Wednesday, November 21, 2007

A new word for the workplace dictionary

My boss is one of the most intriguing, intellectually-minded guys I know. He is in fact so intellectual and so witty that I often find myself obsessed with trying to figure out his comments. He uses dry humor that one can only understand if you’ve been in the CIA with some secret language that only you know. When I finally understand what he is saying I want to congratulate myself as if I’ve accomplished a mission to "crack the code" Da Vinci style.

It was one such event the other day when my boss was expressing how livid he was with how another co-worker responded to an external client. The co-worker was so unprofessional and mindless that my boss wanted to, wait here it is, "defenestrate" him. The other team members and I stopped his ranting and said, what? Defenestrate? What does that mean? He said he wanted to throw him out the window. We all rushed to our computers to look it up on dictionary.com and sure enough the word means "to throw out of a window." I love it.

I was suddenly brought back to remembrance of my high school German class and remembered that "Fenster" is the word for window and perhaps is the root of this wonderfully poignant word. That will help me to remember it easier now too.

So if you’ve ever had a moment where you’ve thought of throwing someone out the window I would urge you to use this word and feel happy in knowing that you have verbally acted on it and hopefully befuddled the listener. More additions to the workplace dictionary to come later.

Posted by Melanie Lopez at 15:05:46 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Friday, October 05, 2007

Why you shouldn’t be nice to everyone

I’m generally a happy person, but there are times when I’m not smiling at work. I may be concentrating on a report, thinking of ideas, just had a frustrating conversation, concerned about someone, or so on. I don’t think anyone could smile throughout the day and really mean it.

 

There are also some people who are paid to be nice, like receptionists for example, so they can be approachable for guests, etc. That’s part of their job. There are some people out there though who are “too” nice, and have ulterior motives for doing so. These people put on a fake smile and ask everyone how their day is going, and force conversations with people just to say they “know” them.  

 

Instead of this superficial nicety, just be genuinely nice to people you respect. You could lose respect quickly by being overly friendly. Most people can see right through it and it can discredit your persona for the long-term. Here are three reasons not to be nice to everyone:

 

  1. You’ll be the “nice” guy. This is never a compliment you want. The person saying this obviously couldn’t think of anything more valuable about you then being “nice” because you over-exaggerate the very meaning of the word.
  2. Co-workers won’t take you serious. Being too nice to people will automatically mark you as a pushover. Unless your co-workers only want to hear “nice” things from you, they will likely not consider you a credible person to offer critique.
  3. You’ll be passed over for promotions. Good managers know when to be tough and stand up for their employees. If you’re too nice, how can your manager trust you to stand up to people if it could ruin your “nice” image?
Posted by Melanie Lopez at 12:56:19 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |