Want to master your workplace in 2019? Here are six ways that can help

Below are some of our favorite Smarter Living articles about mastering your workplace in the new year.

From friendships to salary negotiations, 2019 can be the year you conquer work and your career. Taking hold of your future begins with standing up for yourself, while also learning to navigate the complicated world of office politics. The murky friendships and bureaucracy can at times be maddening, but persevering does not only mean rising the corporate ladder. It could also mean setting out on your own.

Below are some of our favorite Smarter Living articles about mastering your workplace in the new year.

Talk through your failures to overcome them

We’ve all flopped on a big presentation.

Most people prefer to process failure internally, quickly moving on for fear of causing a scene or seeming unprofessional. But taking the time to reflect on and communicate about unwanted outcomes can go a long way in creating more congenial, trusting and productive workplaces.

You deserve more (money)

Not negotiating your salary can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars during your career, according to Linda Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University and author of “Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want.”

It’s OK that your workplace isn’t family

It’s fine to have warm, supportive relationships with your co-workers. But remember the context. That means that you stay really clear about the fact that it’s O.K. to look out for yourself and not fall victim to a mind-set in which you’re living at work. It’s O.K. to say, “No, I’m not going to work 60 hours this week.” And know that it’s not a personal betrayal if you decide to move on.

And sometimes those friendships can be awkward

An analysis of 26 studies confirmed that, yes, work friendships are great.

Yet having and keeping friends at work can feel more complicated than these studies let on. Say you’re leading a big project, and your friend’s contribution is a total mess. Or maybe your friend is not doing her share of the work, which means you are too often doing it for her. What are you supposed to say? What are you supposed to do? And how can you say or do that without damaging your friendship?

Don’t be ashamed of crying at work

When was the last time you had a good cry at work? Maybe you bombed a project, or got some harsh feedback you didn’t see coming, but it happens. We’re all human. What we need to realize is that it’s really not a big deal: Just under half of employees have cried at work at some point, according to a study from this year, which also found that about 75 percent of chief financial officers thought crying every so often is totally normal.

Business Standard

The old rules of the workplace aren't working. At least not for women

What is it that seems to stand in the way of greater strides by women in the workplace?

Business Standard : Despite clear gains by women in so many aspects of society over the decades, their progress in the workplace seems to have stalled. It is as easy to find a man named John walking the corridors of American power as it is to find a woman.

The number of female chief executives in Fortune 500 companies is 5 per cent and has actually declined — by 25 per cent — over the past year. In Britain, a study by the British Equality and Human Rights Commission found that a third of employers still think it’s O.K. to ask a woman during a job interview if she plans to have children. It’s not.

Women receive the majority of college degrees in the United States — and more advanced degrees — and yet they still must work four extra months to earn what their white male colleagues earned the year before, according to United States census data. When those numbers are segmented by race, it’s clear: Women of colour must work even longer.

And then, of course, there is the rise of the #MeToo movement, which revealed as never before the sexual pressure many women face in the workplace. At least one study has found that 81 per cent of women say they have experienced some form of sexual harassment.

ALSO READ: Why workplace safety should be a fundamental right

Economists have long contended that there is a clear financial case for gender equality: Companies are more profitable, more collaborative and more inclusive when they hire women. True gender equality, research from McKinsey & Company has shown, would increase the gross national product in the United States by 26 per cent.

What is it that seems to stand in the way of greater strides by women in the workplace?

At the New Rules Summit in Brooklyn last week, The New York Times gathered 250 of the boldest, most powerful, most successful leaders across business, politics and culture to consider that question.

We asked them to explore some of the challenges women face and to come up with practical recommendations for change that businesses, policymakers and even individuals could enact. Although The Times convened the event, we left the hard work of generating the recommendations to our guests. This section is the result: a playbook for change.