a career opportunity

This isn’t about leaving, letting go and taking this job and shoving it somewhere. No, this is about concluding this chapter in your work life, ensuring your relationships with the people you want to work with are maintained and building bridges to future work gigs that will help you and your tribe successfully navigate careers.

Or you can tell everyone to shove it and deal with the consequences. Your choice. Which will it be?

photo credit: Great Beyond

Getting hired by a company that has recently suffered great setbacks can be a great opportunity — or a complete nightmare. For sure, the employees left after all the setbacks will likely have a attitudes from lifeless to protective to uncaring to…well, not many good ones. And there you are, all excited about landing your dream job.

There are some actions you can take to keep your attitude right — and, perhaps, bring a few of your new coworkers along with you. Let’s look at these:

Stay focused on your work

When you are new on the job, or when a turnaround is needed, it requires a lot of energy and a lot of work. Distractions to your work simply can’t exist in a work environment where distractions about the company setbacks are everywhere. Focusing on the work, accomplishing results from your work, and getting stuff done can go a long way to ensure that you don’t lose your energy and positive feelings to taking a new job.

Right now, I have this nice countdown clock and it is counting down from 50-minutes to zero. I stay focused for 50-minutes, then take a 10-minute break, and then do the next 50-minutes. It really helps with the distractions so I can stay focused on the work.

Move forward on your goals every day

What drains your energy is not moving forward. If all you do is relentlessly tread water, you’ll never make it to shore. If you don’t have business goals, get them. And if you have business goals (or personal ones, for that matter), do something every day to move towards achieving them. Confidence comes from accomplishment. If you can accomplish something every day to achieve your goals, confidence will follow.

Help others achieve their goals

When you are in a demoralized work environment, not much is happening in achieving business goals. If you are doing work to achieve your goals as a new person on the job, see if you can’t help your coworkers achieve some of their goals. Or at least help them accomplish something that day to move towards their business goals.

It takes a hundred little things to move in the right direction and few things to move in the wrong direction. As I am fond of saying, “it’s easy to destroy and much harder to build.” Helping a coworker achieve something positive towards their business goals that day gets moving towards the “build” side of the equation.

Stay positive

Everyone will tell you stay positive in this situation. They say that because it is easy to slide into the same despair your coworkers are feeling. That doesn’t mean you start drinking management Kool-aid, just that you need to focus on moving forward with your work and not support or reinforce all the negatives in a demoralized company.

A reinforcing circle

Joining up with a demoralized company is tough. It takes a lot of energy to turn situations around. By focusing on your work, accomplishing something to achieve your business goals every day, helping others achieve their daily accomplishments and staying positive will become a reinforcing circle that continues to move you forward.

Now, maybe your manager didn’t hire you to turn the world around. But you can do your part — and keep your sanity while doing it.

photo credit: joshfassbind.com

Starting a new job, even one for the same company, is inspiring, stressful, and fantastic — all at the same time. We sometimes get so wrapped up in our emotions in starting a new job that we forget basic communications techniques we need to follow. Starting out on a new job means we have to watch how we communicate in order to succeed.

Here are the principles to follow:

Understand what you need to accomplish and how it is measured

In my book, I’ve Landed My Dream Job — Now What???, I spend a lot of time talking about getting your goals, how you are to achieve them, and how the goals are measured from your manager. There are good reasons for this. You want to ensure you bring your job skills immediately on line with what you need to accomplish on the job. Without knowing what needs accomplishing, you won’t be working on the most valuable stuff for your manager.

As well, you need to know how to measure that you are succeeding in working on the right stuff. Without having an independent way of knowing how you are doing, you won’t know if you get off track.

The only way to know these critical starting goals is to communicate with your manager. Find out the goals and how they are measured. And, once you start work on the goals, practice prototyping your work with your manager to catch what you are doing right and what can be improved early on.

Ask where to find the information you need rather than reinvent the wheel

I had a manager comment on one of my articles that he/she expected the new hire to ask questions — but noticeably absent was any offer to provide information about the job. Crazy, but true. Some managers just throw you into the pool and watch to see if you will sink or swim. Thus, you need to prepare yourself to ask your manager and your coworkers where the information is to do your job. If you try and reinvent the wheel, you will waste time and could be viewed as not knowing how to to the work.

All because you didn’t ask.

Listen more than talking to gain valuable context

It is easy to have a subject come up and — since you are told to speak up to be visible in a job all the time — you take over the conversation about how you do stuff, how you did stuff in your previous job, or offer a process on how to do the work. Early in the job, this is viewed as being pushy, or knowing it all, or arrogant for thinking you have all the answers. Even when you do.

