The Bent Archive

More failure, less micromanagement

We’re tackling two questions this week!

What to talk about at your next informational interview

The reason you’re meeting up with this person is to help them realize how much they’d love to work with you someday. That way, when a role opens up on their team, or someone asks them for a referral, your face pops into their head.

Asking a near-stranger to meet for coffee

What’s a not-obnoxious way to keep in touch with a hiring manager after getting rejected?

Making decisions

Decisions can be painful. But, even more painful? Waffling forever.

How to get better at managing up

The pro of doing it well is that everything gets easier all the way down: for your boss, for you, for the reports you’re managing. It puts you on more equal footing with your manager — they’re still your boss and in a position of authority, but you’ve developed enough trust and capital to influence their perspective and decision-making.

Give an important project to an underperformer

I think we do our teams a disservice if we load up the same few people with everything noteworthy and don’t let anyone else have a chance.

Should I apply for a long shot?

I’m wondering how you might go about defining a career path in a diagonal direction. I have identified a senior managing role I would love, that I think I would excel at, in an industry I have zero experience in (journalism). I have a sense of how I can progress in my current field (UX research) and how I might break into an entry- or mid-level position in another field, but the idea of working toward a senior position in a new field leaves me with a head full of question marks.

Surging too much?

We wanted to share this idea with you because it’s the kind of thing that once you know and name, you might think through problems in a different way. You can map the surges you and your team are experiencing, look for patterns, make smarter decisions.

The ruthless edit

Super-concise and skimmable is always going to be more effective, particularly when you need answers or for someone to take action.

I think I failed my teammates in another country

My company, based in the US, has a sizeable-and-growing office in India, and our team meetings always include them. Recently we tried scheduling some brainstorms to get everybody connected and motivated, and our APAC teammates spent the whole meeting on mute. This sent the managers spinning out and wondering how we failed our international teammates in terms of prep (there was a pre-read) or tone-setting. We struggled to find any resources online for managing cross-cultural teams. Any advice?

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