–Thomas Jefferson

Nobody said career advancement was going to be easy, did they? So how can you best navigate the crowded superhighway of career advancement. One great way to become a better manager is to find out what everyone else in your job position hates to do, get acclimated to the task, and become very good at it. 

Typically you will find that the things people hate do are often time those that will determine success or failure.  You’ll also find that when you have become a proficient performer you won’t feel as negatively about the task. 

Take sales for an example; regardless of what the most unfailingly smiling salesperson says, no one likes to cold call.  Oh, they might like to make a couple of cold calls each day but no one likes to come into the office every day, week after week, for months or years and make 100 cold calls or more every day. 

Anyone in sales can tell you that cold calling is the number one way to jump start your sales funnel and keep it filled but most sales people hate to do this on a consistent basis.  The funny thing is that the better you become at the tasks that everyone hates to do, the less time you spend doing them. 

Great cold callers, fill their pipeline with business, get referrals and repeat business and eventually the amount of cold calls that they need to make on a daily basis decreases drastically.

This concept rings truer the farther up the organizational ladder you go.  As a manager or executive, most of the time there is no one to pass the blame to.  If your department or division fails to achieve its goals, the blame rest squarely on your shoulders. 

Executives and managers are used to handling the unpleasant tasks that others shirk.  From reprimanding or firing employees, and even friends that are not performing to having to be the final arbiter of disputes, to be successful in upper management positions you must be willing to take on these tough tasks.
 

“The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man

who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”

– Adam Smith

 The Path of Least Resistance is Crowded!

If you focus solely on the tasks that you enjoy, not only will critical tasks not be completed but your team will take their direction from you and they also will not complete all their critical tasks.  Anyone and everyone can perform adequately on the tasks that they like to do.  Only high performing managers and executives can perform on the tasks that everyone hates to do.

Think that this doesn’t apply to your job function --- think again!  If the tasks that were the most critical to your job performance and career success were tasks that everyone loved to do then everyone would be a top performer.  Yet we know this is not the case. 

In every job there is at least one task that people hate to do, and typically that task can mean the difference between success and failure. 

Most likely you were promoted to a management or executive position because you were willing to take responsibility and do whatever it takes to get the job done.  The reason you have ascended when others did not is due in part to your willingness to tackle the hardest, least pleasant tasks associated with the position.  Think back to the questions you were asked during your interview for reference.

To continue to move further up the corporate ladder, it is your responsibility to uncover those tasks that others hate to do, and become an expert at them.  Nothing will get you noticed faster then being proficient at a critical job function that no one else can stomach.

Now let’s be clear, just being good at one task will not make you a top manager or executive.  You will still need to be good at all the other tasks that everyone else likes to do.  However, by also being good at the job functions that everyone else hates to do you will stand out in the crowd.  This technique also provides a great way to assess critical performance improvement opportunities within your department or division.

Finding out what the tasks are that everyone hates to do is not as easy as it may seem.  Unless you fully understand the position yourself and can make your own determination, you can’t just ask job incumbents what they hate to do.  If you do, you will most likely get a biased opinion. 

Forced Ranking the Hatred

The best way to uncover critical job tasks that employees hate to do is to ask them to list the top 10 critical job tasks and then rank order them from most like to do to least like to do.  This should help you get an unbiased opinion.  Finally, use your judgment.  If what you come up with does not reconcile with what you see, look a little deeper.

How to use this technique to improve performance?

There are many ways to use this information depending on if you are looking to improve your own performance, the performance of one of your subordinates or the performance of your department.

• Use this technique to assess your performance in your own job and look at how you can improve your performance.’
• Pass this article on to your star employees who are asking how they can improve their performance.
• Use this technique to spot potential superstars in your department.  Those who willingly embrace this attitude are far more likely to become a superstar then those who do not.
• Use this technique with new hires to get them motivated out of the gate to be prepared to tackle the unpleasant aspects of the job.
• Use this technique to improve performance within your division.
• Use this technique to assess performance improvement options for other divisions or departments.