Is your job turning into something you don’t want? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School. They talk through what to do when your boss gives you duties you dislike, your company is grooming you for roles you can’t see yourself in, or you’ve been offered a different job than the one you applied for.
From Alison and Dan’s reading list:
HBR: How to Say No to Taking on More Work by Rebecca Knight — “Sometimes you have too much on your plate or you’re just not interested in taking on a project you’ve been asked to work on. You might not have a choice in the matter, but if you do, how do you turn down the opportunity in a way that won’t offend the person offering? How can you avoid being labeled ‘not a team player’ or ‘difficult to work with’?”
HBR: How to Tell Your Boss You Don’t Want a Promotion by Patricia Thompson — “As an executive coach, I’ve worked with many talented individuals who had the potential to be promoted, but were uninterested in taking on more. Sharing this desire with their bosses often felt threatening, particularly because they were seen as talented, and often, as possible successors. Striking the balance between advocating for their own wishes without seeming ungrateful or unambitious was a challenge.”
HBR: Managing Yourself: Turn the Job You Have into the Job You Want by Amy Wrzesniewski, Justin M. Berg, and Jane E. Dutton— “Job crafting is a simple visual framework that can help you make meaningful and lasting changes in your job—in good economies and bad. But it all has to start with taking a step back from the daily grind and realizing that you actually have the ability to reconfigure the elements of your work.”
HBR: The Surprising Power of Questions by Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie John — “Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members.”