9 Ways to Make Your Boss Like You Immediately - TIME

9 Ways to Make Your Boss Like You Immediately Posted: 13 Nov 2017 01:06 PM PST Your goal as an employee should be to make your boss’ life easier. If you can help your manager look good to their manager, you’re in good shape. It’s simple logic; it’s less simple to put into action. To help you out, we’ve rounded up nine ways you can take the hard stuff off your boss’ plate — starting today. Read on to find out how you can quickly become a star in your boss’ estimation. Send your boss an email recapping what you’ve accomplished this week National workplace expert Lynn Taylor previously told Business Insider that when you start a new job, you should ask your boss how often they’d like you to check in. But you should still err on the side of over-communicating, so they know exactly what you’re working on and how much you’ve accomplished. In fact, Eric Barker, author of “Barking Up the Wrong Tree,” recommends that you send your boss an email every week that sums up what you’ve accomplished. If your boss asks for feedback, give it to them — politely Kim Scott, a former Google and Apple exec and the author of “Radical Candor,” recommends that every manager ask their team for feedback on a regular basis. She told Business Insider it’s so important to get an honest answer that managers should sit in silence for six seconds until their employee comes up with something. If you want to make your boss’ life easier, don’t make them wait in silence. Think of an area where they can improve and offer some constructive criticism. Read More: 33 things you should never say to your boss Be open about your professional ambitions with your boss According to Toni Thompson, the head of human resources and talent at The Muse, one of the best ways to get ahead in your career is to “make sure that they [your boss] know what salary you want eventually and the title you want or more opportunities that you want.” This has obvious benefits for you — you probably won’t get the promotion or compensation you’d like if your boss doesn’t know you want it. But it also helps your boss, so they don’t have to guess which roles or challenges you want to take on, and so they can build the best team possible. Ask your boss how you can help with key projectsYou can make a good impression on your boss and coworkers if you offer to lend a hand with important assignments — even if those assignments don’t fall directly within your purview. As Taylor previously told Business Insider, “Your reputation as a team player will quickly spread — just make sure you’re being genuine about it and not taking on more than you can handle.” Show interest in your boss’ life outside of work Writing at LearnVest, Celia Shatzman says you should make a habit of asking your boss about their weekend. Even better, try to mention something specific — for example, “How was your daughter’s school play?” As Jodi Glickman, author of “Great on the Job: What to Say, How to Say It: The Secrets of Getting Ahead,” told LearnVest, “It gives you an opportunity to start building a personal relationship and connect on a non-work level.” Ask for your boss’ advice on something 2015 research from Harvard Business School suggests that asking for advice can make you seem more competent. In one experiment, 170 university students worked on a series of computer tasks and were told they would be matched with a partner who would complete the same tasks. (The partner was really a computer simulation.) When they’d finished the tasks, the “partner” either said, “I hope it went well” or “I hope it went well. Do you have any advice?” As it turns out, students who’d been asked for advice rated their “partner” more competent than those who hadn’t been asked for advice. Interestingly, it’s generally better to ask for your boss’ advice than their opinion. As psychologist Robert Cialdini previously told Business Insider, asking for advice creates a partnership between you and your boss and encourages them to be more supportive of your idea. On the other hand, when you ask for their opinion, they take a step back and become more of an objective evaluator. Read More: 13 times bosses mocked new technology and got it wrong Get to work early Research from the Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington suggests that employees who get into the office early are generally perceived by their managers as more conscientious and receive higher performance ratings than employees who arrive later.And it doesn’t matter if those who get in later stay later, too. In the Harvard Business Review, the paper authors write: “[I]n three separate studies, we found evidence of a natural stereotype at work: Compared to people who choose to work earlier in the day, people who choose to work later in the day are implicitly assumed to be less conscientious and less effective in their jobs.” The one caveat? If your boss is a night owl, they probably won’t judge you as harshly for showing up on the later side. Thank your boss when they give you feedback Expressing gratitude for your boss’ feedback — even if it’s negative — can make them act nicer toward you, according to a 2011 study from the University of Southern California.In one experiment, about 200 undergrads were told that they had been assigned a partner and were supposed to review a draft of instructions the partner had written about how to assemble parts of equipment. (In reality, there was no partner and the instructions had been written by the experimenter.) Some participants were told they were the supervisor in this relationship; others were told they were the subordinate. In addition, all participants took a pretend test of their abilities and some were told they weren’t that competent. When the experimenter returned notes from the “partners,” some