How to protect yourself from being managed out
‘Being managed out’ means that your boss or company is trying to make your working life so difficult that you decide to leave. This is done in companies and countries where it’s not legally possible to simply let someone go for underperformance or because you don’t get along well with them.
There are usually two main issues for this:
Low performance and not meeting targets
Poor relationships and/or bad communication skills
How would I know if this is happening to me? Some telltale signs include
Not supporting you or your professional development
Lack of training or learning opportunities
Ignoring your requests for promotion or growth
Being actively and openly negative towards you
Making it difficult to do your job by (e.g. poor communication, lack of resources etc.)
Giving you very difficult, unclear or impossible goals to reach
What you can do
Have open and honest conversations with your manager/colleagues to address the issues
Understand what your KPIs are and commit to improving your performance based on them
Apologise if necessary for any wrongdoings on your part, even if it wasn’t intentional
Develop personally and professionally to reduce the risk of further problems
Understand the 3-month rule - it will take 3 months for anyone to believe a new behaviour is real, or to be convinced that your performance has improved
Make a deal with low risk and massive upside for the employer
What to do if your boss is a Difficult to Interpret Communicator: Ask them to clarify what your goals are. You can suggest the form of from X to Y by WHEN. This will make sure that you're on the same page. Ask them what they think success would look like, and be specific. Say what it is and what it isn't. If they've asked you for something complicated or unreasonable, simply ask them "how would you suggest I do that?"
Increase in brand awareness (e.g. social listening, website visits, in-person visits, market share). In a previous video, I spoke about how to emphasise your impact on increasing online sentiment through reviews, subscribers and likes. And in this video I’ll discuss underlining your impact on brand awareness if you’re in a business that sells products.
This is all about highlighting the marketing or promotional opportunities that you develop for the business or the relationships that you are able to leverage.
If your main job is sales, then you’d be expected to generate income for the business. But what about all those people who are involved in other areas, yet still manage to bring in new business. That’s very valuable and worth taking into account when speaking to a manager about a salary increase or a promotion.
How do you emphasize your contribution to increasing positive customer sentiment (e.g. online reviews)? And why is it important to do so?
If I asked whether you’d be more inclined to work with or buy something from a company or a brand that you liked, you’d probably say ‘of course I would’. According to Dr. Robert Cialdini, who is a professor of psychology and marketing, and author of a book called ‘Influence’, “liking” is one of the 6 key factors of persuasion.
With that in mind, if we can increase “liking” or the online reputation of a brand, that has a value because it’s going to influence customers/clients to engage in our services and it might lead to an increase in sales. So how do you calculate it?
How do you convey the value of your work and how your efforts are having a positive impact on your company/organisation?
Here are a couple of useful ways to understand what you have achieved and what you have contributed. They should primarily be used for acknowledging your own efforts, but could also be used for having respectful and professional conversations with your manager.
They should not be used in a moment of conflict or as any form of threat. That would be counterproductive - at least in my opinion.
Are you a subject matter expert that shares your expertise on an area outside of your role? Do you teach new skills to people on your team? Do you save your company money by providing in-house training? If so, do you ever consider how much that’s worth to your company? A simple way to express its value is to figure out how much it would cost to outsource it to another company.
Occasionally you might be concerned about losing your job. But you should also consider your commitment to the organisation. This is because it will take time to hire and train someone else, and it will take even longer for them to get up to the same productivity as you in the role.
Describe how you would build an email list
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Tell me about a time you took a risk and failed.
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