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WSJ: The New Most Dreaded Word at Work: 'Hey'

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WSJ: The New Most Dreaded Word at Work: 'Hey'

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The New Most Dreaded Word at Work: ‘Hey’

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Instant messages with nothing more than a quick greeting—known as “hey hanging”—spark office anxiety. “Am I fired? Am I in trouble?”

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Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

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Welcome to the "Am I a Jerk at Work?" quiz! Each question is designed to assess how you would respond to a series of tricky, hypothetical workplace situations. At the end, you'll find out whether you're a Conniving Trickster, Classic Jerk, just Going Through the Motions-or have been an Ideal Coworker all along.

It can also be fun to take these quizzes from the perspective of someone else at work (how would your boss respond to these questions?). And if you're really bold, have your coworkers take it as if they were you. It can be a great way to see how others at work perceive you.

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Welcome to the "Am I a Jerk at Work?" quiz! Each question is designed to assess how you would respond to a series of tricky, hypothetical workplace situations. At the end, you'll find out whether you're a Conniving Trickster, Classic Jerk, just Going Through the Motions-or have been an Ideal Coworker all along.

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HBR: 5 Jerks at Work & How to Deal With Them

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HBR: 5 Jerks at Work & How to Deal With Them

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When we're new in the workforce, we're often forced to figure out how to climb up the ladder while managing a variety of "difficult personalities" with little or no preparation. In her book, Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them, author Tessa West profiles five specific difficult personalities that you're likely to encounter at the office. Though each "jerk" differs in terms of behavior patterns, they all have one core psychological trait: They threaten your sense of certainty and control at work - your ability to predict what your day-to-day looks like. Here are a few strategies around how to understand their inner workings and weak points, as well as effective ways to manage them.

The Kiss-Up / Kick-Down: Reach out to well-connected or seasoned workers at your organization - people who are aware of the office politics and reputations of other employees. Your goal is to build an understanding of how widespread the problem is and get the names of other potential victims whom you can follow up with. If you gather enough information, approach your boss.

The Credit Stealer: Credit stealing is best handled outside of the room where it occurs. Before your next meeting, get together with your peers and make a plan. Promise to echo the contributions each of you share and give credit where credit is due.

The Bulldozer: Prevent yourself from being bulldozed by learning how to "hold the floor" early on in a new role or organization. Small acts of leadership, like stepping up to spearhead a project or lead a presentation, will help establish your reputation as an authority figure among your team members. Once that label is in place, your actions and behaviors will carry much more weight.

Micromanager: Confrontation will be necessary, but there's an art to confronting a Micromanager. When you do approach your boss, don't lead with micromanagement like them. Rather, lead with a conversation about getting aligned on your big-picture goals.

Gaslighter: Record everything. Gaslighters are allergic to record keeping. Documenting their behavior serves as evidence of what the Gaslighter told you privately and in person. This forces them to confirm things in writing, making it more difficult for them to change the narrative later on.

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5 Jerks at Work and How to Deal with Them

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When we're new in the workforce, we're often forced to figure out how to climb up the ladder while managing a variety of "difficult personalities" with little or no preparation. In her book, Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them, author Tessa West profiles five specific difficult personalities that you're likely to encounter at the office.

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Rachel Feintzeig | Photo illustrations and video by Aaron DuRall for The Wall Street Journal

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Don’t Be a Jerk at Work. (But Don’t Be Too Nice, Either.)

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How devolving into people-pleasing can hold back your career.

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MarketWatch: Why It Pays Off to Be Kind at Work

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MarketWatch: Why It Pays Off to Be Kind at Work

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Who's watching?!?!

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Eurovision News about Countdown. Eurovision 2024 countdown: 100 days! What do we know so far?. Eurovision 2023 countdown: 100 days! What do we know so far?. Eurovision 2022 countdown: 100 days! What do we know so far?.

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NYTimes: How a Virtual Assistant Taught Me to Appreciate Busywork

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NYTimes: How a Virtual Assistant Taught Me to Appreciate Busywork

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HBR: The Art of Asking Smarter Questions

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HBR: The Art of Asking Smarter Questions

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Idea in Brief

The Situation

With organizations of all sorts facing increased urgency and uncertainty, the ability to ask smart questions has become key. But business professionals aren't formally trained in that skill.