said, “I just wanted to let you know that I received your feedback on my draft.” Others said the same thing, along with, “Thank you so much! I am really grateful.” As it turns out, participants in the supervisor position who’d been told they weren’t that competent were nicer when their partners were grateful. When their partners weren’t grateful, the supervisors whose competence had been threatened were more likely to respond by denigrating those partners, saying they were unintelligent, incapable, and incompetent. You might say gratitude prevented the threatened supervisors from acting like jerks. Read More: 8 ways you aren’t impressing your boss Be upfront about problems — and be ready with solutions Mark Cuban has said that he likes to get regular updates from employees and entrepreneurs. But everyone who works for him knows when they email him, they should deliver the bad news first.He told Arianna Huffington: “Let me try to help you in any way I can and then let me move on to the next one.” That said, it’s never wise to present a problem and leave it hanging there. Always come prepared with potential solutions. As Weebly CFO Kim Jabal previously told Business Insider, you should say something like: “We have a huge opportunity to fix something that has gone wrong. Here are a few ideas. I’d love your input.” This article originally appeared on BusinessInsider.com

I Negotiate Major Deals for Chance the Rapper, Foo Fighters and More. Here Are My 3 Tips for Getting What You Want Posted: 13 Nov 2017 07:45 AM PST As a music industry veteran of almost 25 years, including the last 13 as president of my own company MAC Presents, I’ve negotiated over a hundred multi-faceted deals on behalf of brands including Citi, AT&T, Microsoft, Samsung and Southwest as well as for high profile artists like Chance the Rapper, Foo Fighters, Keith Urban, Khalid and the Rolling Stones. Over the years, I’ve acquired a lot of tips that I’ve been able to apply to my personal life as well. Whether it’s a job interview, applying for insurance or just haggling over a cable bill, negotiations can be intimidating. But understanding the value that you bring to the table can unlock tremendous leverage, and help revive an otherwise dead-end conversation. Know Your Worth — and Know How to Sell It There’s nothing more off-putting in a business dealing than desperation. To maintain an upper hand, always walk into a negotiation with a keen sense of your unique skillset and importance to a potential employer or client’s business. Otherwise you could adversely impact your final terms, and end up taking a deal that significantly undervalues your worth. If a partnership is really meant to happen, both parties should be willing to fight to see it through. For example, when an employer says, “What are your salary requirements?” always quote them a number that’s at least 10% higher than your current salary. Otherwise you’ll start your negotiation at a potential deficit and you may not be able to regain leverage once you’ve shown your hand. This protects your worth, and helps you walk away from the wrong opportunity. Always Reject the First Offer Accepting an offer at face value can often dictate the difference between a transaction and a partnership — or in the case of employment, the difference between a job and a career. Earlier this year, I was working with Forever 21 on behalf of one of our artist clients, singer-songwriter Khalid. He had just released his debut album American Teen and I felt it spoke perfectly to Forever 21’s target audience. Without the aid of a Top 40 single at the time, the album debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart in its first week, giving him a strong buzz that we knew would only continue to soar throughout the year. Initially, Forever 21 wanted to partner with us and Khalid on a program that would make him the digital face of the brand’s summer men’s collection, leveraging the brand’s 10 million+ e-mail subscribers and website. While that offer would have given Khalid tremendous exposure at a crucial time when he needed to build his brand and awareness to sell tickets to his first major headline tour and launch his next single, it felt like we were only scratching the surface of what we could do together. Through a series of negotiations, we were able to secure Khalid the first-ever artist ambassador deal for two consecutive collections — men’s summer and fall. It was part of a larger partnership that now included in-store signage, a fan event in Los Angeles featuring a special performance, multiple social-media takeovers, digital video billboards in highly visible locations like New York’s Times Square, and additional revenue streams for Khalid through the sale of exclusive merchandise. By convincing Forever 21 to more than double their initial budgets and make their dollars work harder, Khalid was able to harness the exposure to graduate to the next level as a touring artist — his American Teenheadline tour sold out in days. How “No” Now Can Mean “Yes” Down the Line Almost every deal that I have worked on during my 20-year career in the industry has started with a “no” and I’ve had to turn that into a “yes” by figuring out what both sides want and define as a “win.” A lot of times I say I work on behalf of the deal – if both sides aren’t happy then there is no deal. And this goes for everyday opportunities, too. If a potential employer turns down your initial salary requirements or your employment package, don’t back down from your baseline needs. Once they realize that you’re the best fit for the position, don’t be surprised if they come back around. If you’re not willing to fight for your value, why should anyone else? Marcie Allen is president and founder of MAC Presents, a New York-based music sponsorship and experiential agency.