What to Do If You’re Smarter than Your Boss

You want to work for a great boss — someone you can respect and learn from. But what if your
manager isn’t good at his job? What if you’re more competent or have greater skills? Should you be
raising a ruckus or keeping your head down? And how do you get what you need without making your
boss look bad?

What the Experts Say

“There are a lot of bad managers out there,” says Annie McKee, founder of the Teleos Leadership
Institute and coauthor of Primal Leadership. So it’s not unusual to feel smarter or more qualified than
your boss. Still, being in good company doesn’t make the situation any more tenable. Toiling under
someone who you feel is incompetent can be demoralizing. But not all hope is lost. Even less-than-
great bosses have something to teach, says Linda Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of
Business Administration at Harvard Business School and coauthor of Collective Genius and Being the
Boss: “There are very few people in this world that I don’t think I can learn from.” So try not to
discount your boss completely. Here’s how to make the most of the often frustrating situation.

Be honest with yourself

Before you declare your boss an incompetent fool, take a close look at what’s really happening.
“Some people need to believe they’re better to keep their self-esteem intact, or they may just be
more qualified in one area,” McKee says. Ask yourself if you’re genuinely smarter than your manager
or if it’s possible that you’re more qualified in some areas but not others. “As people move up it’s
natural to get better at leading and managing while losing your technical edge,” says McKee. Be
honest with yourself about what skills you have and which your boss lacks. “Being smarter than your
boss doesn’t mean you’re going to be more effective,” says Hill. After all, to be good at your job,
you don’t just need smarts. “You need experience, strong relationships, social capital, and emotional
intelligence,” she says.

Keep quiet
If after reflecting on the situation, you conclude that you’re actually smarter or more qualified, think
twice before talking to anyone about it. McKee says it’s tempting to plead your case to higher ups or
to try to prove that you should have you manager’s job. But this rarely works. “You put yourself at
risk if you decide to go directly into that conflict because bosses usually win,” she says. Sure, you
may want to vent to one or two trusted colleagues, but be careful. “If your boss senses you are
critical or derogatory of her, that relationship may be over,” she says. Many people in this situation
make the mistake of telling others how incompetent or unqualified their boss is. “You need to be
respectful. If you badmouth your manager, it’s going to reflect badly on you. People notice and
worry you’ll talk about them the same way,” says Hill. Nor should you take it out on her. “Don’t be
mad at the boss, be mad at the people who didn’t make you the boss,” she says.

Focus on doing a good job

Don’t get caught up in ruminating about who should have what job. You’re better off focusing on
your responsibilities, says Hill: “You want to make sure you do your work and people understand
what you’ve been able to accomplish.” It might help to focus on the bigger picture instead of your
relationship. “You have to find a higher purpose,” says McKee. “Take it outside of the interpersonal
fight with your boss.” Hill agrees: “Don’t come in as the smart, young hotshot. Do what’s best for
the enterprise.”

Help your boss be better

There’s no reason not to be generous. If your boss is successful, there’s a greater chance you’ll be
successful too. “See yourself as a complement to the person. Find a way to compensate for her
weaknesses,” says Hill. If he isn’t good at seeing the big picture, ask questions that help him pull
back from the details. If she doesn’t understand the technical ins and outs of your product, offer to
cover the part of a meeting where the features will be discussed. “Offer up ways that he or she can
use you better,” says McKee.

Don’t cover up
“There’s a big difference between delivering on what you’re supposed to do and covering up your
boss’s mistakes,” says McKee. If your boss has a pattern of making gaffes, it doesn’t serve you or
the company to continuously clean up his mess. “You need to do your job well and you need to
deliver on what your boss is asking of you, but if your work is being used to cover up serious
deficiencies, you may need to have a conversation with HR,” says McKee.

Find something to respect

It’s easy to focus on the bad but even the worst bosses have redeeming qualities. “How can you find
something you respect?” asks McKee. She recommends looking beyond the work environment if
necessary. “Is your boss a good mom or a kind husband?” If you truly can’t find something you
admire, you may need to find a new job. “If not now, soon,” says McKee. “It’s soul destroying to
work for someone you truly don’t respect.” Hill agrees: “If you think you can’t partner with that
person, then you need to think about whether you should be at the organization.”

