How to Disagree with Your Boss

I am unwrapping posts from the archives and mixing the old with the new. Enjoy this post from the past.

"Everybody knows turnover at the top means upheaval. But new research shows just how bad your chances of keeping your job are." With this lead-in, the authors of a May 2007, Harvard Business Review article, "Surviving Your New CEO" quickly caught my attention.

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Turnover at the top is a fact of life in any organization and the authors provide steps you can take to survive, and even thrive, with a new leader.  <If you are not a HBR subscriber, you can read the executive summary here. >

One word of advice from the authors was to "study the CEO's working style" and one anecdote in particular caught my attention. In this, an employee with a reputation for being blunt asked a new CEO how he should disagree with him. Caught the CEO off guard and sure caught my attention. Wow - if there is one area fraught with uncertainty, indecision and well, land mines, this is it. 

So, how do you approach your boss when you don't agree with him or her? More importantly, how do you do it to ensure you are heard and not harm the relationship? If you have worked for someone for any period of time you probably have it figured out but just how painful was it to get there?

Let's say that some of my learning over my years of work have been, well, less than pleasant. My approach, refined over time, has to been to watch, observe and generally work to figure out the working style of my boss and then adjust mine accordingly. I worked to figure it out. Now, what if I had just taken the route of the "blunt" employee and flat out asked? Wouldn't that have saved me some pain and misery and increased my chances of being heard much sooner?

Blunt employee? No, I think he was rather sharp.

Drink Your Milk: A Day in the Life Sunday

It's sucks not feeling well. I have not been feeling well for months. I used sick days. I never use sick days. I am rarely ever away from the office. That in itself could the problem, but it is actually something else.

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After many months of  MD, NP, ENT visits and a pending allergist appointment, we may have gotten to the bottom of what ails me. It's not what was running through the worst case scenarios in my mind but it was all the more surprising.

I am vitamin D deficient.

I am an American. I have a job. I own Apple products. How can this be? With a rolling sigh I heard loud and clear over the airwaves, the nurse explained to me that it is rather common. Even in America. Was I drinking milk and taking my calcium? I was ready to listen.

WebMD reports that Vitamin D deficiency can occur for a number of reasons:

• You don't consume the recommended levels of the vitamin over time. Most of the natural sources include fish/fish oils, egg yolks, cheese, and fortified milk.
• Your exposure to sunlight is limited. Because the body makes vitamin D when your skin is exposed to sunlight, you may be at risk of deficiency if so.
  
• You have dark skin. The pigment melanin reduces the skin's ability to make vitamin D in response to sunlight exposure.
  
• Your kidneys cannot convert vitamin D to its active form. As people age their kidneys are less able to convert vitamin D to its active form.
• Your digestive tract cannot adequately absorb vitamin D. Certain medical problems, can affect your ability to absorb vitamin D from the food you eat.
• You are obese. People with a body mass index of 30 or greater often have low blood levels of vitamin D.

All in all, this explains a lot. Here's what I am thinking. I should have been taking my calcium, Greek yogurt is not Vitamin D fortified and protecting my skin from age spots and cancer with SPF 50+ all these years wasn't helping the cause. The piece about aging? Nothing of the sort.

You'll find me hanging out at the safe upper limit of 4000 IU of vitamin D for a few months - but don't go there yourself. The Institute of Medicine increased the recommended dietary allowance of vitamin D to 600 IU for everyone aged 1-70.

Get some sun, drink some milk, and get off my lawn.