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Many of my clients deal with a fear of criticism. I see it in several aspects of their lives. At work, people fear criticism from their managers and colleagues, so they keep quiet and don't share their opinions. They play it safe. At home, people fear that they'll be criticized by their spouse or partner, so they don't speak their mind. They back down when they sense conflict. In friendships, people often don't have boundaries because they fear that establishing them would lead to criticism or that they would be viewed as selfish.

Whatever the setting, it's this fear that keeps people stuck. For example, by not speaking up and not sharing your ideas, you'll never advance. People won't know your thoughts and will have no reason to recognize your worth and promote you.

We’ve all known the bosses who act like children when they get bad news, face a crisis, or perceive a bureaucratic slight. Some are screamers. Some are whiners. Some just go “into the bunker” and won't talk to anyone at all. How do you deal with a childish boss?

“When your boss is having a tantrum, he is ‘going grasshopper.’ The grasshopper is like a toddler—he wants what he wants and he wants it now. Because the grasshopper is in charge of short-term survival, his primary responses are as basic as freeze, flight, and fight. That is why you get the withdrawal, whining, and screaming from your boss.”

The transition to management isn’t easy. One study found it was almost as stressful as divorce.

No wonder people screw it up. But while “Everyone certainly has the right to screw up in her own individual way,” says Lindsey Pollak, whose new management book Becoming the Boss is out this month, there are also “classic mistakes” made by “pretty much everyone I interviewed.” Here’s what they are, and how to avoid them:

1. Keeping The Star Mindset

People often get promoted because they are awesome at what they do. But once you’re in management, “your job is no longer to be the star as a contributor. Your job is now to manage through other people’s successes,” says Pollak. This is a huge change in thinking, and unfortunately, many new managers “keep trying to do their old jobs and be a manager at the same time.”

The workplace today is much different from the workplace of 30, 20, and even 10 years ago. Open office designs, in-house baristas, and for many organizations bosses managing from across the country are now the norm. Between video conferencing, email, and instant messaging, physical proximity to the office is no longer a requirement. Companies are hiring based on talent and fit, not if someone can be in their chair 24/7. This change has led to entire teams being spread across time zones, states, and even countries. While it can be tricky to report to a remote manager, I’m here to tell you it’s possible.

To meet this goal, a performance management system must provide some way to determine how employees are performing relative to their co-workers. Yet there is currently a trend in HR to “fix” performance management by eliminating the use of methods that compare employees based on performance.

This makes no sense since this is the very thing senior business leaders want from performance management!

The 2 performance management methods:

Well, in my experience, the profile of the top performing salespeople is changing. And fast! As I built the HubSpot sales team over the last 6 years, I probably hired close to 200 salespeople. It amazes me, even in that short period, how the profile of the industry’s top performers has shifted. Here are four habits that today’s top performers exhibit that yesterday’s top performers did not.

#1: They are Data Jocks

Historically sales managers have taken extraordinary strides to measure the performance of their salespeople… and salespeople have avoided these tactics like the plague. “What I do cannot be measured. It is an art form.”Today’s top sales performers love the data. To them, data represents the blue print to excellence. They want to know:

Everyone agrees that micromanagement is a bad thing, but not everyone knows how to identify and correct it.

In my experience, micromanagement manifests itself in the following five avoidable behaviors:

1. Measuring too many things.

The advantage of technology is that you can measure your business more accurately.  The disadvantage is that technology makes it too easy to measure too much.  Measuring so much that it's not clear what the data really means is classic micromanagement.

What to do instead: For every job, select one or two metrics that define success for that job. Ignore everything else.

Have you ever been in a job you hate so much that waking up is painful? Have you ever wished that you were born a different person with a different life? Have you ever hoped that an alien spaceship would capture your manager? There have been times in my life I thought these things.Years ago there a young grandfather who lived in Versailles, Indiana. He decided to have a sleep after lunch. While he lay on the couch his young 8-year-old grandson decided to play a trick on him and rubbed some smelly

“The most important driver of employee engagement is the relationship they have with their immediate manager,” says Piera Palazzolo, Senior Vice President of Dale Carnegie Training. She says the most successful relationships are those where bosses and employees really get to know one another.

“That’s different from years ago, when you were supposed to ask any personal questions. Those lines are blurred now, people want you to care about them, particularly if there’s something going on in their lives that might affect their performance.”

1) Find out exactly what your boss wants, and understand the pressure they’re working under.

Consulting firm PwC recently published its outlook for work in 2022, based on interviews with 500 human resources experts and 10,000 others in the United States and several other countries. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that big companies could end up so powerful and influential they morph into “ministates” that fill the void when government is unable to provide essential services. Companies will also use sensors and other gizmos to monitor employees around the clock. And workers will mostly acquiesce to this digital leash, in exchange for job security, decent pay and important benefits.

The workplace is a melting pot of personalities--no surprise there! All types of employees must work together and are expected to overcome personal differences to reach a common goal. But ethics, cultural norms, and temperament can sometimes cause friction.

Let's discuss temperament. All employee groups will exhibit two main types: introverts and extroverts. Each type can interact very differently in the workplace. One may be better suited for leadership than the other. But can you always tell which is which?

You're an adult. You don't need a babysitter. But telling your micromanaging boss to leave you alone and let you get your work done is never going to be an easy conversation.

If you see that you need to improve, take the action to change right away and let your boss know that you are taking your job seriously and you are looking to improve.

But if your self-check comes up clean--if you are confident that your work is up to par, then it’s time to have that talk with your boss. Here's how:

When I started my first company, I hired people I knew and loved.  I thought, Why wouldn't I want to work with my friends all day?

In many cases that worked out fine. Then my company began to grow beyond my circle of friends. The talents required for success became a bigger priority than the camaraderie.

I was usually able to find people who fit the culture and the job description and whom I also enjoyed spending time with. But every once in a while the person I needed to hire just wasn't my cup of tea. And while we shared mutual respect, spending time with this person became a chore, as did the experience of managing him or her.