Learn from someone else

If your boss isn’t giving you the coaching you need, “broaden your network,” Hill recommends.
Take your learning into your own hands and, McKee suggests, volunteer for projects that will allow
you to interact with other senior people in the company. Be explicit about what you want. You
might approach another manager and say, “I’d love to learn more about how you do X. Do you
mind if we spend a couple hours together over the next few months?” “You can choose to see every
opportunity as a way to learn,” McKee says.
 If You Want to Be the Boss, Say “We” Not “I”
The royal “we” has a long and interesting history. Many attribute its first usage to King Henry II, who
in 1169 used it to imply he was speaking for both himself, and for God. Overtime, leaders began to
use it to imply them and their constituents (a distinction that got a little blurry when Margaret Thatcher
proclaimed “we have become a grandmother” and got a significant amount of chastisement). But
beyond using the plural pronoun to indicate that you speak on behalf of a others (or deity), it turns
out that using “we” could also mean you’re more considerate of others and possibly even a better
leader.

A team of researchers – Ewa Kacewicz, James W. Pennebaker, Matthew Davis, Moongee Jeon, and
Arthur C. Graesser — studied the use of pronouns by individuals in a variety of contexts. Their theory
was that pronoun usages (first-, second- or third-person and singular versus plural) could provide clues
to an individual’s status inside a group or a hierarchy and possibly their likelihood of attaining higher
status.

Pronouns help to signify a speaker’s focus of attention. When people feel insecure, self-aware, or
diminished, they are more likely to focus their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors inward. Indeed, studies
suggest that people manipulated to focus inward often increase the rate of first-person singular
pronouns (such as “I,” “my,” or “me”) used in their speech. By contrast, the researchers theorized
that individuals using first-person plural and second-person (such as “we,” “us,” or “you”) ought to
demonstrate an outward focus, considering the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others.

In addition, researchers suggest that an outward focus is an important requirement of those who hold,
or look to attain, status. Status in a group is often conferred or legitimated by the group being led.
Because of this, they theorized, individuals who demonstrate a strong focus on the group and its
members (instead of on themselves) often attain higher status. Those who are self-focused would get
looked down on, regardless of whether they held positions of authority. Perhaps the pronoun was a
small, but potent, signal to others.

To test these assumptions, the researchers designed five separate studies in which language was used
in a variety of contexts, but all in situations with status differences between the people communicating.
In the first study, participants were placed in four-person groups with a randomly chosen leader and
given a decision-making task. In the second and third, two-person teams were either given a series of
problems to solve or tasked to talk informally through an online chat forum (and later self-reported
their assessment of status relative to the other person). In the fourth study, nine volunteer participants
submitted their email correspondence with up to 20 other individuals and self-reported their status
relative to each individual. The fifth study was perhaps most interesting; the researchers collected 40
letters written by soldiers in the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein (obtained through the Iraqi
Perspectives Project). Half of these letters were written from higher ranked offers to lower ranks and
half by lower ranked to higher ranked officers.

In their analysis of all five scenarios, published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, the
researchers found surprisingly consistent results. Individuals with lower status overwhelmingly tended
to use first-person singular pronouns (“I”) compared to individuals with higher status. Likewise,
higher status individuals used significantly more first-person plural (“we”) pronouns relative to those
with lower status (the only exception to the “we” effect was found in the fourth study, of natural use
emails and self-reports of status). Second-person pronouns (“you, your”) also appeared more
frequently in the language of high status participants in all five studies, though the effect was weaker
than “we.”

The studies’ results imply that higher-status individuals do demonstrate an “others-orientation”

significantly more than lower status individuals. Likewise, lower status individuals appear more self-
oriented. All five studies were correlational, so its difficult to tease out whether an others-orientation
was a cause of rising status or a simply result of operating at a higher status. In either case, however,
the studies’ results underscore the importance of an others-focus for those seeking to rise in their
organizations.

