October 9, 2024

Preoccupations: Maybe a Management Job Isn’t Your Style

You can point to any number of reasons for this situation: insufficient training, poor communication, etc. But I say a bad boss is born each time someone goes into management without knowing whether he or she is truly suited to the role. When people are offered a managerial job, they may become intoxicated by the idea of more power and a bigger salary. Refusing such an offer can seem out of the question.

“It’s hard to stop and think rationally when you’re being offered a promotion,” said a former client, whom I’ll call Phil. “You’re flattered. Your boss is telling you it’s a great opportunity, not to mention that it’s really good for the team and will help him a lot. Are you really going to tell him you that you’re not sure if you want it, or that you’ll need some help learning to manage the team and the new responsibilities? I don’t think so.”

Phil, a sales star for a sizable Midwestern manufacturer thought it better to charge ahead and accept his promotion as head of sales for a newly formed territory, rather than to politely decline, even temporarily, or to ask his boss for more time to consider it. The risk that his boss would think that he wasn’t prepared for the job or, worse, that he didn’t want more responsibility, was too great.

Move ahead a year. Phil’s effort at leading the territory proved to be a nightmare. The interpersonal dynamics, the 24/7 monitoring and a near coup in the department made him realize that he disliked managing people and had no talent for it. Maybe if his company had given him more than eight hours of management training, or had coached him through his first three to six months, he would have developed an affinity for the role. Instead, both he and the team floundered.

Many newly minted leaders rarely stop to think about the enormous time commitment and learning curve as they transition from successful individual contributor to manager of a group of diverse people. They often fail to consider the demands of an expanding work schedule; the complexities of hiring, training, supervising and firing workers; or the needs to develop a vision and a tactical strategy, to create budgets or to be accountable for others’ productivity.

THE lesson is this: When offered a management position, talk to your future boss, to the person you’d be replacing, to team members and to anyone else who can tell you what the job entails. Assess your strengths and limitations by scrutinizing your performance reviews and asking your boss, mentors and trusted colleagues for feedback.

Reflect on your motivations, then ask yourself these questions: Do I enjoy working with people, helping them to grow and to become successful? Do I handle uncertainty well, and do I mind making decisions without knowing the entire picture? Do I communicate well, in good times and bad? Do I have the time to take this on? If your answers are yes, then you could well have the makings of a good boss.

On the other hand, do you need for everyone to like you? Want immediate and constant reinforcement? Feel nervous about having legal and financial responsibilities for others? Balk at the idea of evaluating or firing someone? Then it’s possible that you’re just not cut out to be a boss.

Before deciding, find out what kind of leadership training the company offers, especially if you are new to management. Will you receive training at this level and for this job? How about mentoring support along the way?

If you decide to take the plunge, accept that being a great manager, or even a good one, is a learned skill. Like many talented professionals, whether N.B.A. players or opera divas, you will become successful by honing the right skills with huge amounts of practice.

Remember, you don’t have to say yes. Depending on your field and your company, there are ways besides management to further your career. One thing is certain: the more you are perceived as really good at what you do, the more options you’ll have to carve out the path you want — whether in management or not.

Peggy Klaus is an author, executive coach and leader of corporate training programs.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/jobs/maybe-a-management-job-isnt-your-style.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Bucks Blog: Suggested Retirement Savings Goals, by Age

For those of you wondering if you’re saving enough money for retirement, here are some new savings guidelines to ponder.

Fidelity Investments has recommended that most workers should strive to save at least eight times their final salary before they retire to adequately prepare for retirement. (Saving that amount puts you on track to replace 85 percent of your salary, Fidelity says.)

Now, the investment firm is suggesting earlier milestones to help you get to that eight times goal by the time you’re 67.

Namely, Fidelity suggests workers should aim to save about one times their salary at age 35, three times at age 45 and five times at age 55.

So if you’re 45 and you’re making $50,000 a year, you should have put away $150,000.

“We believe these savings targets offer a rule of thumb to help employees get engaged in retirement planning by making it simpler and more achievable, but we recognize many individuals may need more than eight times their ending salary in retirement based on their lifestyle,” James M. MacDonald, president of workplace investing at Fidelity, said in a news release.

The company’s savings guideline is based on an employee in a workplace retirement plan, like a 401(k), beginning at age 25, working and saving continuously until age 67 and living until age 92. The goal would include savings in all retirement accounts, like 401(k)’s and I.R.A.’s, as well as other savings.

The calculation includes several assumptions, like a lifetime average annual portfolio growth rate of 5.5 percent and income growth of 1.5 percent a year over inflation with no breaks in employment.

So, all of you out there who are 35, 45 and 55(ish), are you anywhere near those targets? How did you do it?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/suggested-retirement-savings-goals-by-age/?partner=rss&emc=rss

DealBook: Executive Pay Rises 49% at British Companies

LONDON — Executives at Britain’s biggest companies received an average pay increase of 49 percent this year, with compensation rising faster than companies’ shares.

The annual average pay of executives, including chief executives and finance chiefs, at Britain’s 100 largest publicly listed companies rose to £2.7 million, or $4.3 million, according to research by Incomes Data Services published Friday. Chief executives received an average 43.5 percent pay increase, to £3.9 million, the report said. The FTSE 100 share index rose 15.8 percent in the period from February last year to April 2011.

