11 Signs You Are Not Valued At Work Or Not Valued By Your Boss
If you are not valued by your boss, you want to know about it fast and have a clear plan to quickly change how you are perceived. I am sharing 11 signs you are not valued at work and what to do if any of these signs are what you are experiencing right now.
It makes a lot of sense to work hard and do a good job when you are valued and appreciated for your efforts. If you are undervalued at work, you working harder will help your boss but will it really help you?
Feeling appreciated is a fundamental human need. Being valued makes us happier. Being appreciated is motivating and a great confidence builder
11 Signs You Are Not Valued At Work Or Not Valued By Your Boss & How to change that now
- 11 signs you are not value at work or valued by your boss
- 5 common mistakes that lead to being undervalued at work
- 5 powerful tactics to change perceptions and how you are valued quickly
When our bosses value what we do, we are much more likely to:
- Get more interesting work and projects that are more likely to further develop our skills and experience
- Be given more responsibility and autonomy
- Get more development opportunities
- Gain higher social and professional status at work
- Be paid more and be promoted more often
When you are not valued, you can easily be harder working than colleagues and get a lot less than them. If you find yourself in this position, there are plenty of practical actions that you can start taking right way to improve how you are valued.
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Feeling Undervalued Right Now?
If you are feeling undervalued at work right now, please do use the tactics I share at the end to change how your work is perceived as quickly as possible.
Early in my career I made some very big errors in how I dealt with my worst boss ever. My reporting lines were changed to this boss, and he made it clear through his actions he wasn’t interested in me and certainly did not value my work. I assumed if I quietly got on with my job, I could largely avoid him. Huge mistake. He pressurised me to leave. I got an amazing job at a different company. I learnt a lot from experience with my worst boss ever and committed to myself that I would never again leave it up to a boss to manage our relationship.
What I am discussing with you today are many of the actions I proactively took with every boss thereafter. I did a lot right as I got 13 promotions in 13 years all the way up to board level of large companies. Always be proactive in managing the relationships with those around you and particularly with your boss.
11 signs you are not valued at work or not valued by your boss
When you unappreciated by your boss or unappreciated at work by colleagues, you will typically experience one or more of these signs, again and again. I.e. more than one or twice. They will NOT be isolated instances.
- Lack of recognition & praise from your boss or co-workers or both.
- Regular corrective feedback without much or any praise. It is in your interests to use corrective feedback to improve what you do and how you do it.
- Your ideas and/or solutions are ignored. Even worse is when others are praised when putting forward what you have already suggested
- Others try to steal credit for your work, ideas or solutions
- You are regularly interrupted or talked over by bosses or colleagues in meetings and during discussion. i.e. this happens a lot more than with your colleagues
- You are excluded – from meetings, from information, from opportunities etc
- Your boss micromanages you a lot or displays signs of lack of trust
- Resources, knowledge etc needed to do your job well are purposely withheld
- You get no or little development opportunities while other team members performing as well as you get much better opportunities.
- You get passed over for promotion more times than equally performing colleagues
- Your pay and/or bonuses remain consistently lower that equally performing colleagues.
This List Is Not Comprehensive
This list covers many of the common ways individuals are treated when they are NOT valued at work. This list is not comprehensive. Remember you are looking out for repeated behaviour and actions i.e. a clear pattern.
Bosses make mistakes. Some make a lot more than others. Always consider how you are being treated in comparison to colleagues at a similar level and performing to a similar standard.
5 common mistakes that lead to being undervalued at work
As soon as you stop making any of these 5 common mistakes, the perception of your boss and colleagues about the value of the work that you do will improve fairly quickly.
1 – Being Below Average
The first mistake is being below average or worse at the job you do. Doing an average or better job, especially after 6 months in role, is vital to being valued at work by bosses and team members. Below average means you are making their lives harder. Fix this first.
2- Doing Too Much Low Value Work
Secondly, you are doing too much low value work. This happens if you are too nice, struggle to say no, don’t understand what is valuable and what is not or allow yourself to be taken advantage of by bosses or colleagues. I appreciate there is fine line between protecting the value you are creating and being a team player and helpful to your boss. Keep consciously working on getting the best balance you can.
3 – Poor Communication
The third mistake is being poor at communicating the value of the work you do. The most important person to over-communicate to is your boss. Constantly make sure your boss knows exactly WHAT you are doing and WHY it adds value to the team and business. Quantify the value you are adding using financial data. Proactively communicate the same information to colleagues and stakeholders.