While switching from singular “I” to the plural “we” may not make you a king or win you a
premiership, it might help shift your perspective from self-focused to others-focused, make you more
aware of the needs of others and, as you work to meet those needs, might just make you a better
leader.
 Learn to Become a Less Autocratic Manager
Mark, a ten-year veteran of the pharmaceutical R&D world with a Ph.D. in statistics, was the obvious
choice to lead the SAS software and data management group of a global healthcare corporation when
the current director suddenly departed. Having managed a small team of bio-statisticians successfully
over three years, promoting him to director seemed like a no-brainer. Yet, within six months, despite
being viewed as “high potential” by the C-suite, he had managed to alienate just about everyone.

As a team leader, he had proven himself effective—delivering results, improving processes, and
directing junior staff. So why, when given the chance to manage a larger, more diverse group of top
performers, would he flame out so spectacularly? The answer was simple: Mark was bossy.

By the time a coach was brought in, there was an alarming downward trajectory of morale and
productivity. 360 feedback suggested that although Mark was respected for his expertise, his
management style wasn’t working with this more experienced team. Some of his new team members
matched his technical skills, and all of them were used to a great deal of autonomy.

As Mark painfully discovered, trying to run a seasoned, highly skilled group with the traditional type-
A, command-and-control style is doomed to fail. Today’s knowledge workers demand what leadership
experts call a “post-heroic leader”: one who is emotionally and intellectually agile, able to modulate
their style as needed from authoritative to collaborative—and back again—in order to optimize team
performance. Post-heroic leaders recognize that the key to success is not adhering to hierarchy or
position power, but mastering a complex set of seemingly contradictory organizational dynamics—
autonomy and shared decision-making, individuality andteamwork.

Mark’s situation called for a change in mindset about what it means to be a good manager. To his
credit, he was open to coaching. Yet coaxing him to become more easy-going or to let go of control
was not enough. He was used to driving people hard for results. To help him, Mark’s coach re-focused
the same deep desire to excel that had made him a great statistician on adjusting his style and provided
a framework for change, suggesting several shifts that Mark must undertake:

From self-awareness to social awareness. This shift occurs when a manager realizes that effective
leadership calls for more than just knowing one’s own strengths and weaknesses. Social awareness
calls for a heightened sensitivity to how one’s behavior, in words and deeds, impacts others. To help
build this awareness, Mark’s coach asked him questions like:

 What is the impact of your management style on others?

 How do you know what others are thinking or feeling?

From directive to inquisitive. When seeking to improve processes or engender creativity from an
expert group, the manager needs to shift from a stance of declaration to one of curiosity. Questions
that help managers make this shift include:

 How much time do you spend listening rather than speaking?

 How do you know if you are truly listening to your people?
From power over to power with. When a manager lauds authority over subordinates, A-players tend
to shut down (and look for the exit), while B-players tend to acquiesce, hide out, and fail to grow. As
a result, the potential of the entire team is lost. To facilitate this important shift, a coach might ask:

 How do you stimulate the best thinking from your team?

 What is the role of your subordinates in making decisions?

From teamwork to teaming. Traditional managers tend to rely on static definitions of who is “in”
and who is “out,” fostering a culture of conformity and internal competitiveness. Adaptive managers
evoke commitment through common values and aspirational goals, not structure. Good coaching
questions include:

 How do you create a sense of belonging when the boundaries of a team are porous?
 How do you leverage diverse talents, skills, and perspectives, getting the best from everyone?

This framework gave Mark tangible guidelines to work with—not just generic admonishments to be
more democratic. Coaching provided the space to acknowledge his fear of “losing his edge” and his
hard-earned respect from the C-suite while exploring a different possibility: that he could have both—
remaining directive when needed, but “flexing” to accommodate a variety of work styles.

