While you are “in good graces” with the boss and all your colleagues – while they still love you and invite you to lunch – get those compliments, great evaluations, and promotions IN WRITING.
I can’t count the times I have had clients tell me that one day everything was great at their place of employment and the next day they were called into the manager’s office and f-i-r-e-d! BAM! Just like that! To say it was a shock and totally unexpected would be an understatement.
One of my first questions (of a series I usually ask) to help them regain their footing (confidence), is: Do you have all your great (and formal) evaluations in writing? “Nope!” is the universal response.
It is a lot harder going back to a place where you just got fired and escorted out by the security guard (that same one you just cranked the elbow with at the local watering hole last weekend) and ask your boss for copies of all your evaluations from your file.
Whenever your boss says you did a great job on something – ask for that in writing. Just say you are creating a portfolio for your grandkids (or dogs when you paper train their puppies). GET IT IN WRITING.
If a customer mails a letter to your company and they post it and it is about you and your wonderful service, make a copy of it if you can’t take the originial. Make a copy in color.
Save and print all those emails where your boss, your colleagues, and your clients say/write what an amazing job you did on bringing that project to fruition, or getting that part in on time, or making things right when they were going wrong. MAKE COPIES.
Start today. Create a “Professional Brag Book” and add to it EVERY SINGLE TIME someone awards or acknowledges an achievement of yours (your resume is the place where you can write about what you accomplished – the brag book is filled with what others wrote about you).
And let’s take this one step further – one step higher – write an amazing and beautiful letter of gratitude to someone else! Write a note to a colleague, a vendor, a driver – someone you work with or a business you frequent where someone provided you with exceptional customer service (so they can then have that letter for their brag book).
Treat others in our world the way you want to be treated. Simple. Simple. Simple stuff!
What’s another question I always ask when someone tells me they suddenly and “unexpectedly” got let go?
Did you ever go out drinking/socializing with the boss or a colleague from work? Unless it was at a FAMILY HOLIDAY PARTY, the answer to this one should ALWAYS be “No!”
If you drink with your boss and your colleagues, you probably also tend to talk about others differently – your spouse, the bartender’s amazing abs, the server’s cute t-shirt. NO ONE wants to know that about you. NO ONE wants to see that. You make ONE mistake at work – and that will conjure up every memory of every night you went out partying with the good ‘ole boys and couldn’t drive home ‘cuz you were too intoxicated (but you could, somehow, manage to dance on the bar.)
Moral of the message: Don’t do, say, or write anything -anywhere – that you would not want your loving grandmother or baby boy to read or see today or years from now. GOT IT? (Yes, that includes all those hundreds of inappropriate pics on facebook – THAT is not the type of brag book I write about here!)
So, before your boss starts telling you how fat he thinks you are (and that’s not p-h-a-t) and how you drink like a fish and eat like a pig and chatter like a box and lie like a rug…before he turns on you (for whatever reason) – GET THE KUDOS IN WRITING!
Now go ~ and get all the good stuff in writing!
Need a reference? We can write a blindingly-brilliant one for you, from us, for just $40 through the month of July (regular fee: $75).
contact us at: 216 475 2963
