Business Without the Bullsh*t: 49 Secrets and Shortcuts You Need to Know (8 page)

Contrary to popular belief, you can’t get respect from a job title or a position on an organizational chart. There are six ways to earn respect, regardless of the organization you’re in or the role you’ve been hired to fill:

Sometimes people think they must create a persona in order to command the respect of others. Bosses think they should be authority figures, salespeople think they should be fast talkers, engineers think they should be nerds, and so forth.

However, who you
really
are is more likely to command respect than your ability to play a role that’s unnatural to you. People have a natural ability to detect fakery, and see fakers as untrustworthy, insecure, and ultimately insignificant.

On the other hand, people are drawn to individuals who truly
are
what they seem to be. Being yourself (and at your best for whoever you are) is therefore the foundation of earning respect.

If you’re curious about other people, you listen, truly listen, to what they have to say. When people realize that they’re really being heard, they’ll tell you what’s important (to them) about their jobs, their dreams, their fears, their goals.

That knowledge not only gives you perspective on how to do your job better, but also helps you see how you can best help others. That’s essential, because whenever you help other people, it increases their respect for you.

In a larger sense, curiosity about other people helps you do just about any job better. Bosses more easily manage people when they understand them, salespeople more easily discover customer needs, and engineers even build products that more people want to use.

There are times (such as when you’re updating your social media profile) when you’ll want to toot your own horn. However, if you want your coworkers to respect you, you’ll make those times few and far between.

In business, almost every accomplishment is a team effort. When you publicly praise the people who helped you get your job done, they (and everyone else) will be far more likely to help you next time around.

More important, giving credit where it’s due shows respect for others, which in turn creates more respect for you.

Rightly or wrongly, people judge based on the visual signals you provide to them. When you meet people for the first time, they take in everything about you: your clothes, watch, jewelry, briefcase, makeup, muscle tone, facial expression, and so forth.

It is therefore in your interest to think about how the overall “package” is likely to seem to the other person. Consciously create a set of visual signals that is likely to communicate that you’re a person with whom the other person would want to do business.

If you’re not naturally style-conscious, the best way to hone your appearance is to get feedback from a colleague or perhaps your boss. If there’s a problem, make adjustments until you’re presenting a visual image that matches your ambition.

Does this mean that you might have to spend money buying expensive clothes? Absolutely, if the nature of the job demands it. If you can’t afford “the look,” make getting the right clothes your top financial priority.

Nobody respects motormouths or blabbermouths. Therefore, whenever you intend to say something, take a moment to frame your thoughts and decide how best to communicate them.

Pausing before you speak not only keeps you from half-articulating half-baked ideas, it also makes you seem thoughtful and more wise. And if you’re responding to somebody’s comments, it shows you’ve taken the time to digest what you’ve heard.

Thinking before speaking also prevents you from spreading gossip and saying things that you’ll later regret. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

When people get nervous, their voices tend to move upward so the sound emerges from the nose, which turns even deep wisdom into an irritating whine. Speaking from your chest makes you sound (and feel) more confident and therefore worthy of respect.

Similarly, mid-sentence verbal tics (“uhhh…,” “you know…,”
“I mean…,” etc.) and a questioning uptick at the end of a sentence make you sound unsure and vague. People will respect you more if you sound as if you know what you’re talking about.

Sometimes bad verbal habits are so ingrained that the speaker doesn’t even notice them. Record yourself and listen to how you really sound. Practice until you sound confident, both to yourself and to others.

Most people think office politics are bad for business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Office politics are an integral part of getting things done, whether you’re the CEO, a salesperson, or an intern hired for the summer.

The word
politics
comes from the Greek
politikos
, which means “of, for, or relating to citizens.” Far from being something negative, politics are nothing less than the art and science of influencing people.

Below is a four-step approach to office politics that doesn’t resort to tricks or deception (aka dirty politics, which
are
bad for business as described in “Secret 43. How to Thwart Dirty Office Politics”):

Playing politics consists of balancing the needs of multiple people so they can come together to make a decision. In business, people have four general types of needs:

Once you understand your own needs (on various levels) and the needs of those you work with, you’re ready to play politics.

Office politics consist of making deals to support the satisfying of another’s needs in return for that person’s support in the satisfying of your needs.

For example, if you’ve got a colleague who wants to be head programmer and you want to be manager of quality control, you might tell the colleague: “I’ll support your bid to become head programmer if you’ll support my bid to become manager of quality control.”

The keys to making such alliances work are thus (1) figuring out what you want, (2) figuring out what the other person wants, and (3) agreeing to get there together.

Take care when building alliances. As a general rule, you want to work with people who can be trusted both to hold up their side of the deal and to do the right thing by the rest of the firm.

For example, you probably don’t want to make a deal that involves promoting a complete idiot to be Chief Technical Officer—at least, not if you want your firm to succeed.

However, if, all things considered, it really doesn’t matter all that much whether Jack or Jill gets the promotion, it’s OK to support Jill if she’s the one who’s more willing and able to reciprocate the favor. (And, of course, so much the better if you’re certain that Jill is the better choice.)

In addition to alliances, politics consist of a less formal trading of favors. Again, it’s a simple concept: you do a favor for somebody and then, at a later date, you get to “call in” the favor by asking that person to do something for you. And vice versa, naturally.

Playing office politics therefore requires that you keep close track of whom you owe and about how much, and who owes you and about how much.

Knowing the first keeps you from being blindsided by unexpected requests. Knowing the second allows you to assess whether or not you’ve got the political power to achieve your goal, if politics are needed to achieve it.

It need hardly be said that trading favors is a great way to strengthen your alliances.

Some negotiation is usually involved in assessing the value of past favors versus the value of future favors. Be aware that everyone has his or her own mental tally, which might not agree 100 percent with yours.

All this effort comes to fruition at decision-making time. Your goal is to make certain (as far as possible) that everybody is supporting the decision you prefer, by making your alliances and indulging in favor-trading.

For example, suppose your firm has a choice between two software vendors. Your research tells you Vendor A is the right choice, but you’re aware that some of the misguided dunderheads you work with believe that Vendor B is a better option.

When the big meeting takes place to decide which vendor to hire, you want as many people as possible at the conference room table predisposed to agree with you that the company should go with Vendor A. You therefore use politics to fill the meeting with your dependable allies.

Similarly, suppose you want a promotion but there’s another candidate vying for it. This is an excellent time to call in your markers and have your allies heap praise upon you and insist you’d be perfect for the job.