Instead, until you fully understand the context of subjects your coworkers bring up, you should listen way more than you talk. And when you talk, you should ask more questions to gain more insight. You need to contribute, of course. But by asking a question to clarify context before you offer a suggestion, you won’t immediately launch into a monologue about how to do something before pulling a Rosanadana moment.

You are the new team member

Remember, there are a whole set of unwritten rules, processes, and social hierarchies associated with your team. Each team handles conflicts, suggestions, recommendations, and accepting work differently. Since you are the outsider coming in on your new job, your teammates expect you to integrate with them, not them integrate with you (which is why interviewing to find out about the team is so critically important in a job search).

Start off right by communicating well right from the beginning of your new job.

photo credit: Oldtasty

The Employee Engagement Network is offering a free e-book called the The Top Tens of Employee Engagement with some really great information on improving employee engagement. I was asked to contribute and did so. Most of the listings of ten items to improve employee engagement are about management or things management can do to improve employee engagement.

But Cube Rules is about what people working in cubes can do to land their next job, improve their work, and have a great career. Since that is the point of view of the site, I wrote what I think are ten skills you need to have in order to engage in your work. Here they are:

1. Work on what excites you

Excitement precedes passion. Whenever possible, work on what excites you and reduce the work of what doesn’t excite you.

2. Learn best practices

Full engagement means you need to know the best theoretical way of doing the work. Only then can you discover if the best practice is right for you.

3. Belong to a professional organization

Like-minded people working in the same area as you build knowledge and contacts.

4. Focus on the work

When you are working, do the work. Do not let distractions remove your focus. The more you focus on the work, the greater the concentration and engagement.

5. Build superior task management practices

Knowing all your commitments in a trusted task management system reduces stress (I subscribe to the GTD Methodology with various tools).

6. Become a “trusted advisor”

When you provide your views of the work and business judgment with your manager, you engage at a higher discussion level than most employees. You will also learn about more opportunities to get your work to what excites you.

7. Network with high performers

High performing people bring higher levels of engagement in their work. Get to the top of your game by talking with these people.

8. Work the edges, not the middle

The edge is where the new stuff is happening in your field. The edge is where the value is for employers. The edge is where you need to be constantly learning to perform effectively.

9. Become the go-to person for your work

If you’re the expert, you will learn even more from the questions people ask of you. Making you even more of an expert.

10. Learn from those with adjacent skills to your skills

Adjacent skills are those that sit next to your skills. For example, if you know finance, learn from those that are experts in the adjacent skill of financial reporting. Learning adjacent skills rounds out your knowledge and leads to engaged thinking.

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You can download the entire free e-book. I’d recommend you do!

6. Forever by DarkEmerald

Status reports are one of those “‘way down the list” priorities. Recently, I asked several of my past coworkers to provide me with a couple of samples of their status reports so I can modify them for a project I’m working on. And you know what? Many of them don’t have to do any status reports for their work. They are relieved they don’t have to do them any more and I can understand why.

But there are some very good reasons to do status reports for your boss, even when you are not required to do so.

Status reports force you to think what you accomplished during the week

Let’s be honest here. Look at your calendar for the last week and check out all of the meetings you attended. Then look at all of the mini-sessions you did with coworkers. Look at the time spent on corporate policy conference calls. What do you see? An incredible amount of time spent on these activities.

Then go searching for what you accomplished that helped you reach your business goals assigned to you for the week. How much time did you actually spend on the work necessary to reach them?

Right, not so much.

The reason to do the status report is so you can both capture the few accomplishments for the week and to remind ourselves that we need to constantly fight to work on what helps use achieve our goals.

Status reports show your manager you are working on and reaching your business goals

Unless you provide some sort of written report that shows what you accomplished during the week, your performance is solely based on the perception of the manager. Or, differently, the perception of your work is determined by your manager whether you have a written summary of your weekly accomplishments or not.

Doesn’t it make a lot more sense to put your accomplishments in front of your manager every week to help ensure that performance perception is the one you want to have? Rather than any perception the manager gets from all those meetings you attend?

You can show your personal brand every week through your status reports. When no one else does because they don’t have to, where does that put you in your competitive work environment?

Status reports provide a record of accomplishments for your performance review

All those weekly status reports add up. Handling eight tickets a day translates to forty tickets a week and that translates into 2,000 tickets in a 50-week year. What those resolved tickets are represents the business benefit you bring to your performance.

And wondering where things went off the rail and how you and your manager recovered to still meet your goal is discovered through your status reports when all you can remember is “we fixed it.”