“Britain’s economy may be struggling to return to pre-recession levels of output, but the same cannot be said of FTSE 100 directors’ remuneration,” Steve Tatton, editor of the report, said in a statement. The pay includes salary, benefits, bonuses and long-term incentive plans.

Deborah Hargreaves, chairwoman of the High Pay Commission, an independent group that examines private sector pay, told BBC radio that it was “very hard to justify these sorts of pay increases” and that it was in the interest of the executives to keep the market rate for their positions high.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=643277b00ae630e7203e29f9395a7047

Jobless Go Without, but Stay Hopeful, Poll Finds

Still, despite enduring hardships and being even more pessimistic about the nation’s economy than the general public, unemployed Americans remained optimistic about eventually landing jobs. A little more than half of those polled said they were either very or somewhat confident they would find long-term employment in the next year, and a majority said they expected that when they did find permanent work, it would be at a similar or higher salary than they had received in the past.

But the poll found deep unease about unemployment benefits. At a moment when several states have decided to pay fewer weeks of benefits to save money, and President Obama has been urging Republicans in Congress to renew a program — due to lapse at the end of the year — that pays federal jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed, 7 in 10 of those receiving unemployment benefits said that they feared their benefits would run out before they could find new jobs.

While jobless benefits have been criticized as unaffordable by some Republicans, particularly at the state level, three-quarters of the people receiving them said that they got “a lot less” than they used to earn at their jobs, and two-thirds said that the benefits were not enough to pay for basics like housing and food.

“I was earning $50,000 a year, and now I get $200 a week,” said Jan Thomas, 62, an unemployed marketing executive from Sarasota, Fla., who has been laid off from two jobs in the last three years. Ms. Thomas said in a follow-up interview to the poll that she recently dropped her health insurance “just hoping all will be well” and that she would soon lose her unemployment benefits, leading her to think about applying early for Social Security. “And I’m giving up my apartment and moving in with my mom because my unemployment will be running out,” she said.

The toll that unemployment is taking on families is not just financial, according to the telephone poll, which surveyed 445 unemployed adults from Oct. 19 to Oct. 25 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points. More than half of those polled said that they had experienced emotional or mental health problems like anxiety or depression because of their lack of work, and nearly half said that they had felt embarrassed or ashamed not to have jobs. More than a third said that they had had more conflicts or arguments with family and friends because of being jobless. The top reason people cited for not getting work: Too many applicants.

Threats of foreclosure or eviction were reported by a fifth of the unemployed, and one in eight said that they had moved in with relatives or friends. More than half said that they lacked health insurance. A fifth said that they had received food from a nonprofit organization. And in a sign that the nation’s current economic woes could reverberate for years, nearly two-thirds said they would probably not have enough money to live comfortably during retirement. More than half said that they had taken money out of savings or retirement accounts.

But the unemployed continue to believe in the American dream. Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they still believed it was possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich — only a little lower than the three-quarters of all Americans who said that they believed that, according to a New York Times/CBS News nationwide poll that was conducted at the same time as the poll of the unemployed adults.

Robert Roberson, 52, a licensed plumber from Corpus Christi, Tex., who has been out of work for a year, said that he hoped to get work soon when a delayed project to build a prison breaks ground. “I actually think the job market will get better because I think the recession will have a break and they’ll go back to building housing,” he said.

Unemployed people are now less likely to blame former President George W. Bush for the nation’s high unemployment rate than they were two years ago in the last Times/CBS News poll of the unemployed. But few blame Mr. Obama. Eight percent of the unemployed in the new survey said that Mr. Bush was most to blame, down from 26 percent two years ago. Five percent said that Mr. Obama was most to blame, almost the same as the 3 percent who said so two years ago. Nearly a fifth said “politicians” were most to blame.

There are currently 14 million Americans unemployed, and more underemployed, and the unemployment rate remained stubbornly high at 9.1 percent last month. Fierce debates over how to spur the economy, and how far to go in taking care of unemployed people, are consuming Washington and state capitals.

One of the most contentious policy questions is how long the government should continue to pay unemployment benefits. The length and depth of the downturn led many states to deplete the trust funds they use to pay such benefits, forcing them to borrow billions of dollars from the federal government and prompting some states to raise taxes on businesses to continue paying benefits. This year half a dozen states decided that they would no longer pay the 26 weeks of state benefits that has long been standard.

The federal government has been picking up the tab to pay extended benefits that allow some long-term unemployed people to collect checks for up to 99 weeks in states with the worst unemployment problems. If that program is not renewed at the end of the year, 1.8 million people could lose benefits in January, according to the National Employment Law Project, which advocates renewing the program.

Seven in 10 of the unemployed said that the government should pay benefits for 99 weeks or more. While a slight majority of Americans said that getting unemployment benefits makes people less motivated to seek work, only 40 percent of unemployed people said that it did, with half saying that it had no effect.

Three-quarters of the unemployed said that they were qualified, or overqualified, for the jobs that they were seeking. Four in 10 said that they would consider moving elsewhere to get jobs, but only 15 percent said that they had applied for jobs elsewhere. More than a third said that they had taken classes or trained for new jobs while unemployed.

One was Bobby Austin, 25, from Valdosta, Ga., who lost his job as a truck driver two years ago and whose benefits will run out soon. “Now I’m back in school to study nursing,” he said, “and I’m confident I will find a job when I finish next year.”

Marina Stefan contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a134a75847335bd6b7c75ac19dfc07e8