But whether your complaint is a bad boss, too much bureaucracy, office politics, boring work or all of the above, you don't have to suffer in silence (or not so silently). You can take steps to improve your situation, even if you need to stay put - at least for now.
Once you begin intervening on your own behalf, you'll start feeling less like a victim of circumstance and more like a professional with influence and control over your own destiny. The following strategy should help move your thinking in the right direction:
Strategy: Stop Watching the Clock
Boredom is stultifying and can turn you into a clock-watcher if you're not careful. Your challenge is to find ways to get more involved - to enlarge your job without merely adding more work. The key is to think qualitatively, not quantitatively. Not more, but better.
How?
For starters, keep your eyes and ears open for new projects that interest you. Or, better yet, invent a project that solves an organizational problem and gets your juices going. A retail store manager used her company's national sales meeting to get a better handle on what was going on throughout the company. Since her interests were advertising and marketing, she focused extra attention on talking with people from those departments in order to learn more about their needs and goals. When she learned they wanted to investigate the home shopping market, she volunteered to do the research. This gave her a chance to study an interesting new trend, demonstrate her creativity and initiative, showcase her research and writing skills and establish contacts with the right people. And, should the company decide to move ahead with the idea, she's also positioned herself to be a part of it.
This required the manager to do some extra work. But because she hopes to use the new knowledge to make a job change within the company, she considers the effort worth it. Some doors may now open that were previously closed. In general, try to take a synergistic approach that involves other people in healthy and productive ways, recommends psychologist Laurie Anderson in Oak Park, Illinois. For example, if you need to free up your schedule to make room for new duties, try delegating tedious responsibilities to an employee who'd appreciate them.
"What's boring to you may be developmental to someone else," Anderson says. "Try looking for someone in the organization who'd like to learn the things that no longer interest you." Anderson tells the story of a staffing professional who was burned out on recruitment and a trainer who'd overdosed on training. The two split their jobs in half and traded responsibilities, so both could enjoy new growth.
The staffing professional was surprised to find how much she liked training. In fact, she liked it so much she decided to become a trainer full time-a career direction she'd never anticipated. Developing creative, synergistic solutions not only moves you out of a stuck position, it also enables you to build stronger alliances through shared responsibilities.
Strategy: Say No to Hate
Hate is not a productive emotion. It clouds your vision, distorts your judgment and makes you resent everything and everyone. Hatred kills the spirit and paralyzes you with bitterness. A prominent psychiatrist once commented: "Some of the most self-destructive acts take place in the name of revenge."
Consider, for example, a compensation and benefits manager who was furious with her boss, the senior VP of human resources, for "playing favorites" with another manager. The senior VP vehemently denied this was the case, but she refused to believe him. Instead, she went behind his back-and over his head — to complain about him. Because of the man's outstanding reputation with his superiors, all she managed to do was call attention to the conflict and soil her own standing in the company.
When your emotions are out of control at work, it's always a good idea to take some time to cool down before trying to re solve whatever's bugging you. Accusations made in anger are usually unprofessional, inappropriate and counterproductive. Once said, they can never be taken back and are seldom forgot ten. In the heat of the moment, strong feelings can convert small flare-ups into enduring animosities that can destroy a career.
Rather than go into an emotional tailspin, try (if possible) to develop more of a rational problem-solving approach. For example, the senior VP who'd supposedly been giving preferential treatment realized that the problem was destroying his division's morale. To remedy the situation, he hired a consultant to work with his group to develop better communication and team skills.
