A Simple Guide to Help you Maneuver the Office Christmas Party

It's that time of the year again and many offices are  planning to have what has become a tradition of sorts in the corporate world; the office  Christmas party. The office  Christmas party has become synonymous with Christmas and has become so popular that it is a staple practice in countries where Christmas isn't even an official holiday and Hollywood has even made a movie with  Jennifer Aniston in the leading role based on the shenanigans that have become synonymous with such parties.

While the office party is usually a time for employees to take a break from the stress of the job and have a moment of fun relaxation while mingling with their bosses at a more informal setting, many have misunderstood that there are principles that apply to such parties and have found themselves in embarrassing situations which have soiled their reputations long after the last guest walked out of the party venue.

Before you attend your own office party, be sure to follow these simple etiquette guide so that you are not remembered for the wrong reasons.

Timing - Be on time, if the invitation says the party starts at 6pm, be sure to be there at 6pm. If you must come in later, be sure inform your colleagues but try to be at the venue within the first hour and a half as anything more than that shows a disregard to the organizers of the party as well as your other colleagues and bosses who arrived on time.

Dress code- Most offices organize their Christmas parties after work hours on a work day so as not to disrupt the weekend plans of their employees, so unless a dress code is specified, come dressed as you would normally be dressed for work and if there is a dress code be sure to stick to it.

Refreshment - A good rule of thumb is to have something to eat before attending any parties, just in case you get there and the food being served is something you are not familiar with or worse still is finished. Even if there is an open bar and there is an all -you-can-eat buffet on hand, eat and drink in moderation. A good rule of thumb is to stick to the two-drink rule.

Conduct- Conduct yourself in a professional manner at all times, no singing loudly and off key or performing a striptease. Instead, use the opportunity to engage with your colleagues you normally do not have interactions with on a daily basis by having light conversations, the office party is not the time nor the place for office gossip so , keep your smartphones safely tucked away to prevent distractions.

Exit - Stay for a reasonable amount of time (at least 2hrs). Don't be the first to take a leave and if you must leave before your boss, be sure to let her know  why without going into too much details. You don't want to be the last man standing either. so make your exit once you notice the party crowd thinning out.

While the office party is often gossip fodder for the days following it, be sure that all your colleagues would be talking about is how much fun they had and not how you made a fool of yourself. With that being said, eat, drink and be merry.

Dear Career Sensei - I want to quit my Job to start my own Business

Dear Career Sensei,

I am an intelligent and business savvy professional with over 10 years’ experience, 8 of which I’ve spent with my current employer. Though it’s a small company with a staff strength of less than 20, we control approximately 10% of the market.

There’s really not much of  a future for me here as I hold the highest office an employee can within the company, the only two positions higher than mine are held by the owners and co-founders of the business, a married couple.

I am a good leader, proven innovator and most of the award winning ideas that have led to our current success originated from me. Over the years, I have developed quite a good relationship with all our clients, have a strong network within the industry and have been able to save enough seed capital to start up a small firm of my own.

I know there’s never a perfect time to start a business and even though everything looks good on paper, I am afraid that I would fail and have to start from scratch.

Please help me.

Sincerely,

Scaredy-cat the Entrepreneur

Dear Scaredy-cat the Entrepreneur,

It’s okay to be afraid of taking the jump into the entrepreneurship pool as you’ve probably been informed that 8 out of 10 startups fail within the first 18 months. While not entirely factual, there are indeed more failed startups than there are successes.

My advice to you is to follow your dream and start your own firm, because until you do so, you would never know what could have been. However before you quit your job be reminded that entrepreneurship is not a walk in the park, but I’m sure you already  know this hence your apprehension. 

It’s always a good idea to have a backup plan, a plan b of sorts so that you are not left stranded if the business goes belly up. It could be in form of consulting for similar businesses or selling stuff on eBay as a hobby, just be sure to have a plan that would provide an alternative source of income.

Its also a good idea to start your business on the side while still in paid employment. This give you the room to learn the ropes and make your mistakes while still earning a salary. However, it’s important that you operate outside the hours you work for your employer. After work, weekends and when you are on vacation are good times to test the waters.

