Challenging your boss

The act of challenging a superior necessitates more than just raising one’s voice; it involves understanding, navigating, and engaging in the subtle yet complex dance of power dynamics, diplomacy, and mutual respect. Approaching someone above you in the professional hierarchy requires a delicate balance and a deep understanding of both the person and the situation. Choose your battles wisely. Workplaces are vibrant ecosystems of opinions, processes, and methodologies. Understand the importance of timing. In the world of professional communication, timing can be everything. Prioritise private discussions. The environment in which you choose to voice your concerns plays a pivotal role in how those concerns are received. Master the art of “I” statements. Effective communication is as much about content as it is about delivery. Embrace the feedback process. The journey of challenging a superior or expressing concerns is inherently bilateral. Align with like-minded peers, but tactfully. While individual concerns have their merit, there’s undeniable strength in numbers.

(Adapted from “The Delicate Dynamics Of Challenging A Superior,” by Benjamin Laker, published on October 12, 2023, by MIT Sloan Management Review)

No love for accounting

An accounting career, once a launchpad into the upper middle class for hundreds of thousands of Americans, is no longer paying off. Salaries have risen for young people in finance, marketing, logistics and consulting in recent years. Even young teachers have seen a slight uptick. At the same time, the median, inflation-adjusted pay for young accountants has stagnated, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of salary data compiled by the Census Bureau. Adjusted for inflation, 20-somethings’ accounting salaries stayed at about $56,000 since the 2008 financial crisis. This pay disparity is a major reason why fewer people are choosing accounting careers, threatening to worsen an already dire shortage of accountants. Some of the nation’s largest college accounting programmes, have seen their enrollment or number of undergraduate majors decline by double-digit percentages in recent years. That has led to even greater workloads for existing accountants, and more than 300,000 have left the profession between 2019 and 2022, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

(Adapted from “Why No One’s Going Into Accounting,” by Lindsay Ellis and Paul Overberg, published on October 6, 2023, by the Wall Street Journal)

Giving feedback

One of the biggest mistakes new managers make? Failing to establish trust with their team members before giving them feedback. A manager who gives feedback without first establishing trust is like a director who fails to set the scene before their actors take the stage. The solution: Get to know each of your team members — including their career aspirations and goals. In your on-one-one conversations, ask: “what goals are your hoping to achieve in your role over the next six months?” or “how do you see your role evolving over the next year?” Once you’re clear on how you can support each person’s development, link your feedback to their specific goals. For example, you might say, “I know you want to take on more responsibility. To get there, you need a little more practice in this area. One thing you can do better is …”. In those two sentences, you go from critic to coach.

(Adapted from “Mistakes First-Time Managers Make When Giving Feedback,” by Brooke Vuckovic, published by HBR Ascend)

An ‘I’ in team

Imagine running a factory that assembles electronic devices. Your operators work in highly interdependent teams on the assembly lines, and they’re dealing with a fundamental technological change that you recently implemented. Robotic arms and automated machines were put in place to streamline the assembly process, replacing several tasks previously performed by hand. This change relieves your operators of mundane work and lets them focus on more complex aspects of the assembly process. However, they must adjust to the new work environment: They need to individually learn how to operate and maintain the automated systems while also learning how to coordinate differently as a group. This kind of fundamental change in how members of a team relate to their individual roles and to one another plays out in all kinds of workplaces. 

(Adapted from “There Actually Is an ‘I’ in Team,” by Elad N. Sherf, Subra Tangirala, and Alex Ning Li, published on October 25, 2023, by MIT Sloan Management Review)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, October 30th, 2023