How to survive problems at work

Not all work problems are “survivable”; there is, for example, not much you can do if your employer decides that a whole division or speciality has to go, and you are part of it! No matter how good you were, you’re going to lose your job like everyone else. Your only option is to get the best deal you can, and immediately start out searching for your next opportunity.

But there are some issues that might get you fired, or might not. It’s really how you respond to the situation that counts. And your response may count for you, or against you.

Let’s start with mistakes.

Everybody makes mistakes from time to time. Some are serious, some not, and some get found out, while others don’t. The first, most basic, rule is:

1.Don’t ever assume that you won’t get found out!

If you have made a mistake, tell your direct boss. Paradoxically, the bigger the mistake, the more important it is to tell your boss. The essential thing is that your boss finds out from you, and no one else. It’s not essential to go trotting into your boss’s office with trivial things, of course. Just the issues that would cause your boss to get a hard time himself or herself.

The second rule is:

2.Don’t make the same mistake twice.

Learn from your mistakes. It’s even better if you can learn from the mistakes that others make. That involves having an open relationship with your work colleagues so that you all profit from hearing each other discussing the things that you could have done better. That’s not always an easy relationship to create, but it’s worth trying. Either way, write down the thing you want to learn. Put it in your daily diary or “to do” list.

There is one more rule. It’s this:

3.Listen to criticism.

If your boss or anyone else, including colleagues, customers or your subordinates takes the trouble to criticise something you’ve done, thank them! Feedback is always valuable, and the negative stuff is priceless. Write it down. Learn from it. If you think later that you’ve cracked the problem, find out if that’s true. Go back to the person who criticised you and check if they’ve noticed an improvement. If they haven’t, keep trying. Be positive about negative feedback.

Moving on from mistakes, which are decisions you make where you really should have known not to do what you did, there are situations where you are entirely out of your depth. You really don’t know what to do, maybe through lack of experience, or lack of training. This is where you have to call for help. If there is genuinely no time to do that, and you have to react quickly, make your decision then immediately take the time to find out if you did the right thing. As with serious mistakes, it’s much better for your boss to hear it from you rather than from an irate customer, or an article in a newspaper!

One final category of problems which can be career threatening is to do with culture. Some companies have strong corporate cultures that demand certain kinds of behaviour. Perhaps you are expected to “demonstrate your commitment” by working very long hours, or “show your management potential” by treating your subordinates callously. If you find yourself in a corporate culture that really does not suit you, you can either try to change your basic values, or take steps to get out. In the long run you’ll be much better off in a culture that you find compatible. In the short run maybe you have to compromise your values to keep an income rolling in.

A complication in the “culture” category comes from issues of language or national identity. Do you work for a company whose working language is English, but your mother tongue was not? Or is your boss an expatriate from another culture? These are situations almost guaranteed to cause confusion and stress. Different national cultures are likely to emphasise different aspect of problem solving. For example, I have worked for Dutch and German and British companies. My belief is that faced with a similar business issue:

A British boss would want you to solve a problem, then go to him/her and tell them what the problem was, and what you did.
A Dutch boss would want you to consult lots of people in the organisation, and do what the majority advised, then tell him/her what you had done.
A German boss would want you to get lots of advice, then present a summary of the advice to him/her, for them to decide.

All this “culture” stuff, compounded by language and the meanings of different words and phrases can be very confusing. If you are fortunate enough to live in Jakarta and you need personal advice on corporate culture and Jakarta English training, the Aim team is there to help you.