I noticed that you referenced the relationship you have with your current clients, please no matter how close you are to these clients its best to get your own clients instead of stealing  your current employer's customers. You don’t want to pay an organization that you’ve worked with for 8 years, taught you most of what you know and exposed you to invaluable networks by back stabbing or worse, making them your enemies. As a startup you do not want to use the little capital you starting a war with a company you confessed controls 10% market share of your industry. They can use their years of experience, power and financial means to run you out of business and ruin whatever reputation you have built within the industry.

Lastly, when the time comes for you to hand in your notice, make sure you make your resignation as amicable as possible, give them ample notice and let them know that you plan to start a similar business (if you lie about it, they would eventually find out). You don't want to leave on a sour note or burn bridges because as a startup, you would be needing all the connections and assistance you can get to forge ahead. 

Remember that entrepreneurship is often more arduous and tasking than it is glamorized to be and for every Mark Zuckerberg there are about 90 Elizabeth Holmes'.

All the best!

The Career Sensei

Why your online Activities May be Hurting your Job Search

In the early days when the Facebook userbase were mainly milenials, I would often update my status to reveal what I was upto from the important (job interviews, work functions) to the mundane (what I was eating for dinner). As the medium started to become more popular with generation x's and baby boomers, and my network began to grow to include older relatives and colleagues, I began to tone down the amount of information I shared but would occasionally share my plans for Friday nights. My typical Friday posts were often funny depictions of my love for alcohol, so I'd share something like "TGIF- Totally single so tonight I'm going to be spending the night alone with a bottle of Grey Goose Vodka" or "I'm going to dance and get wasted with my girls tonight", you know, typical single girl living a life of debuchery posts.

It all stopped the day my pastor sent me a friend request. You see, I was a very active member of  the local chapter of my church and held several leadership positions. I wasn't comfortable with my pastor seeing my 'cheeky' posts that often included updates about spending the weekend in nothing but my underwear with a bottle of red wine for company because I did not want him giving me sermons on how I had to comport myself to reflect my faith to the world. I wasn't going to start posting scriptures either because it just wasn't my style so I just stopped sharing updates all together and became a lurker, checking out what others were sharing.

Even if your pastor/boss/cleric or anyone you hold in high esteem doesn't follow your online activities, you still have to be careful with your online activities. This because the internet never forgets and whatever you do on the internet stays there forever and even if you delete  it,  chances are that it may still exist on other computers, websites, search engines or someone with a fast finger screen grabbed it.

To project your personal brand, it is important that you are careful with the information you put online. Too many people are losing their jobs and elected positions because they aired what they believed where their personal opinions with friends on social media. Recent instances of high profile people losing their jobs as a result of their social media activities include a mayor, a director, a  police officer and  Hamilton's Brandon Victor Dixon who was initially  praised for speaking to Vice President Elect - Mike Pence's until his credibility on speaking on important social issues was questioned when one of his tweets from 4 years ago was dug up.

As a career professional, it is important that you keep your online activities as professional as possible. This is because 60% of employers use social network to research job candidates. Hiring managers will pass up a candidate based on the information found about them online. Top of the list why a hiring manager will eliminate an otherwise qualified job candidate includes posting provocative or inappropriate photographs or information,  information about candidates drinking or drug use, discriminatory comments related to race, religion, gender and bad mouthing previous employers or colleagues. Poor communication  is also very big no no to a recruiter.

You may think that you can prevent a recruiter from seeing your social activities by keeping your social media accounts private but keeping your profile private can be counter-productive as 41% recruiters report that they are unlikely to hire someone if they are unable to find information about them online and employers who use social media in their hiring process admitted to sending such cadidates friend requests anyway.

Here are some important points to guide you on making the best out of your online activities

- Be consistent: use a consistent username across all your social networks or even message boards and online communities you belong to, this is helpful in establishing your digital footprint and strengthens your personal brand

- Join online forums/groups that are pertinent to your industry and make intelligent/well researched cotributions

- Limit the amount of personal information you post online, seemingly harmless information about your interests or family can be used by hackers for identity theft or by stalkers or criminals to know your whereabouts (Kim Kardashian can tell you a something about this).

