Getting the Recognition You Deserve

Getting the Recognition You Deserve

Get what you deserve

Feeling like you’re still missing out on the recognition you merit at work? Follow these seven tips to get the appreciation you deserve from your bosses and co-workers.

Publicly congratulate your co-workers for their accomplishments

Be sure to point out any accomplishments that might be a little off the manager’s radar, Ventrice suggests. By complimenting others, hopefully one or more of these people will mention your contributions, too. Even if they don’t, Ventrice says, praise them anyway – it will make it more palatable when you praise yourself.

“If it isn’t always about you, people will be more willing to see self-recognition in a positive light.”

Tell your boss what you’ve accomplished
Be brief, to the point and do it privately, Ventrice says. Remember to share the credit.

“Most of the time, you didn’t accomplish what you did in isolation,” Ventrice says. “Others helped, even if it was by taking up the slack while you got the project done.”

Ask for the tough assignments
They will give you visibility while letting you grow, Ventrice says.

“If you’re invisible, you aren’t in the running for promotions, raises or new opportunities.”

Ask for feedback
Don’t get defensive when it isn’t all positive, Ventrice says. “Negative feedback can be recognition. If feedback is offered with good intentions and framed as a development tool, most employees appreciate learning the hard lessons,” Ventrice writes in her book. “Thank him or her regardless.”

Describe what you learned from an experience
This turns the conversation into a development conversation rather than an opportunity to brag about you.


Have a conversation that describes the recognition that you would most like to earn This way, you aren’t whining about the past, but looking toward the future.

Compliment your boss

“Middle managers are the most under-recognized group out there. They are operating at a recognition deficit. Give them a little praise, show them a little appreciation, and they may recognize you and everyone else a little more frequently.”

Tips to Make You a Better Manager

Tips to Make You a Better Manager

Unless you are brand new to the business world, chances are you have encountered someone in a management position who should not have been there. Unfortunately, individuals who are the best performers are often promoted to leadership positions without much formal management training. But being good at the job does not always translate into being a good manager. It takes a great deal of skill and knowledge to be able to motivate, evaluate and manage a team. A manager must have a firm grasp of the business, but also must be able to communicate well with others, a skill that does not always come naturally.

There are some basic rules of being an effective manager, says Rich Moore, a senior organization development specialist at AAIM Management Association, an organization that provides training, networking and education to St. Louis-area businesses. He says that being an effective manager is all about people. "Good managers get their work done through, with and by developing their people." Managers who are most effective "know their people's talents, and take the time to get to know their people."

If you are taking on a management role, or want to do so in the future, take a proactive approach to learning the management ropes. Here are six ways to get started.

1. Examine your own knowledge. Sometimes, knowing what you don't know is the best place to start. Examine what you do and do not know about management. Think back to experiences you have had and managers you worked for. What worked in your past professional relationships, and what needed to be changed? You will probably find that you can pick out some of the good and bad traits of managers in your past and use this knowledge to your benefit.

2. Find a mentor. Another important early step to take is finding a mentor who is in a leadership position in your workplace. Moore cautions that you need to make sure you find someone who is not just doing the job, but doing it well. Make sure you are able to learn from someone who can teach you good habits.

3. Go back to school. Many organizations offer courses in management development. In addition to his organization, Moore says that associations and businesses like the American Management Association, Padgett-Thompson and SkillPath offer a variety of resources. He suggests asking your company to send you to a seminar. "These seminars are great places for a new manager," he says, adding that they cover topics such as how your role changes when you become a manager, how to delegate, and how to get your people on board.

4. Hit the books. Another way to take your management development into your own hands is by reading books on the subject. Moore says that four of the "must read" management books are First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, Good to Great by Jim Collins, It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by D. Michael Abrashoff, and One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard.

