Note from Scot: While on vacation, I’m having some of my favorite bloggers share their knowledge here on Cube Rules. This article is from Phil Gerbyshak who not only understands Cubicle Warriors, but how to manage and collaborate with them.

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For my day job, I’m a vice president of information technology, and I’m responsible for managing 10 people who answer questions about software, hardware and every thing else that sits on associate’s desks.

Even though I’m a VP, I don’t get a corner office…I get the corner cubicle. And I’d encourage YOU to think about taking the corner cubicle too!

4 reasons why the corner cubicle is better than the corner office

Visibility – It’s normal for me to be at my desk and there is no door, so I have perfect visibility into my team’s functions…and they have visibility into mine. They can quickly see if I’m available or not, and they can ask questions. And I can see what’s going on and offer assistance right away.

Accessibility – Similar to visibility is accessibility. Folks are much more apt to ask me questions when they can see me than if I were hidden away in an office behind a closed door. I want to help, and sitting in a cubicle means few barriers to talking to me.

Knowledge gathering – I can hear what’s going on with my team right away. If I hear a few people buzzing about the same thing, in real-time, I can know what’s going on and if we need to escalate something. It also helps me explain the situation to my manager and our CTO because invariably if something breaks, they want to know about it.

Dive in when needed – With all this visibility and accessibility, I know when it’s time to help out and when it’s time to step back. If things are going crazy, it only takes a second for me to dive in and help out, then I can quickly back away when things normalize.

About the author: By day, Phil Gerbyshak is a vice president of information technology at a regional financial services company headquartered in Milwaukee, WI. By night, Phil is a social media maximizer who helps people learn the tips and tricks they need to take their business and their brand to the next level. You can find more of Phil’s management insights at http://slackermanager.com or by following him on Twitter @philgerb.

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Note from Scot: While on vacation, I’ve asked some of my favorite business bloggers to share their knowledge here on Cube Rules. This post from Laurie Berenson, a Certified Professional Resume Writer and owner of Sterling Career Concepts, is a great review of the dreaded “What’s your greatest weakness” interview question.

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“Name one of your weaknesses” or “What’s your greatest weakness?” is a common interview question that doesn’t need to trip you up. While some recruiters have stopped using it after receiving too many canned answers, many others still include it in their repertoire. So what’s a candidate to do?  Plan for it. Prepare a thoughtful answer since, chances are, someone somewhere will pose the question.

None of us are perfect, and interviewers know that. We each have our strengths and our weaknesses. Job interviews focus primarily on identifying whether your strengths and abilities are a good match for the position at hand, but touching on your weaknesses, or allowing the interview to see how you view your weaknesses, is a valid part of the process.

The good news is that this question lends itself very well to preparation. There are several strategies to help formulate your answer. What you should not do is shrug your shoulders and respond, “I don’t know. I can’t think of anything.” This only comes across as smug and that you’re unable to identify your own faults or areas for improvement, neither of which is flattering in a potential new employee.

Turn one of your strengths into a weakness. I’m a perfectionist. I expect too much of my colleagues. I take on too much by myself. I work too hard. In terms of possible answers, this is my least favorite as it comes across as phony. Even the most novice interviewer will want to roll his eyes and realize you’re reframing one of your strengths.

Using personal weaknesses rather than a professional. Bringing information about your personal life into the interview is a distraction that only murks up the waters. Saying “I’m not a morning person” or “I’ve never been very athletic” sidelines the conversation and detracts from selling yourself as the best candidate for the job.

Sharing a real weakness that’s not relevant to the job. This carries with it some risk. You may feel the trait is not at all related to your job performance, but the interviewer may feel differently or may think through repercussions of how it might affect your job performance. A staff accountant who shares he is not a good writer. An attorney who says she’s not the best with numbers. At first blush, it may seem like a safe answer, but admitting to a current weakness could come back to haunt you. It’s never smart to provide information that might hurt your candidacy.

Walk the interviewer through how you improved a past weakness. My all-time favorite approach is to think back to a past weakness of yours that you have corrected. Tell it in the form of a story – that it had been a problem for you at work, that you identified the problem, and that you took steps to improve the situation, and that it is no longer a problem for you. Finish your answer with words to the extent of “…and in fact, I am always looking for different ways to improve upon myself.” Answering the question this way not only demonstrates a willingness to think critically of your own skills, but also conveys that you welcome constructive criticism and are open to self improvement.

