The best advice

Over on his blog The State of the Nation UK, Stephen Chapman has posed his monthly question for other bloggers to answer. It's a great idea and when I saw this month's question I immediately knew what my answer would be. The question is: What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

The answer for me is something my old boss said to me probably five years ago now. It's stuck in my mind. She said that you don't need to be liked by your colleagues but you do need to be respected by them.

Think about what it means for a minute. We all want to be liked. It's a natural human thing I think. But you can't make everyone like you, and in an office it's not necessary - but they must respect you. She said it to me because she didn't think I was being tough enough with people and that I was saying 'yes' to too many requests.

In her case it was certainly true. By that time I had really grown not to like her. She was a dreadful Canadian woman, a complete perfectionist and very critical. (In fact the whole company was a dreadful place to be - I left without having a job to go to, the only time I've ever done that.) But I did respect her because she worked so bloody hard and had achieved a lot at such a young age. 

I try to be liked at work, and by my team in particular (I currently manage seven people). But it's not always possible because I have to make difficult decisions - I'm currently deciding whether to get rid of one of them, which won't be popular. But hopefully they will respect the decision because it's made in the best interests of the organisation, and because they know I'm a hard worker and committed to the job.