Last April Steve Tobak, who writes BNET’s The Corner Office, did a post on 5 classic blunders when presenting to the board of directors. Good post, interesting and useful if you’re in that arena.
But his current post, 5 Classic Dumb Executive Moves is priceless; not just the five of his own that he shared, but the dozens shared by readers.
The great thing is that they apply to everyone, so you don’t have to be an executive to learn from them.
Many talked about email sent to the wrong people or the entire company instead of the one person for whom it was meant. (Sound familiar?)
Sadly, many talked about what happened when they gave honest answers to their managers; enough similarities to assure you that Dilbertland is alive and well.
Obviously, it’s a matter of culture and the manager’s MAP, but it’s a good idea not to misread it.
As one person offered in his WORDS TO LIVE BY:
No good deed goes unpunished
Good guys DO finish last
A few were hilarious, here’s a favorite from a woman who was even brave enough to use her own name.
“Gave a speech in a foreign language and, in an attempt to say, “You can be flexible,” accidentally said, “you can stretch your private parts.” The audience loved it and kept asking me to repeat the sentence before I caught on.”
Let’s start our own list, here are 5 of mine.
- Back when smoking was still acceptable in offices I smelled a cigar and made a comment about the phallic implications of men who smoked cigars to my cube-mate. A few minutes later the VP visiting from HQ walked in carrying his cigar. He pretended he didn’t hear, but I was told later that almost everybody heard me.
- When I was a recruiter I called a long-time client and presented an engineer for a critical opening. Half way through I realized I was presenting the person who had just left.
- Probably one of the dumbest things I did as a recruiter was setting up an interview and then forgetting to tell the candidate, so he was a no-show. The manager was furious and I had to grovel to get him to listen to the truth and reschedule.
- During a training session on writing better emails I critiqued one of the real life examples given to me by HR, pointing out the grammatical and spelling errors, poor phrasing and misused words. It turned out that the email was from the executive who hired me.
- Then there are the times, too numerous to count, since my hearing went south that I’ve responded to what I thought was being said and was not only off base, but completely out of the park.
Not my smartest moments.
What about you? What are your most remembered OMG moments?
Each OMG moment you share will enter you in a random drawing for a copy of Jason Jenning’s Hit The Ground Running.
The contest runs through August 31 and you can enter as many times as you want.
Your comments—priceless
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Image credit: annia316 on flickr