Often times, answering the weakness question is not so much about confessing to a negative personality flaw as it is giving the interviewer a glimpse of how you view yourself and how well you make efforts to improve yourself.

About the author: Laurie Berenson, a Certified Professional Resume Writer and owner of Sterling Career Concepts, LLC, works with her clients one-on-one to highlight their professional strengths and accomplishments through highly customized career documents. More information including Laurie’s blog on all things career can be found at www.SterlingCareerConcepts.com.

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Note from Scot: While on vacation, I’ve asked some of my favorite business bloggers to share their knowledge here on Cube Rules. This post is from Rick Saia, a Certified Professional Resume Writer and a frequent commenter here on the site.

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Resumes are essential, but by themselves, they can be somewhat cold and impersonal. Despite its detractors, the cover letter can remove a bit of that impersonal edge and, if done right, give the employer a good reason to spend more time reading your resume, and – just maybe – call you for an interview.

Especially today, with thousands out of work and more people competing for jobs, a cover letter that’s executed with great care and detail can deliver you from the ranks of the unemployed.

How can you accomplish that? Follow these three guidelines:

1. Don’t use needless phrases.

A cover letter should excite and intrigue a hiring manager to get him to want to know more. But many a cover letter has contained a phrase or two that doesn’t add anything, and can even be seen as insulting the hiring manager’s intelligence. For instance:

• I’m responding to your job posting for a (title of job here) that I saw in the June 10 edition of The Boston Bugle.
• As you can see from my resume …
• My resume is enclosed.

In each case, you’re not telling the hiring manager anything he or she would already know or assume correctly. (If you forget to include your resume with the cover letter, then you can kiss your chances goodbye anyway.)

2. Show that you’ve done your homework.

If you know the company well, then great, you should have a good idea how your skills and background would fit into the job and the company culture. If not, look at the company’s web site, especially recent news releases, to see what it has been doing lately. Is the company’s stock publicly traded? Look up its quarterly (10-Q) and annual (10-K) statements in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database.

Your aim here is to uncover a few data points about the company that allow you to address your skills and how they can help the company improve its performance. For instance: I read recently that you lag your two chief competitors in market share in the Asia-Pacific rim. My business development experience in that region can help your company become more competitive there.

3. Be professional.

A few years ago, a former colleague was fielding resumes for an open position. She read one applicant’s cover letter, which included the following lame attempt at levity: “Now go have a nice weekend! I command it!” The applicant wasn’t called for an interview.

The lesson here is that you need to keep the cover letter professional, focused on the job posting, the employer’s needs, and how your skills and background can fill those needs. As for levity? Leave it for the interview, but only if the opportunity presents itself.

Ideally, the cover letter serves as an “opening act” for the main attraction: your resume. Use your cover letter to add a personal touch to an otherwise impersonal resume that merely lists your skills, accomplishments, and background. Give the hiring manager an early glimpse into the person he or she would interview, and want to hire.

About the author: Rick Saia, a Certified Professional Resume Writer, is a Web Content Writer for PongoResume.com. His work experience has included roles as a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and high-tech media, and as a research analyst.

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Note from Scot: While on vacation, I’m having some of my favorite business bloggers share their knowledge here on Cube Rules. This post is from Anita Bruzzese, a terrific writer and speaker.

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While many employees are losing sleep these days worrying about their jobs, it’s a bit doubtful that they also are losing z’s fretting over how the boss is faring in these tough times.

Still, it may be time workers started giving some consideration to what a manager is going through.  Because as everyone knows, when a manager is stressed, that stress can often roll downhill and land directly on employees.

I recently interviewed Wayne Hochwarter, a Florida State University professor who spends a lot of time studying the workplace, and he said a recent study found that 55 percent of bosses have become more demanding of current workers and more than 70 percent of employees say the recession has increased stress levels at work.

“I’ve never been a big believer that we’ve got good managers, and now with this economy, they’ve lost whatever humanity they had,” Hochwarter says. “They know that they’ve got to meet goals or they start chopping heads. Managers really don’t know what to do during a time like this. We haven’t prepared them for anything like it.”