5. Learn to listen and understand others. The secret to being successful in any management position is knowing how to relate to, communicate with and honestly evaluate your people. Moore says that this part of management is the most challenging for professionals who find that they have gone from being friends with their coworkers to being in a position of authority. When it comes to establishing a relationship with a new team, it is important to be up front and honest, he says. In addition, take a real assessment of how your employees are performing, and communicate with them about their quality of work. This means not just accepting that the work is getting done, but requiring that it gets done right.

6. Put your people first. The bottom line about being a good manager is this: If your employees don't perform well, you don't perform well. Every good manager must learn how to train, support and motivate his or her employees. If you don't take the time to support your staff and ensure their needs are being met, all of your work will be useless. After all, says Moore, "If you don't develop your people, you have nothing."

Resume Strategies

Seven Executive Resume Strategies

A resume isn't designed to get you a job. A resume can't make you qualified for positions outside your area of expertise. A resume won't, all by itself, open up doors or knock down obstacles in your path.

But there is a lot that a good resume can do... and those job seekers with them have an edge in the job search.

To be competitive, your resume needs to communicate more than just your work history, job duties, and even key results of your efforts. At the executive level, hiring authorities want to know more than just "what" you did; they want to know "how" and "why" so they can better assess your fit within the organization and its goals.

Compared to entry-level or mid-level resumes, executive resume tend to be longer (two or even three pages is the norm), a bit more detailed, and emphasize strategic contributions. Everything in the resume should support a specific career target, and the entire document should present a sharp, focused, cohesive picture of who you are and why you're valuable.Consider these strategies for a powerful executive presentation of your capabilities.

1. Start with a summary rather than an objective. Objective statements on résumés are passé. Instead, begin with an overview of your strongest selling points -- those things about you that will make a reader sit up and take notice. Make sure this summary clearly indicates the type and level of position you're interested in, and be certain to include highlights of your career contributions.

2. Show your chronological work history. If you're sending resume to recruiters and responding to print or online ads, you'll do yourself a huge disservice if your résumé shows a confusing career history. Nearly all executives are best served by a traditional reverse-chronological format introduced by a powerful summary. Even if you're trying to downplay some less-than-stellar recent experience in your work history, be certain to show job titles, employers and dates of employment. Otherwise, you risk being quickly eliminated in a flash.

3. Don't write "job descriptions." Your resume should be more about what you did than the duties of the job itself. Briefly describe your scope of responsibility, and then highlight your achievements and contributions -- things you did that improved revenue, profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction or contributed to other business objectives. As an executive, you should be more focused on strategic contributions than day-to-day administrative duties: Be sure you're communicating the "big picture" in your resume. Keep in mind that résumé readers are pretty intelligent. They can make assumptions based on job titles and general descriptions; they don't need to have every task spelled out for them.

4. Be specific. Avoid vague qualifiers such as "substantially" and "significantly." Instead, use hard numbers to lend credibility to your accomplishment statements.

5. Describe context and challenge. Your accomplishments will have even more impact if you present them in context or in relation to a specific challenge. Instead of writing "increased revenue 23 percent," it might be even more meaningful to write "reversed a five-year declining-revenue trend by focusing business development efforts on niche markets; grew revenues 23 percent and achieved profitability for the first time since 2002."

6. Be concise. Even though a two- or three-page resume is acceptable for an executive job search, it's still important to use a tight writing style so that you can communicate important information without losing your reader in a sea of text. Edit ruthlessly to remove information that isn't essential to your message.

7. Use format to increase impact. Make it easy for readers to skim through your resume to pick up important information. Use type enhancements, bullets and indentations to create an organizational hierarchy that makes your information easy to absorb. Above all else, make sure you don't make spelling, punctuation or grammatical errors.

Finall your resume is important. If it's powerful and focused, it can help advance your career. If it's vague and unconvincing, it can leave you languishing in a protracted job search. Time, energy, thought and care spent on resume development is an excellent investment in yourself and your career.

BEST REGARDS,

Jeetu Ramchandani