Within a few weeks, he had made significant progress on two of the shifts—from power over to power
with and from teamwork to teaming. The changes he made included:

1. Setting up a series of brainstorming sessions for process innovation, utilizing an outside facilitator so
that he could participate as a team member—not as the boss.
2. Enlisting expert “thought partners” on his team to help make specific decisions that impacted work
flow and initiatives.
3. Pairing senior staff with junior staff for mentoring and coaching.
4. Sending a personal note to each team member, asking them to share what activity, structure, or process
would support them to do their best work.
5. Holding an offsite “values summit” to explore what his people cared about most—out of which they
created their own internal values statement and a list of operating principles.

Initially, Mark’s team was skeptical about his sudden transformation, but with consistency and
repetition, he earned their respect and morale improved dramatically. Encouraged by his coach to see
himself not so much as “the boss” but as a role model, he began communicating with greater candor
and vulnerability.

For any manager that finds herself across the table from a traditional heroic leader, like Mark—one
who defaults to position power and authority—the challenge is to accelerate the shift to a more
adaptive approach. Start by helping him re-connect to his aspiration to excel, not just as a functional
expert but also as a leader. Then provide a framework for considering new options, a safe space for
experimentation, and most important, ask thought-provoking, open-ended questions to spark his
creativity. With the right kind of support, an old-fashioned manager can make the post-heroic leap,
and soar.
 What to Do When You Don’t Feel Valued at Work

It’s no fun to toil away at a job where your efforts go unnoticed. How can you highlight your
achievements without bragging about your work? Who should you talk to about feeling
underappreciated? And if the situation doesn’t change, how long should you stay?

What the Experts Say

“There’s nothing worse than feeling unseen and unheard in the workplace,” says Annie McKee,
author of How to Be Happy at Work. “We all have a human need to be appreciated for our efforts, and
so when your colleagues don’t notice [your contributions], it makes you feel as though you don’t
belong.” You might also start to worry – justifiably – about your potential professional
advancement. “Self-doubt starts to creep in, and you think, ‘If no one notices what I’m doing, how
am I going to get ahead?’” But you are not powerless to change the situation, says Karen Dillon,
author of the HBR Guide to Office Politics. “There are many ways to make sure people understand and
see what you do.” The key, she says, is to find “diplomatic ways to toot your own horn.” Here are
some ideas.

Be realistic
Before you take any action, ask yourself whether you’re being realistic about the amount of
appreciation “you expect from your boss, colleagues, peers, and clients,” says McKee. “People are
very busy. The feedback might not be as much as you want,” but it might be reasonable within the
context of your organization. “You are dealing with human beings,” adds Dillon. “Even with good
intentions, your colleagues and manager might overlook what you do and take you for granted.”
When you’re feeling unappreciated, she recommends running a “personal litmus test” on your recent
accomplishments. Ask yourself, “Was my work extraordinary? Was it over and above what my peers
typically do?” And importantly, “If I had to ask for credit for it, would I sound like a jerk?” If you’re
unsure, seek a second opinion from a “slightly senior colleague” or a peer you “deeply respect.”

Talk to your boss

If your above-par efforts are going unsung, engage your boss in a conversation, says McKee. Granted,
this will be easier with some managers than others. “The average boss doesn’t pay attention to human
needs,” says McKee. If yours falls into that category, keep in mind that “you’re not going to change
that person, but you can signal that you’d like more dialogue on your performance,” she says. “And if
your boss is average to good, he might heed the call.” Of course, you must be subtle. “Don’t go in
saying, ‘I want more appreciation.’” Instead, McKee recommends saying something along the lines of
“I’d like to talk about the past three months and get a sense of where my strengths lie and where I
could learn.” Come prepared with specific examples, advises Dillon. She suggests drawing up a list of
your recent achievements to jog your manager’s memory of your good work. “Most managers are
happy to have that list,” she says.

Increase your team’s visibility

If you manage a team, you also need to look for ways to explain to others the group does and why it’s
valuable, says Dillon. “In our hectic daily lives, your boss and colleagues might not be aware of ” the
ins and outs of your job. She advises asking your manager for a sliver of time to “talk about what your
team does, what its goals are, and ways you’re striving to do better.” McKee also suggests more subtle
ways to draw attention to the group’s day-to-day efforts. Don’t let presentations or reports go out
without making clear who created them. “Make sure everyone’s name goes on the work product,” she
says. You want people beyond your manager to see what your team is delivering. Make sure to spread,
not hoard, credit when it’s due. But don’t be afraid to tout your own leadership. “Sometimes, in your
efforts to be inclusive and not sound self-aggrandizing, you miss an opportunity,” Dillon
explains. Women tend to do this more than men, she notes. It’s okay to “use the word ‘I’ as in ‘I
accomplished X and Y, and I am grateful for the support that I had.’”