That’s why it’s important – for everyone’s sanity – that employees think about ways to help a manager get through these tough times. As most people have learned, when a manager is happy, it follows that employees will fare better as well.

Some suggestions for workers wanting to help a stressed boss:

Work smarter. I know, I know, you think you already have the workload of 12 people, but I’ll bet if you took a hard look at what you do you could come up with some better ways to get things done. Just because you took over someone else’s tasks doesn’t mean they make sense now, or can’t be streamlined in some way. Becoming efficient and more productive – and letting the boss know – will help reduce his worry about remaining competitive.

Understand his bottom line. Ask the boss about his key objectives and then figure out how to help him meet those objectives. Nothing is more frustrating for a manager than to feel people aren’t on the same page, and don’t care to be.

Realize that no offer is too small. Even taking a minor task off the boss’s plate gives a real lift to the spirits. Can you do some initial research? Make some phone calls? When managers feel isolated, it can hamper communication with workers. If you want to stay in the loop, help a manager feel you are on his team.

Ask how he’s doing. During these tough times, many managers are feeling a lot of personal anguish about what’s happening, and they need an encouraging word as well. Going out to lunch, sharing a funny story or just taking a minute to really listen can go a long way in reducing tension for the boss.

About the author: Anita Bruzzese is author of “45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy…and How to Avoid Them,” named a top 10 notable business book by the New York Post. She is an award-winning journalist and a syndicated columnist for Gannett/USAToday.com. Her website and blog can be found at: www.45things.com.

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Note from Scot: While on vacation, I’ve asked some of my favorite business bloggers to share their knowledge with you here on Cube Rules. To start us off is Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, of Cali and Jody and the creators of the Results Only Work Environment. And while Kate and I are on vacation, Cali and Jodi give you an interesting task for next week…

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Hello, all of you Cubicle Warriors!  We’re honored to have been asked by Scot to write for you.  We hemmed and hawed about what to write about, and finally landed on something that will hopefully shed some light on your life in the cube.

We’re all familiar with the term “absenteeism”, and some of you may have heard of the term “presenteeism”.  Essentially, it’s the physical presence of your body in the office, but the absence of your mind.  Presenteeism at work can take the form of online shopping, online games, daydreaming during an unproductice meeting, or striking up a conversation with a cube neighbor because you’re bored.  When people enter the office environment (become “present”), they begin counting their time for the day.

For example, if someone arrives in the office at 8:00 a.m. and leave at 6:00 p.m., they’ll say they worked 10 hours.  If this goes on for 5 days in a row, you’ll hear that same person in the elevator on Friday bemoaning their 50 hours they put in that week.  When we conduct sessions to move people from a traditional work environment to a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), we hear this all the time.  But let’s examine it more closely…

We’d like you to try something: For the next week, see if you can keep track of the number of hours you work.  You’re only allowed to count the time when you’re actually being productive.  You can’t count time on your personal e-mail, going to the restroom, talking about things that aren’t work-related, etc.  You must also subtract the time spent in any meeting that you feel is unproductive or a waste of your time.

When you have your number of hours at the end of the week, submit it as a Comment and tell us how you felt about doing this exercise.

In the end, doing this exercise bolsters the argument for focusing on results vs. time in the work environment.  At the end of a week, wouldn’t it be nice to rattle off the list of results we achieved and get praise for that instead of having to put a number of hours out there when someone says “How many hours did you work this week?”

With the work culture the way it is, you could have worked 20 hours and achieved greatness in terms of your results, but the “20 hours” elicits judgment.  And so the cycle continues and we carry on with counting the number of hours we’re in the work environment as the number of hours we’re actually working.

If nothing else, we hope this exercise helps you see how ludicrous it is to focus on time…and prompts you to join the fight for a work environment focused solely on RESULTS!

Get your paper and pencil ready…and start counting…

About the authors: Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson are the creators of the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE™.  A Results-Only Work Environment is one where employees show up energized, disciplined, fluid, flexible, and focused – always ready to deliver the results necessary to drive the business. It is a bold, cultural transformation that permeates the attitudes and operating style of an entire workplace, leveling the playing field and giving people the ability to do whatever they want whenever they want as long as the work gets done.