- Steer away from engaging in unnecesary arguments/fights, you may just be having an argument with a troll, who has far less consequences to suffer in the event that the post becomes public

Remember the rule of thumb is not to post or engage in activities online that you would not say or do in public.

How to Comeback from a Poor First Showing

A personal poor first impression incident happened early on in my career as an entry level e-business banking officer. Part of  my job scope at the time, included going to client locations to pitch our electronic banking applications to a group of often high ranking officials. It was a pretty standard routine, I would start off by delivering a  power point presentation to highlight the product features, follow it with a Q&A session after which I would launch the application and proceed with a live demo to emphasize how user friendly the products were.

I delivered these presentations so often that it got to a point when I could do my presentations without having to look at the slides and could predict the questions that would be asked  and answer them preemptively. I had also learnt from doing so many sales pitches that almost every audience had a 'problem person' and could spot them almost immediately I stepped into the meeting room. A 'problem person' in this instance refers to that one person that pretends to have more important things to do than being bogged with 'your' sales pitch, they usually spend most of the meeting fiddling with their phone/tab  and would only spring into action during the time for questions to ask questions with the sole purpose of throwing you off.

Over the course of doing these pitches, I had learned that to manage the 'problem person', I needed to pay them more attention than necessary and answer their questions as politely as possible no matter  how mundane or meaningless the questions were. The trick was to identify  them for what they were (distractions), navigate their obstacle courses as effortlessly as possible, stay on focus and never lose my cool or let them get on my nerves.

On one occasion, I was tasked with making a pitch for an important prospect of the bank and before heading to the  meeting my manager informed me of how big the prospects account was and the decision as to whether they would start banking with us rested on the product I was going to talk to them about. So I was already a bag of nerves heading into the clients office and it didn't help matters when I spotted the problem person the moment he walked in as I was setting up. He sized me up and said to my hearing that he would have preferred someone 'more senior' than I was  to handle the presentation.

After doing what I believed was an impeccable presentation and fielding all his questions, it was time for a live demo and from that moment, everything seemed to go south. I couldn't gain access to the application, and after several failed attempts, I excused myself from the meeting to put a call through to our support team, who were able to resolve the issue after what seemed  like the longest 5 minutes of my life. I returned to the meeting  flustered, apologized for the glitch and proceeded with the demo all the while trying my best to ignore the problem guy smirking behind me as I struggled to regain my composure. After logging into the application, I attempted to simulate a payment process but got logged out, I tried to downplay the glitch by re-signing in and demonstrating another product feature but got signed out again. At that point I was forced to admit to the group that there was a system malfunction which I would have to log in with our developers and rescheduled the demo. Thankfully, they were quite sympathetic to my plight and agreed to have the demo at a later date.

As I was packing up my equipment, problem guy walked up to me with a huge grin on his face scoffed and said "You know you don't get a second chance to make a first impression right?"

It took everything within me not to snap at him. I just smiled and continued with my bags, thanked the room for their time and walked away. I would save the frustration brought on by the humiliating experience for the support team back at the office.

One of the most popular quotes in business is  'you don't get a second chance to make a first impression', You are expected to put your best foot forward the first time because  first impressions set the precedence for how the relationship that follows will go. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D argues that people will form an impression based on your gender, age and race when they see you for the first time. The impression is hinged on your appearance and how attractive they judge you to be. This means that your appearance is the most  important part of creating a good impression.

In the course of your career, it is important to create good first impressions but what happens if you blow your chance at making a good first impression? You do not have to bury your head in shame and give in to the false notion that by missing that one chance of putting up a good showing it is over for you. You can recoup by doing the following;


Do not apologize if the gaffe was no fault of yours as apologizing is an admittance of wrong doing on your part. You should instead work towards offering a plausible explanation for why there was a gaffe. But if you must apologize, be graceful about it, make your apology short and straight to the point, try not to grovel or avoid eye contact, crack a smile if you can manage one.