Recognize others’ contributions

One surefire to get your own work noticed is, “paradoxically,” to “praise and appreciate others,” says
McKee. “By being the person who notices a job well done, you can be the agent of change” in your
organization’s culture. Most often the “response from the other person will be to return the favor,”
she adds. If your boss is not one to dispense positive feedback, talk to your team about “what you can
do to shore each other up,” and generate optimism among the ranks. “Because of the pace of our
organizations, what we produce becomes passé or invisible fast,” notes McKee. She recommends
creating norms in your team such that when a colleague makes an important contribution or finishes
a piece of work, “everyone stops for a nanosecond and says, ‘Yay.’” But don’t get carried away,
cautions Dillon. “Sending extensive thank-yous can diminish the message,” she says. “Use your
judgment. Ask, ‘Who really deserves acknowledgement for going the extra mile?’”

Validate yourself
While being appreciated and valued for your work is a wonderful thing, you can’t expect all your
“motivation to come from honors, accolades, and public gratitude,” says Dillon. Intrinsic motivators
are much more powerful. “You need to strive to find meaning in the work itself.” McKee concurs.
“Ultimately over the course of your working life, you want to move away from the need for external
validation,” she says. “Real fulfillment comes from within.” She suggests making an effort to pat
yourself on the back regularly. “Try to carve out time at the end of each week to reflect on what went
well and what didn’t go as well.” This is a useful exercise for remembering both what you’re good at
and why you do what you do. “Be careful not to sink into deficiency mode where you [dwell on]
everything you did wrong,” she adds. “Catalog the wins.”

Consider moving on
If you continue to feel undervalued and unappreciated by your company, it might be a sign that it’s
not the right place for you. “We all stay in jobs that aren’t perfect for a lot of reasons,” says McKee.
Maybe you need the experience, or perhaps you can’t move because you need to be in a certain
geographic region for your spouse or partner. But if you’ve tried to make the job more validating and
fulfilling, and nothing has worked, it might be time to look for a new one.
 The gender pay gap
Women still earn a lot less than men, despite decades of equal-pay laws.
Why?
Oct 5th 2017

“I ALWAYS wanted to be a mum,” says Meghan, a British woman with two children. She wanted a
career, too, and worked hard for it, earning a degree in economics and accounting, and taking
professional exams. At a big accounting firm in London, she managed junior employees. When her
daughter was born she faced a choice between her career and being the mother she wanted to be.
After her boss refused her a flexible work schedule, she quit. Six years later she is a childminder,
earning a fraction of her former salary. Now divorced, she says that a professional role in
accountancy would have been financially better for her family. But finding one with hours that
worked for a single parent seemed impossible.

Stories like this sum up the “motherhood penalty” to women’s careers. It is the main reason why the
pay gap between men and women in rich countries is no longer narrowing. Employers view long
hours as a sign of commitment and leadership potential. But from scarce, pricey child care to short
school days, the world is organized for families with a parent at home—and that is usually the
mother.

In the rich and middle-income countries that make up the OECD, the median wage of a woman
working full-time is 85% that of a man. This is not, as many assume, because employers pay a
woman less than they would have paid a man in her place. Data from 25 countries collected by Korn
Ferry, a consultancy, show that women earn 98% as much as men who do the same job for the same
employer. The real reason is twofold. Women outnumber men in positions with lower salaries and
little chance of promotion. And men and women are segregated between occupations and industries;
those where women predominate pay less.

Just a fifth of senior executives in G7 countries are female. Across the European Union supervisors
are more likely to be male, even when most of their underlings are female. Nearly 70% of working
women in the EU are in occupations where at least 60% of workers are female. The top four jobs
done by American women—teacher, nurse, secretary and health aide—are all at least 80% female.

