Actually, this is to tell my boss so he can tell *his *boss. Boss’s boss (call her “A”) has asked for a list of all boss’s direct reports’ strengths and weaknesses. We’re not sure why, but probably A is going to reassign us all to different departments and boot my poor boss (call him “B”) somewhere inconsequential, as they apparently do not get along. He is trying to make me look good and has already vetoed some of my real weaknesses, such as:
a) gets migraines (I think HR would be mad if we used this one),
b) has no ambition to be an exec of any kind ever,
c) can generate passable euphemistic bullshit but sometimes forgets to,
d) hates hates hates marketing and all its evil works in this fallen world,
e) has no experience, training, education, or aptitude in marketing (can you tell where I’m worried I’ll end up?)
f) often wordy,
g) prone to discounting or dismissing hierarchy and the protocol that is supposed to go with it,
etc.
What should we say? What’s a good weakness for a good worker bee to have, from a corporation’s perspective?
Although maybe that would be considered too smartass. Actually, since you really don’t want to be shuffled into marketing, I think naming marketing as a weakness might be a good idea, as long as you’re pretty sure they won’t react by saying, “Oh, she needs more experience with marketing, let’s move her there.” Something like, “Marketing is a particular weakness, as it is something I do not enjoy and therefore have little experience or interest with.”
I don’t get it. What sort of retarded office do you work in? Doesn’t your boss already know your strengths and weakness from actually working with you?
And if you don’t want to do marketing, why don’t you just talk to your boss and say you would rather do something else. You have to pick what that something else is though. It’s not the company’s job to guess what you might want to do for them.
MsWhatsit, I lobbied hard for exactly exactly that, and my boss says IxNay, he won’t use it. He is worried that if A is hell-bent on putting me in Marketing that if she thinks it’s a weakness she’ll just can me.
I forgot to mention that we need this by 3 (eastern) today. :eek::eek::eek:
Also forgot to mention that I’m a tech/internet editor. I handle words we put online, help with tech product development, and advise on crap like social media and why we should not advise our authors to write their autobiographies and put them on Wikipedia. We’re a publisher.
msmith537, yes, my own actual boss, B, does know this, though he knows it less than you might think because I have a lot of autonomy and am expected to take care of bidness. Which I have been doing quite well, thank you. Boss’s boss, A, does not know me well and does not work with me often and is the head of the company. A and B clearly are not soulmates. B wants to protect me as best he can.
The current situation is that boss’s boss, A, is suffering under our parent company. They put us under a hiring freeze, cut our budget, and gave us impressively optimistic revenue numbers to meet (translation: they expect us to make a lot more money with less investment and fewer people. SOP for corporations.) A got permission to technically honor the hiring freeze but have freedom to reassign existing employees.
Fundamental underlying problem: Tech is scary and dangerous. Tech always costs more than you thought. A is not a tech person. A is a marketing person. A wants to put as many resources into marketing as possible.
Oh, and “What kind of retarded office do you work in?” I work in a totally normal modern American corporate environment. *Dilbert*doesn’t have the circulation numbers it does because it’s all so odd and foreign, you know. In fact, all parties involved are intelligent, well-meaning, competent people, I swear.
One example of a potential weakness that I have used is “technical knowledge”. I have quite a bit of it in my field - but I could use this as a weakness as well, since 1) you can always know more, and 2) it provides an opportunity to talk about how far you’ve come, while being self-aware enough to know what you still have to learn. You can also use this as an intro into topics, programs, or whatever that you would like to learn.
ETA: Another benefit is that “technical knowledge” is fixable. Other things, like personality traits, are not.
I’m a perfectionist. Sometimes that gets in the way of producing results that, though not perfect, are more than adequate for the needs of the project.
Some of these are great. I wonder how sensitive A’s bullshit detector is set.
Kiber, I would totally use something along those lines, but Boss B vetoed that too. My #1 strength is going to be some technical knowledge (I noz teh Intertoobz!!1! and am a Super Expert Blackbelt SEO, yessir) and he doesn’t want to get too specific about exactly which areas because A’s eyes will glaze over (guaranteed – he was telling her about a new FAQ page we’re designing for our site, and her question was: “Will that have a URL?”). So he says I can’t say I’m strong in tech knowledge and weak in it at the same time, because to A, all tech is just tech, you know?
My advice is to be upfront. (Good) Management wants you to excel.
I’m not sure what you are calling ‘marketing’ (advertising?), but if you don’t like crafting sales promotions, say that.
Weakness - Poor sales skills
While this may result in somebody saying, “They need some marketing experience to make up for that weakness!!” You are also permitting to politely decline such a move. If they come back with “Move on or move out,” then you may be, well, screwed.
First, the politically correct term for weakness is “areas of improvement.”
Second, good for your boss. Even if he or she thinks he knows you, in doing performance reviews reviews I’ve seen cases where bosses totally got it wrong.
As for suggestions, it is great place to ask for training. “Not as expert as I would like to be on package X.” Or it could be a place to ask of something from your boss. Something like “though I set priorities for tasks, they do not always perfectly align with departmental priorities.”
That’s why “Area of Improvement” as a name for this is not total BS - the exercise should be focused on people getting better, not Chinese Communist style self-criticism.
Well this is just my opinion, but I think a good tactic would be to bring up a weakness that might be typical for your age group. Like, if you’re young or recently entered the work force, your weakness might be that you’re still honing your craft and becoming aware of the resources available to you. If you grew up before the boom of technology, maybe you pick up new technologies slower than other people. If you have a family you need to get home, maybe your weakness is rigidly defined work hours. But naming something that is a true weakness, but simultaneously typical of many people in your situation indicates an awareness to your surroundings, without singling you out as being particularly weak.
Welp, Boss B has just come to tell me that he’s not writing down any weaknesses for me, and that if pressed he’ll offer one of the ones I came up with: I could use more knowledge of our products. (I’ve been here a year, we have thousands of titles, and some I answer social-media questions about without actually knowing them very well).
As B says, A has already decided what she thinks is best to do, and whatever he writes down isn’t going to change her mind. She may not even read it, as it may have been an exercise in making everyone feel that Good Procedures Are Being Followed rather than actual decision making being done. He also says A’s in a spectacularly lousy mood today.
phreesh, as far as I understand it, Marketing and Sales are different and separate and never the twain shall meet. *Marketing *involves things like advertising and soliciting reviews and writing the blurb that goes on the back of the book, and maybe responding when the Social Media Tech lady bugs you for something to put on Facebook about the last industry conference you went to or about how interesting up-and-coming author Z is. *Sales *involves actually taking people’s money and giving them goods in return, and visiting lots of them in person to talk them into that, and keeping track of whether we have enough goods in the warehouse to sell, and how many more we ought to print, and advising on whether there’s a market for a new edition, and maybe offering a special deal if someone agrees to buy 1200 copies of Book X next year. Marketing: Think ad copy writers. Sales: Think used car salesmen.
Voyager, we just two weeks ago finished formal performance reviews in which you’d think that Boss B and Boss’s Boss A would’ve got all the strength-and-weakness talk they could stomach. We have a whole automated corporate process thing where you have to write up pages and pages of bullet points on your five annual objectives and measure how you met them or didn’t and rate yourself/get rated and expound on where you think you need to go from here, all of which Boss B approved line-by-line and Boss’s Boss A had to sign off on. But… see paragraph on “Good Procedures Are Being Followed rather than actual decision making being done” above.
I like to tell potential employers that I am often too hard on myself when making mistakes. Similar to detail-oriented and perfectionist, but I heard that those are said too often for weaknesses and are generally dismissed as being too stereotypical of an answer nowadays.