They are also the founders of CultureRx, which offers customized consulting services and products tailored to the needs of their clients – companies and organizations committed to challenging the status quo for the benefit of a healthy workforce and ultimately, a healthy bottom line.

Their book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, was published by Portfolio, a Penguin Imprint, in June 2008.

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When it comes to performance reviews, results matter. Successful results. You don’t get rated higher on your performance review for your failures or for your mistakes.

Yet, when you look at what it takes to grow, you must get out of your comfort zone at work (and in life) and embrace that which is given to you — greater responsibilities, different work, new teams to perform the work.

Stretching your comfort zone means mistakes

As a child, we are constantly told that “practice makes perfect” and that we need to make mistakes in what we do because that is how we learn. Making mistakes becomes a liability only when we don’t learn from our mistakes.

Innovation, for example, requires many, many mistakes and false steps to get to the point of getting to success. Thomas Edison was famously quoted about how many times he failed to create a light bulb, but in today’s business, I don’t think he would have been around to brag about it. Nor would a light bulb been invented.

Companies don’t care about your growth and penalize you for mistakes

Companies don’t tolerate mistakes. When your performance review time comes around, what does your manager focus on? How great you kicked the goal out of the park or the three mistakes you made getting there? Indeed, company management wants you to consistently perform at a high level with associated high levels of perfection.

The paradox of growth and mistakes

In a sobering paradox on leadership in Fortune, Geoff Colvin notes:

Research has established that what turns average performers into great performers is a process of being continually pushed just beyond their current abilities, and then responding to the new challenges with focused efforts to overcome them, accompanied by abundant feedback about the results.

But constantly attempting what you can’t quite do, which is the essence of the process, is a recipe for trouble in most jobs. It means that you will inevitably make mistakes and have failures. Now if you ask accomplished businesspeople, as I have often done, whether they learned more from their successes or their failures, 100% of them will say the latter. But most employers don’t want to hear that your mistakes have been an absolutely necessary part of your growth. They just want you to perform.

So that’s what most people do in their jobs, operating entirely within their comfort zones and as a result not getting any better. We know this not just from observing it in our own workplaces but also from considerable research showing that most people improve rapidly in the early days of a given job, then plateau, and may continue for years thereafter without progressing.

This, then, is the challenge: how can management embrace the mistakes from pushing the envelope of our job performance in the performance review when nothing in the culture supports it?

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Most time on career sites is devoted to the stuff “in the weeds.” The 3 white lies managers tell you all the time, how to answer 1000 different interview questions and the 5 things that make you look like a poor job performer all dominate the headlines. Necessarily so, since we seek to solve work problems.

Once in a while, though, we should step back and take a bigger picture look at what we do that helps us engage in our work and gain satisfaction from it.

A good “big picture” start comes from the insightful post at Terry Starbucker’s site and called The Secret(s) of Work. In it, Terry notes the three secrets of job satisfaction:

Work must be done with passion

The work must be for a cause greater than ourselves

It ultimately must be fun, or it isn’t worth doing

What’s more, these 3 are truly a set - that is, you can’t just get to 2 out of 3 and call it good.

We’ve all seen the work with a passion, though I have my issues with finding your passion. We’ve also seen that we must work for a cause greater than ourselves and not just a paycheck as well. Plus, whole websites are devoted to the cause of fun at work.

But the kicker for me was “these 3 are truly a set.”

Each of the three have individually been touted as being the “answer” to employee engagement, retention and all sorts of ills in the workplace. But the better answer, I think, is the combination of all three. You can’t have one and have career and job satisfaction. You can’t have two and get it done. You need all three.

Since I’m leaving on vacation on Thursday, you start to think more about the big picture of your life. You wonder how it all fits together. Terry’s approach is a great place to start.

Do these three aspects of work kick work up a notch for you?

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When it comes to SMART Goal definitions, the research shows some pretty standard stuff. And, frankly, simplistic. We are told in the workplace to create and implement setting SMART Goals, but when we look at the definitions, we come up wanting.

