People tell me crazy workplace stories all day long and ask me, “How bad is my situation, compared with other stories you hear?” Sometimes, they’re middle-of-the-road scenarios (your boss and another manager hate each other, and you have to wiggle around the problem without making enemies) and sometimes they’re truly heinous (your boss and another manager hate each other, and your boss told your whole team in a staff meeting to thwart and sabotage people in the rival’s department).
You might be thinking about a job change in 2012 or just asking yourself the age-old workplace question, “Am I crazy, or is working around crazy people just making me feel that way?” Take our quiz to discover whether the level of dysfunction on your job is low, average, or reason for a speedy exit.
1. Ideas: When you have a great idea to share with your boss, your typical first thought is:
a. “How can I pitch this to my boss when he or she will be most open to it, and how can I get the idea put into place once I get the approval?” Good ideas have a high probability of being adopted in your organization, and you generally own any idea you come up with.
b. “I know I’ll have to put together a business case for my proposal, but it’s worth it—it might take a while, but eventually the higher-ups will consider any idea with merit.”
c. “Why bother? My boss will say, ‘That’s not your concern’ or ‘I don’t pay you to think.’”
2. Recognition: When you’ve done a particularly good job on a project or in a customer interaction, you can usually expect:
a. A message or visit from your boss, saying, “Way to go! You were sensational!” and a reflection of your good results when salary-increase time comes around.
b. That the A-plus incident will be logged in your file and will show up in your performance metrics—but don’t expect anyone to do cartwheels about it.
c. No recognition for your success at all; it’s like it never happened.
3. Conflict: When there’s a disturbance in the Force on your team, you can typically look to your managers to:
a. Within a fairly short time (weeks, not months) sit down and hash out whatever isn’t working, maintaining respect for every participant’s point of view and eventually getting resolution.
b. Avoid the problem for a while, but when it has become the elephant in the room, deal with the conflict, inexpertly maybe, but at least they’re talking.
c. React with “What’s that? Conflict on the team? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m too busy humming my favorite tune, ‘If I Hit This Quarter’s Target, My Bonus Will be Huuuuge.’”
4. Leadership Ethics: When it comes to ethics, one thing I can say about the people who run this organization is:
a. They are ethical. It’s all they talk about, and it’s true: I’ve seen their ethical boundaries tested, and they do the right thing in the clinch.
b. They work at ethics. They offer seminars and have conversations about ethics. Do the top execs do everything they tell the rest of us to do, ethically? I’m not certain.
c. Ethics? This is not a word we use in daily conversation in my workplace, or actually, now that I think about it, ever. The concept itself is foreign at my job. It’s a miracle no one’s been indicted here yet.
5. Teamwork: When I think about my job and the teamwork in my workplace, I conclude:
a. One of the best things about this job is the way people work together and the fact that the state of the team is a standard and productive agenda topic at our staff meetings.
b. They try to do team building, but it feels silly or like lip service. It probably doesn’t help that my manager doesn’t always role-model wonderful team behavior himself.
c. There is no teamwork here, unless stabbing people in the back counts as teamwork. I loathe half my co-workers, and I’m sure it’s mutual.
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