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The unwritten rules to progress and hold in your position

The four work environment support columns

 

Article by Mario Sanchez

Engitek.com  

All rights reserved

 

Most people get excited when hired in a new job, and naturally expect to grab the new opportunities that this has to offer, however many people spoil what could be a potentially successful career because their lack of understanding of the importance of their interaction with the surrounding working environment.

 

A very common and important mistake is the lack of vision in how important their upward, sideward and downward relationships are, and how to keep an appropriated balance among them. Providing that you are essentially efficient and technically competent in what you are doing, the path to a successful career will depend in a big proportion on the handling of these relationship vectors with your direct boss, subalterns and side clients.

I define “side clients” as peers in your own department, coworkers in the same company, customers and providers, in other words all other persons that you need to deal with in relation with your job excepting your superiors and subalterns.

 

We can visualize this vector balance con concept as a table supported by four legs or columns, all four legs have to be of the same lengths to keep the table stable, each of these legs or columns represent you upward relationships (boss or superior), your side Internal clients, (peer and coworkers) and external clients (customers, providers, etc).

I have seen in my long experience in the industry how often this balance is lost and how disastrous the results could be.

It’s important to make a self assessment on where you stand in this balance concept, in general terms if one of your four columns self assessment grades is below 80% you are in path for trouble.

 

 

 

Lets looks why:

 

Upward Relationship:

Relationship with boss or superior

You must have the right attitude when dealing with your boss, remember, like it or not he is the person that signs your checks and he is the first person in line that will help you to escalate or make you fail on your career path. You have to be respectful and willing to do your job and obey orders within the expected responsibilities within the ethical, moral and legal boundaries without so many:  “why me”, “you are wrong”  “I don’t agree”, “not now”, or “when I have a time”, or” that isn’t my job”.

I don’t want you to misunderstand my point; you don’t have to tolerate an offensive or incompetent boss, even though you can still find professional ways to deal with this issue for example by filling a complaint with your HRD or talking with him in a sincere and open way.

But remember you must have the right vector with him, in other words you have to do the job in an efficient and responsible manner and communicate him all what he needs to know, this will be the only way to gain his trust. Although the relationship with your boss is vital do not make the big mistake of thinking that as long as you are doing a good job and you are OK with him, any other relationship vector is less or no important.

 

Downward Relationship:

Relationship with your subalterns

This relationship is as important as your upward relationship, is assumed that if you have this kind of vector you are depending on subalterns to get a job done or achieve a goal, en other words you are in a management o supervisory role. As such you have to create image of fairness and trust among your people, you have to treat them with dignity and respect which isn’t in conflict with be strict and demanding as required by the job, but without losing ground or abusing of the willingness of your employees or subalterns.

If you want to be a leader you have to have your vector close to 100% as much as possible.

Fair treatment implies honest and good periodical job performance appraisals, fair salary and working conditions, clear instructions and strategies, time to listen them, assure equal opportunities based only on their skills and qualifications and avoiding humiliations and offensive language plus some other considerations beyond the scope of this article.

If people feel that is being mistreated or treated unfairly, with time they will create they own “defenses”, that among others could be:

 People will avoid communication with you

 Start lying on things related to the job by fear or as a mean of retaliation, to cause your trouble

 Will feel demoralized and will start doing only the minimum to stay in the job, never going for that extra mile  

 Start spreading the word about the kind person you are, creating a bad reputation that sooner than later will hunt you down in

   many aspects and with bad results.

 Will complaint about you with your superiors, and when these complaints reach the critical mass you will be the first in line to

   step out the company.  As a reminder, due to productivity and possible legal implications, no company wants unhappy

   employees flying out or with feelings of being abused.

I have seen many very good technically skilled managers and supervisors that have failed due to the lack of understanding of this basic vector concept. Remember that if you are in a Supervisory or Management role, you will be as good as the job done by your subalterns, their respect and trust in you will be fundamental toward this end.

 

Sideward Relationship:

Relation with your internal and external clients

No less important than the other two previous vectors, columns or legs are your sideward relationships.

Previously I have defined the internal and external clients, let review why are so important.

 

Internal clients

Any coworker in your company excluding your boss or subalterns are your internal clients and these are a fundamental part of your work environment structure. You depend on them to complete part if not most of your assignments, regardless of what you think because your job is normally fed from other department (s) and most likely you will be part, not the end of an administrative, manufacturing or service process. You have to procure the best relationship with them otherwise your will be stuck in the middle making your work environment miserable and unproductive due to the lack of cooperation.

I have seen some cases where highly skilled persons prioritized 100% they upward and downward vectors disregarding their peers and coworker needs, relaying only for their job security in their good relationship with their bosses and subalterns. I remember the case of a technical skilled person that was 100% trusted by his boss and he had a “very good relationship” with his engineers, all the way to the point where he always closed his ears and eyes to complaints of mistakes and problems caused by his team. Frustration from other coworkers grew up as a snowball and pretty soon a frictional relationship was inevitable, pressure started to mount on this guy and his boss by other complaining department. And yes you bet, the skilled guy left the company before the other less technically skilled did.

 

Mistreating, ignoring, delaying work related materials, reports, lousy jobs, harassments of any type, resilience to cooperate with other peers, etc.  All are good ways to arrive to a bad outcome.

 

A relationship as the one explained before could have the vector as seen in the table below.

 

 Graph 2

 

External clients

In order to keep this article short, I just want to say that the same rules for internal clients apply to customers, providers etc. They also could be a support in your career or disgrace.
I was a able to get very good terms and pricing for my former employer company due an excellent and professional relationship with them.

You can apply these same concepts to your family life, considering that your spouse could be in some cases depending on the circumstances, your superior, your side client and in others your subaltern.

 

Good luck………