Occupations dominated by women have lower status and pay. Primary teachers in the OECD earn
81% of the average for graduate jobs. Nurses earn less than police officers; cleaners less than
caretakers. Women’s lower earnings mean that after divorcing or being widowed, they often end up
poor. And skewed workforces can be a problem for firms—and for society. BHP Billiton, a mining
company, has found that sites with more women are run more safely. Heavily male police forces and
female nursing corps are unlikely to have the best mix of skills, experience and priorities to deal with
crime victims and patients of the opposite sex. One theory for why boys do worse than girls in
school is the shortage of male academic role models.

The gender pay gap would shrink if men moved into female-dominated jobs and vice versa. But in
America such workplace gender integration stalled about a decade ago after steadily increasing for
more than two decades. A study of 12 European countries concluded that between 1995 and 2010
the share of female workers in most occupations changed little. A similar pattern has been found in
Australia.

Two roads diverge

Men and women are free to study what they want, and discrimination at work has been banned for
decades. But there is plenty of evidence that workplace segregation, and men’s and women’s
differing career paths, cannot be explained away as a matter of differing preferences.

Research in Canada has compared reactions to ads for the same jobs that used stereotypically
masculine words (leader, competitive and so on) or feminine ones (such as support, interpersonal
and understand). Women found the “masculine” jobs less appealing, but not because they felt they
would be unable to do them. They read the words as a signal of a male-dominated workplace, where
they would not belong.

Stereotypes that discourage men from female-dominated jobs are at least as ingrained. Florence
Nightingale, who established the principles of modern nursing in the 1890s, believed that men’s
“hard and horny” hands made them unsuitable for the job, “however gentle their hearts”. Some
American nursing schools started admitting men only in 1981, after a Supreme Court ruling.

A plethora of programmes and campaigns encourage girls into science and engineering. And they
now have role models aplenty. But campaigns to get boys into teaching and nursing are few and far
between. Men who become nurses often stumble into the job. Marius Malmo at the Stavanger
University Hospital in Norway explains that, after he failed to get into the police academy, a
policeman offered friendly advice: nursing, he said, used the same “people skills”. He decided to try
it for a year before reapplying to the police, but loved nursing and stayed. He says he likes intensive
care and operating theatres, because they are “where the action is”.

Neither choice of field nor lack of ambition can explain why the share of women shrinks higher up
the career ladder, even in industries that women dominate. The proportion of business and
management degrees earned by women has grown steadily, but that of women in managerial and
senior jobs has not kept pace. In America about half of college degrees in business awarded since
2000 have gone to women, but the share of senior executives who are female has remained stuck at
one in five.

Women used to be less likely to ask for promotion. No longer: a survey by McKinsey in 2016 found
that women in corporate America asked at the same rate as men. It also found that women and men
were promoted at similar rates, except at the lowest rungs of the career ladder, where women lagged
behind. A possible reason is that managers are reluctant to promote women who are starting
families, or are likely to do so soon.

It so happens that the opportunity for the critical first promotion often coincides with wanting to
start a family. Data from Britain show that the age at which women’s pay starts to fall behind men’s
tracks the age at which they typically have their first child. Claudia Goldin of Harvard University has
found a similar pattern for college-educated American women.
 IS IT TIME TO QUIT YOUR JOB?
Amy Gallo

JANUARY 30, 2013

Everyone has bad days at work or even long periods when they feel disheartened about their job.
But how do you know the difference between ordinary, occasional dissatisfaction and a genuine
mismatch? How do you know when you’re truly ready to move on? And how do you then get out
gracefully?