Why It's So Challenging

Managers' expertise often blinds them to new ideas. And the flow of questions can be hard to process in real time, so certain concerns and insights may never be raised.

The Remedy

Strategic questions can be grouped into five domains: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive, and subjective. By attending to each, leaders and teams are more likely to cover all the areas that need to be explored-and they'll surface information and options they might otherwise have missed.

As a cofounder and the CEO of the U.S. chipmaker Nvidia, Jensen Huang operates in a high-velocity industry requiring agile, innovative thinking. Reflecting on how his leadership style has evolved, he told the New York Times, "I probably give fewer answers and I ask a lot more questions....It's almost possible now for me to go through a day and do nothing but ask questions." He continued, "Through probing, I help [my management team]...explore ideas that they didn't realize needed to be explored."

A version of this article appeared in the May-June 2024 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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With organizations of all sorts facing increased urgency and unpredictability, being able to ask smart questions has become key. But unlike lawyers, doctors, and psychologists, business professionals are not formally trained on what kinds of questions to ask when approaching a problem. They must learn as they go.

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HBR: You're Back from Your Leadership Development Program. Now What?

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HBR: You're Back from Your Leadership Development Program. Now What?

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Executives who go through leadership development programs often come back with new energy and purpose, ready to transform their teams, themselves, and their organizations. But it can be challenge to gain traction, sustain momentum, and achieve durable post-program results. Success requires determined effort and patience. To better navigate this reentry phase, remember to acknowledge the contributions others made while you were away, anticipate reactions to your new ideas, embrace the opportunity for change, clearly communicate your intentions, pace yourself, build a support network, and stay the course.

After participating in a good leadership development program, you'll no doubt feel inspired to transform yourself, your team, and your organization. That's why companies spend more than $46 billion per year on such training. They want their employees, from high potentials to top executives, to gain energy and purpose by learning and envisioning the future with others.

Developing Employees Course

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Developing Employees. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

Support and challenge your direct reports to help them reach their potential.

Learn More & See All Courses

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You're Back from Your Leadership Development Program. Now What?

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Executives who go through leadership development programs often come back with new energy and purpose, ready to transform their teams, themselves, and their organizations. But it can be challenge to gain traction, sustain momentum, and achieve durable post-program results. Success requires determined effort and patience.

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Employee disengagement is rampant in the workplace. We've all experienced it as customers encountering unhelpful retail clerks and as colleagues dealing with apathetic teammates. But what happens when you yourself feel dead at work?

This article describes what you as an individual can do to sustain your motivation or recover it, even in the most stultifying of jobs. After synthesizing research on this challenge and experimenting with various strategies, the authors have developed a process for recharging yourself called DEAR.

The first step is to detach and objectively analyze your situation so that you can make wise choices about it, instead of reacting in a fight-or-flight way. At day's end, review what went well at your job and then mentally disconnect from it to give yourself a break. Meditation and exercise can help you do that and will improve your mood and cognitive function. Next, show empathy. Practice self-care, make friends, recognize the accomplishments of others, seek their views, and help them. Research shows that this combats burnout. Third, take action: achieve small wins, invest in rewarding outside activities, redefine your responsibilities, and turn uninteresting tasks into games. Ask yourself how someone you admire would behave in your situation, and dress in a way that projects confidence. Last, reframe your thinking: Focus on the informal roles you enjoy at work, your job's higher-order purpose, and how others benefit from your work. All these techniques will improve your mental health and increase the energy you bring to your job-even if it is not what you'd like it to be.

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Employee disengagement is rampant in the workplace. We've all experienced it as customers encountering unhelpful retail clerks and as colleagues dealing with apathetic teammates. But what happens when you yourself feel dead at work? This article describes what you as an individual can do to sustain your motivation or recover it, even in the most stultifying of jobs.

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Inc: Your Happiness & Success in Life Comes Down to 4 Simple Rules

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Inc: Your Happiness & Success in Life Comes Down to 4 Simple Rules

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Expert Opinion By , Author of 'Career Self-Care: Find Your Happiness, Success, and Fulfillment at Work'

If you could go back and give advice to your younger self, what would it be? Barbara Corcoran, the 75-year-old real estate entrepreneur, and Shark Tank Shark, says she gets this question often, and it's her least favorite one.

