Workplace

Employees everywhere suddenly seem to be unusually eager to please, said Michelle Conlin in BusinessWeek. They’re staying late, begging for more work, and dressing “all spiffy and dry-cleaned.” Some bosses see this “paranoia” over the prospect of layoffs as useful—a means for boosting productivity and encouraging innovation. Others wish employees would ease up on the kissing up. “I’m getting e-mails all day long that say, ‘I’m doing this and I’m doing that,’ and it makes my job harder,” says Trevor Traina, who heads the Silicon Valley start-up DriverSide.com. “Every time I turn around, there is someone sticking their head in my office reminding me what they are doing for me.”

If you really want to score points with your boss, shut up already, said Mimi Whitfield in The Miami Herald. In an effort to try to impress, some people will interrupt, finish people’s sentences, and rehearse their own agendas while others are talking. According to management coach Joe Takash, these blunders send the wrong message: Namely, “I really am not interested in paying attention to what you have to say.” They also make it impossible to process what the boss is saying, and in this economy, “you could say good listening is crucial to job security”

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