Advance Your Career by being the Bearer of Good News
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Here’s a quick question. When people see you coming into the office do they a) smile and greet you with the expectation of an enjoyable conversation or b) inwardly groan and start to worry?
Every interaction you have with someone shapes their expectation of their next interaction. Even if you are doing your job well, you can quite unintentionally end up being seen as the constant bearer of bad news – just because when all is going well, you’re too busy to communicate, and only appear or email when there’s a problem to be solved.
So how can you avoid that trap and gain a reputation as the bearer of good news?
Take action this week to build positive expectations of you, rather than people only seeing your name on an email as the prelude to a problem. Use this week to experiment with actively sharing good news from yourself, your team, your colleagues or other teams. Try out the idea of doing a circuit of successes at the start of a meeting. What difference does it make?
Every interaction you have with someone shapes their expectation of their next interaction. Even if you are doing your job well, you can quite unintentionally end up being seen as the constant bearer of bad news – just because when all is going well, you’re too busy to communicate, and only appear or email when there’s a problem to be solved.
So how can you avoid that trap and gain a reputation as the bearer of good news?
- Tell people when things go right. When something goes well or you or your team have a success, drop this into the conversation when you meet people informally at the coffee machine, or while waiting for meetings to start. You can also send an email letting your boss know the good news or – depending on your relationship – your boss’s boss or mentor (be sure to cc your boss if you do!) Heading the email Good news can help too, as can not mixing your messages. Do you know how rare it is to open an email that is pure unadulterated good news? Be a pleasant surprise!
- Praise other people. When you’re sharing good news don’t just share your own, share other people’s too. This is a generous action that builds morale and stops any suggestion of boasting.
- Encourage positive sharing. When you hold a team meeting, go around the room and ask people to tell you one thing that has gone well for them or that lifted their spirits since the last meeting. Give them a moment to think before starting (otherwise they may groan or freeze!). But so often meetings just focus on all the problems we haven’t solved. You can shift the mood to feeling like a team of winners, if you start with the positives.
- Plan your good news. When you’re preparing for a meeting, get into the habit of thinking about things that are going really well to counter-balance the impact of any bad news. Ask others to share successes that you know about.
- Mine for gold. Sometimes good news isn’t obvious and you have to dig a little to find it. Analyse your work and the Performance Indicators for your area – what has happened that is good news? Don’t just wait for good news to find you, ask around to see what is going well for other people. Use that information to spread good news.
Take action this week to build positive expectations of you, rather than people only seeing your name on an email as the prelude to a problem. Use this week to experiment with actively sharing good news from yourself, your team, your colleagues or other teams. Try out the idea of doing a circuit of successes at the start of a meeting. What difference does it make?