Not every accomplishment goes from the status report to the performance review, of course. But the big ones do. And few, if any, of your coworkers have the documentation to build a performance review that really allows their accomplishments to shine.

Status reports give you accomplishments for your resume

And then there is the job search. Resumes demand accomplishments to get noticed. They provide the proof that your job skills are used to help businesses reach their goals.

I’ve talked to way too many people who say they don’t know where to find the numbers they need to show what they accomplished on their jobs for their resumes. The answer, of course, is in the lowly weekly status report. Done right, the status report is a powerful representation of your work and worth to an organization.

And if the organization doesn’t value your work, the results in the status reports become the accomplishments you need on your resume that great hiring managers want to have in the people they hire.

People just like you.

So True… by Scott Robbin

There was this little company I worked for in my career: WaMu. Washington Mutual is back in the news because, after becoming the largest bank failure in history, it is being investigated by Congress and the Justice Department for fraud in its mortgage lending operations. Not only was management not smart enough to understand what was happening, but management wasn’t able to stop the bad stuff from happening either.

No worse than Enron, of course. And worthy of bashing. But what of the good and honest employees–the vast majority–that worked there? I know countless employees at WaMu who worked very hard to turn the company into something much better than when it started. Indeed, from when I started to when I was laid off, there were huge improvements in operations, technology, processes and services for the customer.

It was just that pesky mortgage securitization thing going on with sub-prime and option arm loans that really took the company and did it in.

Company failures are your personal brand failures–unless you change the perception

The problem is this: all of those good, hard working employees who had nothing to do with the bank failure took a hit to their perceived ability to do their job. It hit their personal brand of accomplishment. It made them far less attractive to hire. Not necessarily because a hiring manager thought the person committed fraud and helped bring the company down. It was just that they worked for Washington Mutual. You know…a failure.

The failure of WaMu comes up in every interview. Some of it because the hiring manager wants to know about your work in the failed company. But also because they want to know beyond every doubt that you are not also a failure and hiring you would lead to their failure.

You have to work extra hard to overcome this perception in your resume, your phone interview and your personal interviews for jobs. So how do you keep your personal brand after working at a company that failed?

You leave the company before the implosion takes place

The very best thing you can do is leave before the catastrophe occurs. Just like evacuating before the hurricane, leaving disassociates you from the impending doom of failure that will touch your personal brand. When you actually leave, rather than saying all those bad things happened before you got there, you have a case that you not only did well, but you thought the company was caving and you decided to leave. Not wait around while the world blew up all around you.

This makes it easy to throw off the failings of the many by being part of the smarter few.

You distance yourself from the failure

Home loans caused the demise of WaMu just like trading electricity futures took down Enron. Or derivatives took down Lehman. Yet, the banking division of WaMu was strong, growing and solid. If you worked there, in banking rather than mortgages, you can easily distance yourself from the embarrassment of the drunk uncle who just can’t seem to contain himself at the party.

You show your results to re-establish your personal brand

If you are the President of the division that caused the company failure, you don’t have much of a defense. You will get pounded on no matter what.

Even if you fail, you can walk away with $25 million to help tide you over to your next gig.

But most of us are not the president of a division or a CEO. We are not the employees who embraced the excess. So we must, more so than any other candidate for the potential job, show our results. We must have them on our resume, talk about them in the phone interview, and tout our interview stories around the successes we brought to help the company that was, in the end, not worth helping.

Most people don’t really talk to their results well because they are difficult to quantify or they don’t know how to do it. If you are coming from a failed company, you will have to know how to show your results.

Failure is the elephant in the room

Make no mistake about this: if you came from a company that was doing poorly or went bankrupt, failure is in the room with you during the interview. You need to be ready to face it, knock it down and show your worth in your approach to your job search.

Don’t let the taint of a failed company taint your personal brand.

Arguing About An Apple by pomranka

Office politics was the number one issue in my survey of the people on my e-mail list (see sidebar to subscribe). I get that–you have to deal with people every day and business is social. That means there are conflicts about what to do next and the best way of doing it. The office politics are the things that get most people dissatisfied with their jobs. They point to the politics for the blame.

They should blame themselves.

No matter where you work or what organization you join, how people work together to come to decisions and next steps to take will be present. So the issue isn’t office politics; that will be a constant. The real issue is “What kind of office politics to I like to participate in?”. It is a corporate culture question.

We go for the job, not the corporate experience that suits us best

There is no doubt that in a choice of having or not having a job, having one is better. Yet, we need to strive for a higher corporate experience than just having a job. Having a job often means “not satisfied” with the job. That is a wrong long-term strategy.