I’ve created quite a body of work here on Cube Rules relating to SMART Goals ranging from management’s inability to create SMART Goals or how to make SMART Goals SMARTer. It’s about time I finally provided some SMART Goal definitions that make sense for the Cubicle Warrior, because too often SMART Goals fail high performers.

SMART Goals: Specific

A standard definition is this:

Specific in the context of developing objectives means that an observable action, behavior or achievement is described which is also linked to a rate, number, percentage or frequency.

Other definitions include answering the 6 “W” questions: Who, what, when, where, which (resources), and why (benefits of achieving the goal).

Neither approach embraces what is needed for business and especially what is needed for corporate workers. One is too simplistic while the other is complex.

Instead, the Cubicle Warrior Specific definition is:

A business objective for you that defines a measurable, controllable outcome with clearly stated assumptions of resources needed for achievement.

We need our goals to support work in a business. The specifics need to focus on a measurable outcome and an outcome that you can control. And without the assumptions clearly stated about the goal, we will face our performance review with an unwilling management team willing to reassess the goal based on changing business conditions.

SMART Goals: Measurable

The standard Measurable definition is:

A system, method or procedure has to exist which allows the tracking and recording of the behavior or action upon which the objective is focused.

The big problem with this definition for employees is that the corporate measurement systems rarely measure your work that contributes to goal achievement. Less rarely, measurement systems often fail to take into consideration a good baseline number that has consistent definitions across time to measure the goal.

The Cubicle Warrior Measurable definition is:

The measurements used to show the individual’s progress and completion of a goal.

The deal with goals is that it isn’t “all” or “nothing.” There is progress. Unless an employee can easily measure the individual’s success in achieving a goal — including team goals, the employee will lose motivation to try and reach the goal. In addition the employee is defenseless at performance review time for the goal attainment without the ability to track progress.

SMART Goals: Attainable

Here, a standard definition asks:

With a reasonable amount of effort and application can the objective be achieved?

It’s a good question. The trap is what looks achievable now may not be achievable two months from now because your business world has changed. Changed priorities, changed budgets, changed projects, and changing customers. Too often, the answer is “no” but the goals stay the same for employees.

The Cubicle Warrior Attainable definition is:

Goals are attainable over the time needed to achieve the goal if the effort needed is agreed to by the manager and employee.

Attainable is negotiation between the manager and the receiver of the goal. If your manager doesn’t think you can attain the goal, it is not attainable. If you don’t think the goal is attainable, you won’t. There needs to be an agreement of the effort to reach the goal by both parties.

Note that the definition says “over the time needed to achieve the goal.” If you are not getting the assumed resources needed in the “Specific” section of the goal or your project needs credit that is now in crisis, the probability of your goal being attainable is very small. Those changing business conditions require re-negotiation of what is attainable from the goal.

SMART Goals: Relevant

Here is a standard definition of Relevant:

Goals must be an important tool in the grand scheme of reaching your company’s vision and mission.

This type of definition starts tying your work to grand corporate goals that have little to do with your work. Like what you do will increase shareholder’s return on investment by 10% while you work in a support call center. It won’t happen through your work, yet employees are saddled with “cascading” goals from on high that forces the relevancy. Nope.

The Cubicle Warrior Relevant definition:

A goal is relevant when the goal is important to the organization and when the individual has direct impact on the goal through their work.

When your only impact on “reducing expenses by 5%” is to not take training, not travel, and not use office supplies, for example, it isn’t a relevant goal for you because your training, travel and office supplies is not the core of what you do on the job. Unless you can impact the goal through your everyday work effort and the goal is important to the organization, it’s not relevant.

SMART Goals: Time-bound

A standard definition of Time-bound is:

Goals must have starting points, ending points, and fixed durations.

In other words, you will succeed, no matter what. Period.

The truth of the matter is that time frames change in business all the time. Try telling your Executive VP that you can’t do her work because you have a deadline on one of your SMART goals that needs completing. Or consistently turn away your manager from doing work and using your SMART Goal deadlines as the reason. It won’t happen.

The Cubicle Warrior Time-bound definition is:

Goals have starting points, milestones, ending points and negotiated durations.

Many goals can be completed within their alloted time frames with few problems. Other goals have changing conditions on them all the time. And while the end point of the goal may not change, the time frame may.