4 – Not Helping Your Boss
Fourth, you are not helping your boss solve their problems. Your boss cares about and values solving their problems. If all the work you do does NOT solve any of their problems, then they will NOT value you as much. The more you can personally solve their problems the more likely your boss will perceive you as valuable.
5 – Poor Teamwork
Fifth, being a poor team player. Managers create the most value by increasing the value produced by the team they lead. There are a ton of ways managers can increase the value produced by their team. One of the most powerful is by increasing the teamwork of the team. If you are a poor team player, you will hold back teamwork within the team and other team members will get frustrated and potentially resentful towards you. Work to help and support your colleagues.
If any of these mistakes are you, even just a bit, I encourage you to work out what you are going to do differently to avoid damaging how other people value you and your work. Just choose a first action, however small, that you are going to commit to and start that action today.
5 powerful tactics to change perceptions and quickly change how you are valued
Focus the most effort on what you can control and influence and try not to spend much on what you have no control or influence over. Each of the following 5 powerful tactics to increase how you are valued at work should be within your control.
Try to do as many of these tactics in parallel. Each tactic compliments and reinforces the others in terms of improving how much you are valued.
1 – Improve In Demand Skills
Firstly, analyse the skills and experience which are in demand within your business i.e. in short supply. Build the in-demand skills that overlap with what you need for you next position. Another way to analyse which skills to select are the ones in your area that make the company the most profit, either directly or indirectly. An example – in finance, the ability to produce accurate management accounts is not nearly as valuable as the skills to help operations managers make better more profitable decisions. Find the highest value skills in your area and work on improving these.
2 – Make Your Boss Look Good
The second way to improve how much you are valued at work is to make your boss look good. Find out what targets your boss personally has. Ask your boss? You could say something like: “You have mentioned that you have been tasked with reducing the errors in the XYZ production line. How are you being measured on this and what can I do to help you reach your goals quicker?” Find out what is important to your boss and help them achieve it.
3 – Solve The Highest Value Problems
Third – focus as much of your time as possible solving the problems with the highest value and visibility within your team or business. Both elements are important. It is no good if you are solving lots of high value problems and no-one knows about it. The more value you create for your business the more highly you will be regarded. This is true in pretty much any job.
4 – Communicate Achievements
The fourth activity is to intelligently and consistently communicate your achievements and great work to your boss, to leaders within the business and to your colleagues and team. Communication is vital because perception is reality a lot of the time. Constantly provide updates to your boss of where you are with x activity or project. Explain how this is increasing revenue or reducing costs or increasing profits. Bosses and colleagues can only value what they know about. Make the time and effort to update colleagues and bosses on all your achievements, weekly … or monthly as a minimum.
5 – Build Great Relationships
Finally, fifth, work hard at building relationships across your business. With relationships comes trust, an opportunity to communicate what you have been up to, and an opportunity to build influence and increase your impact. Very few of us work in complete silos. We rely on others just as others rely on us to do great work. It is human nature to help those we like and who have already helped us. The more you intelligently help others, the more you are able to get speedy help in return, which multiplies your effectiveness. Build good relationships across your organisation.
in summary
It is a horrible feeling not to be valued and appreciated at work. If you are in a situation where you are not valued as much as you think you should be, there is plenty of actions you can take proactively to change others’ perceptions of you.
The five actions I recommend you take to improve how highly you are valued are:
- Improve your skills particularly where those skills are scarce and in demand within your business and industry.
- Make your boss look good by visibly helping them achieve their goals
- Spend more time on the highest value activities and projects and avoid doing too many low value activities or projects
- Consistently communicate your achievements and the great work you do to bosses and colleagues
- Build relationships across the company to increase your effectiveness, your support network and those to whom you communicate your achievements.
Do take a look at our courses to help you build incredibly valuable expertise that will move your career forward a lot faster.
If you have any question on “11 Signs You Are Not Valued At Work Or Not Valued By Your Boss”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
Being highly valued at work is not about working harder. Being highly valued is a skill set than anyone can build. Use the 5 powerful tactics we have taken you through. Put them into action today. Some of them may take a little while to really bear fruit.
I have been using all of these for decades and 13 promotions demonstrate how successful they are in ensuring bosses and peers value what you do for them.
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