by Judy Khoo

Created on: September 01, 2007

Believing that employees have to kiss up to the boss to move ahead in their career is doing injustice to themselves and also to their bosses.

A boss moves ahead in his own career because of his own capability. If he was rich enough to have formed the company on his own, then all the more he would require capable people to assist him in running the company. Likewise even if he was just a division manager, he would require his staff to be capable of assisting him and furthering him in his own career.

The criteria any boss looks at from his staff would be trustworthy, loyalty and hard working. It would not be to his own benefit if he promotes or favors a staff just because the staff is better at kissing up to him. This is because the boss will be the one having to do all the work and probably have his own career at stake when things go wrong.

However, we cannot deny that bosses are also human beings. Being human means they, too, have emotions and therefore preferences of people they want to work with. While they may like someone who kisses up to them, when it comes to work, they will definitely balance the capability of the person and not the kisses they get.

Hence, a person who is hard working, loyal and does the extra mile without being asked to will get the attention of the boss. It would be wrong to mark that person as a person who is kissing up to the boss. When we join a company, we are entrusted to do a good job in our capacity. But if we want to move ahead, then we should do more than what we are expected. If we work with the attitude that the company belongs to us, then we are more diligent in our job. These are the people that would be ear-marked by the boss for promotions. And these people are definitely not kissing up to the boss.

If a person is not capable of his duties, no matter how much he kisses up the boss, he will find it difficult to move up the ladder. On occasion, he may mislead the boss into thinking that he is capable but once he is placed in that position, the truth will prevail and he will start to lose all the respect and trust of the boss.

But there is one very important point that we must remember no matter how good we are, if we do not learn to work with our boss, we will also never be promoted. No boss will want to have an assistant whom they cannot work with or trust no matter how good that person is. Some examples are employees who think continually disagree with the boss without good reasons and arguing with the boss in public thus causing the boss to lose his image.

We can disagree with the boss on his decision but we need to learn to be discrete and be able to state the facts supporting our own opinion without belittling the boss. This again does not mean kissing up to the boss but rather being able to show consideration in the bosses feelings and image in public.

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