It's okay ask for a second chance, there's no harm in asking for 5 minutes to gather your thoughts and sort out whatever it is that is unnerving you. You can take a quick break to the restroom, pop , take several deep breaths, some mints in your mouth, look yourself in the mirror and give yourself a pep-talk. If like me your failure to launch was caused by something outside of your control, place a call to whoever is responsible and find out if it can be rectified immediately or if you need more time.

Walk out with your shoulders square and with your head held high; no matter how badly you think your performance was, when you leave the room/meeting/interview leave with your dignity in tact. This is because the more confidence you convey, the more other people will react to you.

Make a killer second impression: If you were lucky to get a second chance, make the most of the opportunity by preparing for it with the precision of an Olympian training towards winning a gold medal. Ensure that you dot your i's and cross your t's and to dwell on your past poor showing, even if it is brought up by your audience, politely steer the conversation away and leave it were it belongs which is in the past.

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Dear Career Sensei - I Hate my Boss

Dear Career Sensei,

My boss is lazy, rude, crass and vindictive and I really hate him.

He makes what would have been an otherwise great job stressful and even though I am actively searching for another job, I'm starting to think that it's best I quit now because I fear that I may soon be forced to react to his  mood swings and constant condescension by lashing out at him and saying what I really feel about him which could lead to me  losing my job on the grounds of insubordination.

Please help because I am at my wits end.

JR



Dear JR,

You are not alone. According to a staffbay.com survey of 15,000 job seekers, a whopping 87.2% admitted they were in the job market because they did not trust or they hated their bosses.

I can tell you a thing or two about having to work with a "horrible boss" because I too have  lived through it. You see when I was a junior executive, I had a boss that I was sure hated me because it seemed like she was always picking on me and never seemed to appreciate all the effort and hard work I put  into my job.

Like you, I decided to get out of the organization as I was sure that I was never going to grow within the organization as long as I was her direct report. After applying for several jobs with nary a new job in sight, I decided to look inwards and transfer to a different division with the company. As part of the inter-departmental move, I had to explain to our director why I wanted to move and after beating about the bush, I opened up to him that my boss and I were not really getting along and that it had started to affect my performance negatively.

I would share with you what he told  me back then as with the passage of time and acquired experiences, his advice has held tried, trusted and true. He stated of all the reasons for changing jobs, the relationship you have with your boss or colleagues while important, should not be top of the list. This is because you are not in control of the way people would  behave towards you and what if you change jobs and meet with people with worse off personalities? Are you going to continue to change jobs until you find a job with people with the right kind of personality?

He told me not to focus on my boss's behaviour as there was little I could do to change it but to instead work on managing my own emotions. He asked me not to take her attitude towards me personally as her behaviour could be linked to much larger issues such as stress and advised  me to observe and learn why she seemed to treat me poorly for possible triggers and patterns and for me to develop my own strategies for handling her perceived bad temper.

Once I realized not to take her outbursts personally, I started to see things in a different light. I noticed that she was usually at her worst behaviour just before the company's monthly performance meetings and started to empathize with her knowing that those meetings could be brutal.
While I was of the opinion that she was specifically picking on me, I would eventually find out after having a chat with her that she was harder on me than the rest of my colleagues because she expected much more from me as I had worked with her longest.

I also devised coping mechanisms for staying calm whenever she would lose her cool by excusing myself from the office whenever I felt like reacting to her outbursts. I would normally take a walk out of the office to a quiet corner, whip out my phone and go through the pictures of my then baby son. I also learned to become proactive in my dealings with her, I made sure my reports were on time and as error free as conceivable.

Today, several jobs and multiple bosses after; some of who turned out to be worse than she was,  I can categorically tell you that the 'horrible boss' you know is better than the 'great boss' you don't know and instead of leaving a job you rightly admitted is a great job because of your poor relationship with your boss, try working towards having a mutually respectful relationship, it may surprise you how instrumental this person may become in your career trajectory.

All the best!

Please send your questions for publication to dearcareersensei@gmail.com