This essential guide explains how to find satisfaction in the workplace in the face of imperfections involving oneself and others. The Undreaded Job: Learning to Thrive in a Less-than-Perfect Workplace was written to help people find satisfaction in the workplace, turning work into a major contributor to overall happiness. The book is organized around issues individuals face as they try to thrive in the face of inevitable workplace imperfections. These include imperfections in the leaders for whom they work and the colleagues with whom they interact. The book also covers the influence of one's own thinking processes and those of others, power and political sophistication in the workplace, worker motivation, development and change, workplace diversity, social skills, and the communication challenges that arise as people pursue different or conflicting goals. The author, an expert in both psychology and management, reviews research on these topics as it relates to workplace satisfaction and life happiness. Each chapter explains research findings in ways that translate them into key concepts applicable in any workplace, at any level. Dozens of vignettes illustrate how this important issue goes unrecognized, yet how vital it is to life happiness A bibliography lists important research studies that contribute to finding workplace satisfaction An index of key terms

Given the internationalization of business, and the increasing need to work effectively with culturally diverse people in one's own country, people are facing new and more common challenges in developing workplace relationships. The challenges include communicating across differences in the use of silence and indirectness, dealing with negative exchanges, or neutral exchanges that one party perceives as negative, making decisions, working through criticisms and disagreements, and interpreting changing workplace dynamics. In this book, Distinguished Professor Richard Brislin shows us that helpful guidelines for everyday intercultural interactions are clear in information that has been gathered across the fields of cross-cultural psychology, organizational behavior and intercultural communication. A psychologist and a professor of management, Brislin uses actual examples he calls "critical incidents" to illustrate the basic psychological processes that play a part in effective, and ineffective, intercultural relationships across workplaces. The differences they face include individual and collective cultural background, the relative emphasis placed on the importance of status and power, behaviors relative to a culture's social norms, and gender expectations of males and females in the workplace. Insights explained here allow readers understand how they can benefit from, rather than be frustrated by, intercultural experiences, and how to better develop such relations. Short stories throughout the text demonstrate how actual people in business recognized and dealt with intercultural issues, at home and abroad.

How is power acquired? Are there strategies and tactics that people can learn which will increase their chances of becoming more powerful? Richard Brislin claims there are. In this work he reveals the unwritten rules for obtaining power, and presents an analysis of power as a tool in developing clout and in implementing decisions. This framework for looking at why and how certain groups have a greater understanding of the role of power in the worlds of business, education, human services, law, and politics integrates relevant scholarly literature with interviews of more than one hundred powerholders.

Focusing on the workplace and community environments, Brislin makes the reader more savvy about the role power plays in gaining support for proposals, in formulating policy, and in molding a career. He discusses the role of power in the personalities of people; why the power motive is stronger in some individuals than in others; the use of resources and resource exchange; ethics and the use of power; and strategies and tactics in the acquisition and application of power. He also suggests means to develop a sophisticated view of power as a tool in the service of leadership. Anyone interested in achieving more power, in holding his or her own against others in power, or in gaining insights into policy formulation and decision-making will find The Art of Getting Things Done to be particularly valuable.