But recently she purchased a green suit with a checkered pattern, and then came across a picture of herself at 25 wearing a jacket with almost the exact same pattern. "It made me stop and think about the long road young Barbara had ahead of her, but also how delicious it was," she writes in an Instagram post.

And so she shares some advice that she would give her younger self. You'll have to read her post to get all of it. Here's some of what she has to say.

1. Listen to your instincts.

"Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct," she writes. "Trust your gut. It's a summation of everything you've learned, and it won't often lead you astray."

For many people, especially many entrepreneurs, this can be hard advice to follow. We're accustomed to crunching the numbers, examining the data, and basing our next move on what it tells us. And we often try to keep our emotions or gut feelings from getting in the way.

But Corcoran is right that what we call a "gut instinct" is often a distillation of all the knowledge we've acquired, even if we can't quite back it up with facts and figures. So listening to your own intuition might be a good idea after all.

2. Don't wait to try new things.

"When you have an idea, move on it immediately," Corcoran writes. "Don't worry about whether it's a winner or a loser, just throw a lot at the wall and see what sticks." This is great advice because Corcoran is absolutely right that the more you try out new ideas and new approaches, the quicker you will learn and the faster you are likely to achieve success.

Of course, if you experiment as she suggests, some of the things you try will turn out to be failures. That's OK. "Those nasty failures? Your best successes will follow soon after," she writes.

3. Make time for fun.

As a leader, make sure that fun and relaxation are part of your workplace culture, especially if you work in a high-pressure industry such as commercial real estate. "Plan a boondoggle for your company, play out that wacky theme party, and get your vacations on the calendar," Corcoran writes. "It'll multiply your creativity, build a loyal team, and create an unparalleled sense of camaraderie that'll make you the most desirable shop in town."

Fun outings for your team are a great way to increase retention, build valuable relationships, and allow everyone to blow off steam. And vacations are particularly important to your team's well-being, as well as your own, experts say. With summer coming soon, now is a great time to make sure everyone has some vacation time planned, and to plan some activities for the team as a whole.

4. Don't waste time on regret.

Although Corcoran doesn't formally include this in her advice to her younger self, she easily could. "I wouldn't be where I am today without the obstacles and setbacks I fought through along the way, and for that reason I don't hold on to regrets," she explains at the beginning of the post.

If you follow her advice about trying new things, you'll have to take risks. Some of those risks will likely have negative results. But even if you never take any risks at all, some things will still go wrong. At those moments, both in work and in life, it can be hard to see the big picture. But chances are, the mistakes and setbacks will be leading you where you need to go, just as they did for Corcoran.

In my book Career Self-Care, which Corcoran endorsed, one of the exercises is all about having a conversation with your younger self. There's a lot we can gain from looking back to our younger selves and trying to see our present selves through their eyes. Just as Corcoran does, we can appreciate all we've learned along the way.

A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta

If you could go back and give advice to your younger self, what would it be? Barbara Corcoran, the 75-year-old real estate entrepreneur, and Shark Tank Shark, says she gets this question often, and it's her least favorite one.

But recently she purchased a green suit with a checkered pattern, and then came across a picture of herself at 25 wearing a jacket with almost the exact same pattern. "It made me stop and think about the long road young Barbara had ahead of her, but also how delicious it was," she writes in an Instagram post.

And so she shares some advice that she would give her younger self. You'll have to read her post to get all of it. Here's some of what she has to say.

1. Listen to your instincts.

"Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct," she writes. "Trust your gut. It's a summation of everything you've learned, and it won't often lead you astray."

For many people, especially many entrepreneurs, this can be hard advice to follow. We're accustomed to crunching the numbers, examining the data, and basing our next move on what it tells us. And we often try to keep our emotions or gut feelings from getting in the way.

But Corcoran is right that what we call a "gut instinct" is often a distillation of all the knowledge we've acquired, even if we can't quite back it up with facts and figures. So listening to your own intuition might be a good idea after all.

"When you have an idea, move on it immediately," Corcoran writes. "Don't worry about whether it's a winner or a loser, just throw a lot at the wall and see what sticks." This is great advice because Corcoran is absolutely right that the more you try out new ideas and new approaches, the quicker you will learn and the faster you are likely to achieve success.