The thing is, we spend little time thinking through what kind of work environment suits us best. Instead, we think about our qualifications for doing the work and how cool or not cool the company is to work for. We can even go so far as to look at the logistics of the work–how long is the commute, what are the benefits, and how budgets can get rearranged because of the new job.

We need to know how we like to fight

Unless you are doing extremely repetitive work, part of what a company is paying you is for your corporate judgment on what is happening in the department. Part of what a great manager hires you for is for your experience in business and how things get done. Your analysis of a situation or process and how it can improve.

There are no single or simple answers to business problems. Which inevitably means there will be conflict. High performing teams, in fact, have high levels of conflict. The conflict means they are engaged in the work, resulting in satisfying work.

Yet these high performing teams understand how to fight. The conflict yields better performance and better results. People on these teams know how they react to different types of conflict and know where they both perform and are not intimidated by the conflict.

There will always be office politics

Office politics are not going away. Nor will they diminish. Conflicts at work will stay high because there are no longer easy answers to meeting corporate goals.

The question, then, is not where there is low conflict and little office politics. The real question is understanding how we do best with conflict when working with others. Then finding a corporate culture that matches it.

How do you like to fight?

Hail Fellow, Well Met by Diamond Geyser

Personal branding used to be that your likability trumped your value. Your personal brand of “going along by getting along” would work as a strategy for integrating with your team. But, that was then; this is now.

Now, you need to prove your worth to your manager and team every day. Every person on a team needs to be the Most Valuable Player in their space so that the rest of the team can count on them to produce results. Not just be friendly.

You’ve seen the Hail Fellow, Well Met person:

Talks a good game, doesn’t deliver

They sound impressive when the first interact with you — all the right buzz words, all the right commentary. You think you’ve found someone who can do the job and perhaps do it well.

But after your first common set of tasks that need completing, you find that all that talk is just that: talk. The work doesn’t get done and all that grand theory doesn’t get translated into practice.

Superficial relationships to get higher in the management chain

The killer is that this person often manages up really well. And uses you and your coworkers to do it. Gather up all the consensus information that would solve a problem, present the solution as if the person figured it out themselves and then take credit when the solution is implemented. Coworkers figure this stuff out all the time and can’t understand why managers don’t.

Embraces change without principles

Management presents the latest and greatest replacement for Six Sigma? This person is all over it, learning what can happen with the new approach, and getting all the buzz words ready. Ignore the practical issues of implementing something brand new — the theory covers it all and that’s all we’ll need for success.

Then, as the obvious difficulties become popular, this person embraces the populist view on what needs changing to make the new approach work. Or even touts the newest theory to stay ahead of the shifting sands of practical implementation. The bedrock principle? Whatever is popular is right for me.

Now, Value trumps Hail Fellow, Well Met

Today, managers and employees need people who’s personal brand results in value to the team. Personal branding as your work gets delivered on time to your coworkers. Personal branding that provides quality work. Personal branding that results in your coworkers can counting on you to do your part to get to success. Personal branding where you raise practical issues so that your team’s solutions get better and better at addressing problems. Personal branding that uses conflict as a way to clarify priorities for the team and raise issues for management to solve.

Value means you produce results that contribute to the manager and team goals. Not being friendly (though doing that in the process is great). Not being nice (although being nice is nice). Not being likable (though you will have greater success if you are). Not being a Hail Fellow, Well Met person with your manager and team.

Does your personal brand result in bringing unique value to your team?

The new offices by sparktography

Manager – employee communication is tricky. The process should be straightforward, but then, business is social and social situations are never that simple. Throw in the fact that your manager is writing your performance review and has influence on your pay and career and you get a communications nightmare. If you want to be an effective communicator with your supervisor, don’t make these killer mistakes:

Explaining your entire thought process without a decision request

Remember the writing rule that says the first sentence of your paragraph should explain what is coming in the rest of the paragraph? Same situation here. Managers are used to making decisions, so tell your manager up front what you are requesting. Once you say what you are expecting, you can then go through the reasons why and your supervisor will know where you are headed.

The longer it takes for you to put out your request, the more your supervisor will try and figure out what you want instead of listening to what you are saying.

This is especially true the higher up in the hierarchy you go. How do I know that? This point was given to me by a Senior Vice President in a Fortune 100 company. Executives are used to making many decisions a day — so put your request up front and your reasoning after it so they can follow your thoughts and make a decision.

Taking over your manager’s meeting

If your manager is running the meeting, let your manager run the meeting. If you interrupt your supervisor to make your points, bring up additional items not on the agenda or don’t follow your supervisor’s lead, you won’t do well in the communication department.

