You’re leisurely jogging toward the finish line in your khakis and button down shirt when you look back and all the other managers from your various competitors are on your heels. You thought you were leading the pack by a good distance, but they caught up. You look forward again and the finish line got pushed so far away that you can’t even see it. 12 swear words pop into your head, you ease up and everyone passes you by.

This attitude has struck down the greatest companies because they stop pushing for innovative ways to separate themselves from the pack. The best way managers can help a company flourish is by dedicating themselves to professional growth. We all need to keep moving or we become a bucket infested with mosquitoes, attacking others to stay alive. The only way to avoid the blood suckers is to keep moving.

Complacency will wreck any company, especially one that relies on the same tactics that they used last year and the year before that. If marketing companies kept putting out the same ads then the audience would learn to tune them out. If managers keep using the same techniques their voices will fall on deaf ears. That’s where continual learning fits in. Whether it be classes, conferences, meetings, or consulting companies, there are ways for a manager and his employees to learn new tactics that rock the world of their customers. It’s the only way to stay alive in this hyper competitive working world.

Chris Bailey wrote Four Professional Growth Issues For Managers (And How To Address Them). My favorite line was:

If you are a leader, know that a key responsibility of leaders is to produce more leaders.

Managers should be creating people that can help a company grow. They should never fear that they are producing someone more capable than them. If that does happen then the manager should be happy. The company will only prosper if it beats out the competition. The only way to do that is to have great people around you. Every master should be ready for the day that his pupil surpasses his abilities. If you taught them right, they will respect this relationship and treat the company and the manager with respect.

Chris wrote four reasons why managers don’t further their professional development as well at their staff’s. It’s a good read for any manager wanting to overcome obstacles that might be preventing them from growing.

My biggest obstacle to continual learning was convincing upper management to buy into the idea. They don’t want to spend money when they think they are doing fine without it. If they were having a bad quarter they sure as hell didn’t want to spend money on professional development. They wanted to cut back on every extra expense. The only thing I can say to this is to keep trying. Most sales people get rejected between 8 and 16 times before a client agrees to do business. Consider yourself a salesman and keep after your bosses. If you keep trying, they will start believing.

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A great question from a reader arrived in my inbox last week and I wanted to share it with all of you. Many of you probably like your job to some extent, but maybe a manager or co-worker is difficult for you to deal with. We all have our problems, but dealing with a difficult manager is tricky.

Her summarized question went like this:

I just started working at my current job in March. This is my first job period, other than two jobs I’ve gotten by being default (’student helper’ for both jobs).

The problem is, I’m only in this job because it’s a job, and one of the managers is in this job as a lifestyle. He consistently harasses us to sell more (or so it feels like to me). We’re either behind and have to sell more, or are ahead and have to sell more. Within the past week, I can count three separate times that he’s harassed me about asking each and every customer to buy a certain product from the registers.

It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even bother asking the customers if they want the certain product. I figure I’ll get reamed about not selling enough later anyways, so why bother?

I love my job (it’s rewarding), I love my coworkers, I get on well with the other two managers and the two supervisors, it’s just him that I don’t get along with.

How can I manage to work happy? He often excuses himself saying it comes from corporate, but the other two managers don’t harass us like he does. Is it maybe because he’s not that good of a leader, or is it just our differing personalities?

On the training front, should I ask to shadow one of my coworkers (there are two that are really good at selling stuff)? I figure I can’t flat out say, “The training I’m being given is bogus, I know it and you know it, are you able to give me any actual *realistic* training?” And I’m not very good with people to begin with (to the point that I honestly can’t think of a way to rephrase that last question in a people-friendly way).

My response was:

The first thing to do is get your thoughts in order. You are a good writer. Your question was well constructed and I think you should use this talent to write a mock letter on how he could be a better manager. It will help you see his perspective. You should not give him this letter, but it will help you prepare for a talk.

I believe you should talk to this manager. It doesn’t sound like you want to confront him, but I think it’s your best bet at improving your situation. Don’t make a big deal of it, but just ask him if he has a minute to talk. I would ask him how you can improve. If he is human he should be willing to help you become a better employee. If he is stumbling around or doesn’t suggest anything helpful then tell him that you have something that might help. I think you had a great idea. See if the two of you can create a schedule, during slower times, to shadow some of the top sellers for a few weeks.

If this manager is still busting your chops after a few months and you are selling better, I would try confronting him on his managing tactics. Sometimes managers need to be shown how to improve. Try to be tactful and constructive, so he knows that you appreciate his style, but it could use a little work. Hopefully he will put his ego aside and listen. If this makes your relationship worse then look for another job. You should never be afraid to chalk up a job to a good learning experience and move on to something better.

Everyone is different and some people can tolerate a bad manager if everything else is good, but I can’t. I need a manager to be supportive and understanding. Believe me there are plenty of them out there.

If you have a question that you would like for me to answer on this blog you can contact me on my question page or at Karl (at) workhappynow.com. Believe me, there is probably someone else going through the same thing right now, so if you ask a question it will probably help other people.

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Dr. Charles Kerns of Pepperdine University was kind enough to give me a short interview that I think will help all of us work a little happier. He is an associate professor of Applied Behavioral Science, so if he agrees with me you know I’m on to something with this work happiness thing.

As we all know, it’s better to work with someone that is truly happy. I’ve worked with plenty of co-workers who are happy for the first month and then their true personality sets in and I’m stuck with a dud that just wants to coast. So I asked Charles about separating the fakers from the truly happy.

1. How do you think HR managers can separate truly happy and potentially productive interviewees from fakers?

Actually an operating manager’s challenge is to interact with their people in ways that promote performance and positivity(happiness). In support of this effort HR managers can help by designing performance based interviews that reliably assist in identifying individuals whose profile match the performance profile for a specific position.

Selecting individuals against a specific profile can increase the opportunities for boosting the number of happy high performers in the workplace. Selection interview questions which tap a candidates ability to set goals, be grateful, show resilience and focus on their strengths will help identify individuals who may be happier than others in the workplace. Other questions and activities within the selection interview need to identify candidates who have the ability to take key actions which correlate with success in the position that is under recruitment.

The more data that I gather about work happiness, the more I believe that companies need to start this process from the ground up. It’s harder to turn around the titanic than some little wave runner. I asked Charles how smaller companies can get on board the happiness train now before it’s too late.

2. When implementing a happiness-enhancing intervention, what steps do you think would work best for small companies (under 50)?

Small businesses can potentially have a more direct impact on their people’s happiness and performance than larger organizations. Smaller organizations have fewer levels to communicate through and have leader/owners who are more likely closer to the daily operations.

Leaders in small organizations can promote performance and happiness by offering a clear and motivating direction. People want to know that their work serves a worthwhile purpose. Leaders can help in advancing this by documenting and effectively communicating where things are going and how people fit into this direction.

Also, along the way leaders need to help their people focus on those things that their people can influence and that are important to achieving success. Focusing tools that increase both performance and happiness include setting stretching yet realistic goals, providing effective feedback, practicing forgiveness and optimism and finding the intersection between their people’s strengths and situations that will challenge them…

If you want to read more about work happiness from Dr. Kerns check out the original blog article Bring Happiness to Work that spurred these interview questions.

You can also check out his three other articles:

Performance Profiling

Trybaby Syndrome

Connecting Performance and Happiness

Thanks Dr. Charles Kerns for being so accommodating to my questions and hopefully we can work with each other again in the near future.

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