Of course, if you experiment as she suggests, some of the things you try will turn out to be failures. That's OK. "Those nasty failures? Your best successes will follow soon after," she writes.

3. Make time for fun.

As a leader, make sure that fun and relaxation are part of your workplace culture, especially if you work in a high-pressure industry such as commercial real estate. "Plan a boondoggle for your company, play out that wacky theme party, and get your vacations on the calendar," Corcoran writes. "It'll multiply your creativity, build a loyal team, and create an unparalleled sense of camaraderie that'll make you the most desirable shop in town."

Fun outings for your team are a great way to increase retention, build valuable relationships, and allow everyone to blow off steam. And vacations are particularly important to your team's well-being, as well as your own, experts say. With summer coming soon, now is a great time to make sure everyone has some vacation time planned, and to plan some activities for the team as a whole.

Although Corcoran doesn't formally include this in her advice to her younger self, she easily could. "I wouldn't be where I am today without the obstacles and setbacks I fought through along the way, and for that reason I don't hold on to regrets," she explains at the beginning of the post.

If you follow her advice about trying new things, you'll have to take risks. Some of those risks will likely have negative results. But even if you never take any risks at all, some things will still go wrong. At those moments, both in work and in life, it can be hard to see the big picture. But chances are, the mistakes and setbacks will be leading you where you need to go, just as they did for Corcoran.

In my book Career Self-Care, which Corcoran endorsed, one of the exercises is all about having a conversation with your younger self. There's a lot we can gain from looking back to our younger selves and trying to see our present selves through their eyes. Just as Corcoran does, we can appreciate all we've learned along the way.

A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta

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Barbara Corcoran Says Your Happiness and Success in Life Come Down to 4 Simple Rules

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The 'Shark Tank' star finally answers her least favorite question.

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Inc: How Emotionally Intelligent People Use the Calendar Rule to Make Better Decisions, & Motivate Themselves & Others

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Inc: How Emotionally Intelligent People Use the Calendar Rule to Make Better Decisions, & Motivate Themselves & Others

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How Emotionally Intelligent People Use the Calendar Rule to Make Better Decisions, and Motivate Themselves and Others

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Master the calendar rule, and use a trick of cognitive psychology to change the way you view time.

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HBR: How to Solve Tough Problems Better & Faster

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HBR: How to Solve Tough Problems Better & Faster

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How to Solve Tough Problems Better and Faster

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Listen to this episode from HBR IdeaCast on Spotify. When it comes to solving complicated problems, the default for many organizational leaders is to take their time to work through the issues at hand. Unfortunately, that often leads to patchwork solutions or problems not truly getting resolved.

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Even the most effective leaders recognize how much is outside of their control, but one thing we all have agency over is how we communicate with others. Clearly articulated requests, the kinds that elicit real responses, don't come naturally to most of us. As it turns out, there's an art to the request - whether it's directed at an employee who's producing subpar deliverables or a colleague from a different department who hasn't been pulling their weight on a collaborative project. Here's why requests are so hard to make, what so many leaders are still getting wrong, and a handful of strategies for issuing requests that elicit concrete, actionable responses.

If there was ever a time when leaders could simply issue commands and consider them done, now is most certainly not that time. We live in a world of flattened organizational structures, cross-functional teams, and workplace cultures that value collaboration, autonomy, and sensitivity. In my work coaching executives at companies and nonprofits over the past 20 years, I've observed that leaders increasingly find themselves having to make requests in order to get stuff done. And more often than not, they don't know how to do it.

Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor®. HBR Learning's online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Delegating. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies.

The key component of your transformation from a manager into a leader.

Learn More & See All Courses

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Even the most effective leaders recognize how much is outside of their control, but one thing we all have agency over is how we communicate with others. Clearly articulated requests, the kinds that elicit real responses, don't come naturally to most of us.

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Gallup: The Strengths, Weaknesses, & Blind Spots of Managers

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Gallup: The Strengths, Weaknesses, & Blind Spots of Managers

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The Strengths, Weaknesses and Blind Spots of Managers

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Discover the difference between how managers think they are leading their teams and how employees say they’re being managed.