You may be the expert in the room on the subject at hand, but let your manager lead the meeting.

Fail to prototype your work

Ever had your supervisor give you a small project with a due date out a couple of weeks? We all have. But how many times have you taken that project, thought you understood the deliverable, then presented your work on the due date and were told it was all wrong?

It happens all the time. The higher up you go in the organization, the more likely it is to happen — because no one wants to bother the mucky-muck, but to deliver.

I worked with a group of people on a presentation that a Senior Vice President would give to a customer and the person running the project worked us hard for a week on the presentation. Every slide. Every nuance. Every statistic. It was a beautiful thing. When we presented it to the Senior Vice President the day before the presentation, he said it was all wrong. Wrong level of detail. Not the right information for his audience. Not enough relationship and too many statistics. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

So we threw everything out the window, stayed up all night and delivered another presentation before he flew out to meet with the customer. And not happy with our work on top of it.

When you get a project like this, take one point and follow it through to the end. Then, after completing this in a couple of days — about 5-10% of the total project, show your work to your manager. Now you will discover all the hidden requirements your manager assumed you knew when you said yes to the project. Now you will find the right level of detail. Now you will find if you are writing for the right audience. Now you will find if you are using the right delivery tool for the work.

Most importantly, you won’t have to stay up all night to fix something and you will be perceived as a collaborative person.

Providing activities in status reports instead of accomplishments

In bigger corporations, status reports are common. Most managers don’t tell you what they want in them or, if they do, they focus on activities, not accomplishments. Don’t fall for this trap.

Your accomplishments are your results that can get included in your performance review. Or your resume. Your accomplishments become the stories you tell your hiring manager for your next gig. Even if your manager wants to know that you attended twenty meetings last week (which should tell you a lot about the  type of manager you have…), put in the twenty meetings but also include what you accomplished as a result of the meetings.

Focus your personal brand on effective communications and accomplishments

Being the person on the team that consistently communicates well with management is a powerful differentiator between you and your coworkers. Communicating well means your results will be more consistent, you will show support for the manager’s initiatives and you will have more collaborative discussion about your work.

What has worked best for you communicating with your manager?

trust-me by cheerfulmonk

Office politics can often be seen as a group of tactics to get people to do what you want them to do. While some of the tactics can work, there is a more fundamental issue that can help your overall cause: your trustworthiness.

This sounds simple, but it is not. What, exactly, is trustworthiness? The Harvard Business Review gives us some good definitions for business in The Dividends of Trustworthiness.

Benevolence

Benevolence, as a component of trustworthiness, means that you have good intentions towards other people. In an office politics situation, that means that the other person understands that your intentions are good for you and others in your group.

You can’t go and try to screw people over. It won’t work in the long run and people will turn against you. You can certainly advocate for strange and different approaches to problems — as long as your intentions are seen as benevolent.

Integrity

In this component of trustworthiness, people assess you based on whether or not you adhere to principles they find acceptable. Not only must you have benevolence towards others, but your principles need to share common ground as well. Just as you can’t negotiate with a crazy-maker, if the principles you follow are so out of line with your coworkers, you won’t be trusted no matter how good the intentions.

This is particularly appropriate when looking for jobs; you must find a corporate experience that matches your principles about how you work. If those principles don’t match up well, you’ll never trust your coworkers and they will have a hard time trusting you.

Capability

Capability is all about producing results. Can you do what you intend? If so, when you say you will do something, people will trust that you will go and do it.

In an office politics situation, your ability to produce gives you credibility that your idea as well as implementing it makes sense. Because you produce results, it favors your ideas will get results.

Too often, office politics is viewed as a way to get something for nothing. As this component of trustworthiness shows, you have to produce results if you want to carry the day for what you advocate.

This is long term; a personal brand

You don’t build trustworthiness in a day. Or the first month on a new job. But as the article notes:

Trustworthiness is about history.

Decision makers judge you on the basis of your past exposure to them. They roll tape and remember things you’ve done in all manner of contexts, from last year’s holiday party to last week’s staff meeting.

How you are viewed is the sum total of all of those impressions you’ve made every day on the job. We often talk about trustworthiness, but we rarely talk through how you can move to that position. The way you do it is through benevolence, integrity and capability to produce results. Plus doing those activities every day.

The dividend? If you are viewed as trustworthy, “your trustworthiness will mitigate their negative reactions to any bone-headed tactics you might try to pull, such as being too pushy.”

You don’t have to “play” office politics to get what you want and need to do your job. But you need to be trustworthy.