What the Experts Say

Quitting a job can negatively impact your career and disrupt your personal life. But staying in an
undesirable situation can be worse. “I find a lot of people paralyzed by their unhappiness with their
current reality,” says Leonard Schlesinger, the president of Babson College and coauthor of Just
Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future. It’s often easier to stay put. “Most people stay
too long in bad jobs because the corporate world is geared towards keeping us in roles, not matching
individuals up with their ideal roles,” says Daniel Gulati, a tech entrepreneur and coauthor of Passion
& Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders. But don’t let yourself get stuck.
Here’s how to decide whether it’s really time to quit, and if so, how to leave effectively:

Watch for signals

Start by figuring out whether you lack excitement about the bigger picture or the day-to-day
activities. “When people ask me how things are going, my standard response is that I love what I’m
doing, which doesn’t mean that I like it on any given day,” says Schlesinger. Here are some signs that
something larger is going on:

You keep promising yourself you’ll quit but never do. Gulati says that these false starts are often indicative of
an underlying problem.

You don’t want your boss’s job. If you can’t stand the idea of having your manager’s job, you need to
think hard about what’s next. Chances are that “your hungrier peers will soon pass you, creating
more job dissatisfaction,” says Gulati.

You’re consistently underperforming. If you keep trying to get better but you’re not seeing results, it may
be time to consider whether you have what it takes, or if your boss and colleagues value what you
have to offer. Schlesinger warns that sometimes you’re up against an impossible task — the job is
too big, the politics are too tricky, there aren’t enough resources, or you don’t have the required
skills and experience.

If you notice one or more of these signs, pay attention and ask yourself whether the costs of staying
in the job are reasonable and acceptable to you. It may be that the “price of admission” —
opportunity loss, emotional toll — aren’t worth it.

Test the waters

To further explore if you’re ready to leave, run a few experiments to assess whether your perception
is reality. “It’s better to rely on information gathered from live interaction with people rather than
spinning around in your own chair,” says Schlesinger. He suggests having an honest conversation
with your boss about how you’re perceived and what you’re capable of achieving in your role. If you
think your manager wouldn’t be open to that kind of discussion, Gulati advises looking at your last
two annual performance reviews. “Do the comments make you feel empowered or disheartened? If
your performance is stagnating despite your best efforts, you might want to quit before further
reputational damage is done,” he says. You can also test whether there’s a mismatch by putting your
hat in the ring the next time your boss has a high-profile piece of work to be done. If you’re
overlooked, it may be that he doesn’t appreciate your skills and it’s time to move on.

Know the risks

Before making a final decision, make sure you’ve assessed the downsides. Even if you’re certain
you’re in the wrong job, there are risks to leaving — you may damage existing relationships, lose
needed income, or blemish your resume. According to Gulati, people usually get ten chances to quit
a job in their lifetime, which works out to an average of every four years. “If you’re changing things
up much more than that, companies will start looking at you as a serial job-hopper,” he says. This
will hurt your professional reputation and your chances of getting jobs in the future. “This could
become especially problematic if you find a role you really want but can’t get a foot in the door
because of your dicey resume,” says Gulati.

Always leave toward something

You can mitigate some of the risks by deciding what’s next before you leave. Both experts agree that
it’s better to have at least an inkling of what you want to do, if not a full-fledged plan. “People
should quit to secure a positive role, not on an emotional whim to avoid a negative situation. If you
truly hate what you’re doing, you should absolutely leave but not before you identify something that
you have a good chance of loving in the future,” says Gulati. Scheslinger adds “I wouldn’t leave
without some sort of plan, whether it’s a set of experiments to confirm what you’re excited about
doing next or a conscious strategy to make something happen.” Of course, that’s not always
possible. “Many people leave it open ended, especially if they’re financially secure or craving an
uninterrupted period of introspection,” says Gulati.

Don’t run out the door

You may fantasize about telling your boss to take this job and shove it, but that will only give you
short-term relief and could possibly ruin your professional life. “There’s nothing worse than taking a
bad situation and leaving it badly. How you leave is as important as how you arrive,” says
Schlesinger. Discuss the decision with people who matter in your life: spouse, children, friends. Ask
mentors or former bosses for advice. Most importantly, Schlesinger recommends, “Look at it from
your boss’s point of view and think about how you can communicate a process for disengagement
that is respectful of the situation.” Gulati agrees: “Once you’ve decided to quit and have a last day in
mind, you should let your immediate supervisor know and follow due process.”