Start dates can move, significant progress points representing milestones may slide and the final completion dates may change.

That’s where the negotiations come in. If you can’t negotiate with your manager over due dates because of changing business conditions, you can’t win. Negotiations, of course, are two-way wins. Both have to agree to the change. If there is no agreement and the deadlines stay, then other work needs to go away to accomplish the goal.

SMART Goals focus on results

Too often, we focus on writing our SMART Goals simply on writing the goal, rather than understanding goals lead to results. Individual results combined with corporate wins mean everyone moves forward in their careers and business. By using these Cubicle Warrior definitions of SMART Goals and followthrough with our progress, we can successfully accomplish our goals for ourselves and the business.

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If you want doom and gloom about jobs in this economy, it is easy to find. But in all situations, some good can come of it. In the middle of this bad economy, here are five good things that can happen to you.

Your job responsibilities will increase

Because so many people have been laid off, people are getting more responsibility by default. Of course, there can be great stress with the increased responsibilities. But the good news is if you prove you can handle them, you’ve proven you can handle the promotion that goes with the responsibilities.

Companies are back to basics

Everything not essential to the core of the business is most likely gone. That’s good because it provides better focus for the management and the employees. While circumstances are still unclear, the mission of the company cannot be unclear. This should translate into clearer goals, projects, and work as the economy recovers.

You can ask for work you like

When there are layoffs, chaos can easily happen. There is this void of work that needs to be done and management hasn’t had time to figure out who is going to do it. If you are working on stuff you don’t like, go ask to work on stuff you do like. It’s one less headache for management to deal with and gets you working on stuff you want to do. That helps out everybody.

You may be forced to change

Sometimes, you don’t get to change; sometimes change is forced upon you. There are too many people out there who are too timid to change on their own — try out the new career, work in an area that has more responsibility, or forced to choose between different career options — that any forced change will result in a better career. Sure, there may be setbacks, but too many people come out of a forced change for the better to think this is a disadvantage.

You can spend time with loved ones

Of course, you can get laid off. If you are prepared for a layoff, while you are looking for another job you can spend significant time with the people you love. If everything is either time or money, having enough money to support you through a long layoff gives you the time to spend with loved ones.

How we approach difficult situations can often determine how good the resulting outcome will be. Knowing that good things can come out of a bad economy keeps us looking for the opportunities. And opportunities are what make great careers.

What good things have you experienced in this bad economy?

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When CIO’s start getting articles about personal finance — the basics, not the fancy investments — you know that personal finance has come to career management.

Here’s the basic thrust of Where Personal Finance and Career Management Meet:

Good career management stems from a foundation of good financial management. Career freedom and financial freedom begin with effectively managing our money. Which leads me to our other big problem: Most of us don’t know how to manage our money. As a result, we get stuck in jobs we dislike just so we can pay the bills, and we think we have no other choice but to work our pants off for a living.

Let’s offer up some reasons personal finance is career management.

Personal finance manages your attitude

When you have managed your money well, you are not desperate about keeping your job. This has a significant impact on your attitude at work. Desperation puts our career on defense instead of offense. We’re more concerned about keeping our job than we are doing our job.

When we are in a position of keeping our job instead of doing our job, the probability of doing poor work significantly increases. Which, of course, can directly lead to losing your job.

Personal finance helps keep your job options open

Opportunities for jobs come from many sources. When we manage our money well, we don’t have the big bills to pay, big mortgages to keep and big lifestyles to support. Instead, those that manage their money well can have an offer presented to them and not worry about the current bills and the impact a new position would have on them.

You can move across the country for the right opportunity because you’ve managed your money well.

Personal finance levels the layoff playing field

When you manage your money well by having few liabilities, your risk of being hurt by a layoff is reduced because you need less money to live on while laid off. I’ve also consistently advocated having one year’s take-home pay in the bank. The reason? When you don’t have to worry about paying your bills for one year, it gives you the time you need to adjust to the layoff and enough time to find your next gig.

Learn to manage your money

I’m not a financial consultant and it has taken me a long time to learn about money management. But your focus should be on limiting your liabilities, increasing your assets, and getting to one year’s take-home pay in the bank. Making progress on those money goals will give you peace of mind. In today’s economy, we all need that.

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