This is a first, this week’s blog is a letter to a friend. But I think the message applies to a many people out there. Heck, if the shoe fits, consider this your New Year’s Resolution…

Dear R.

If Eskimos have many different words for snow, you have a similar huge repertoire of ways to put yourself down, to diminish your accomplishments. I wish you could watch yourself, you’re ruthless at attacking any compliment that’s thrown your way. It’s like a more efficient version of the old Star Wars missile defense shield, every compliment is shot down long before it reaches its intended target.

Okay, I think a little self-doubt can be a great thing. Lord knows, a number of people have told me that through the years. But in your case you not only don’t get the buzz off people saying nice things about you, you put energy into attacking what they say. It must be incredibly tiring.

I have a simple rule. If all of the people around me believe that I’ve got what it takes to get the job done, even if I have my doubts, I can be persuaded to accept their point of view. Especially when the people who are tossing bon mots are clearly experienced, savvy and insightful.

So here is your homework assignment. Practice saying, “Thank you Bob.” “Thank you J.” “Thank you D.” Don’t let Nancy Negative take hold, just practice the art of graciously accepting compliments tossed your way. Given how few and far between they are for most of us, it’s a silly source of fuel for you to squander.

40 hours a week is tough enough. Treat compliments like the ballast that allows you to survive the workplace grind. In fact, I even know people who keep a file of nice things that have been written to them. One woman, would even write down compliments that were said to her and put then in her file. She calls it her “victory file” and she reads it on those tough days when everything is going wrong to put herself back into a more positive frame of mind.

You might never get rid of those negative thoughts rattling around inside your head. That said, just because they’re there, doesn’t mean that you have to listen, or act, on them. You can just let them fall on deaf ears. Your own.

Again, I’m a fan. I think you have a lot of potential for helping to take us to the next level. But we all need you to stop beating yourself up and putting all that energy into moving all of us forward. We can afford to squander any energy with the challenges that lay ahead of us.

So please consider this a pat on the back. And a kick in the butt.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Politifact, the fact-checking web site of the St. Petersburg Times, announced the biggest lie of 2010. But it doesn’t stop there, the NYTimes, FactCheck.org and a number of other experts agree with Politifact’s analysis.

The lie? That the government will be taking over health care.

I’ll leave it to Politifact to debate the “why.” I’m more interested in the “how” and what we can learn from this that will help us to survive today’s challenging workplace.

Repetition was probably the one factor that pushed this phrase to the top of the list. In 2010 alone, “government takeover” was mentioned 28 times in the Washington Post, 77 times in Politico and 79 times on CNN. Add to this countless times on a variety of congressional and activist web sites.

Beyond your beliefs about health care, and the politics surrounding, is one simple fact, views can be shaped by a message being said over, and over, and over again.

Which reminds me of a previous blog that I wrote about Google. Remember, Google is not an arbiter of what’s true or not true, it’s fancy algorithms only can tell you what’s popular.

If you’ve ever locked horns with a nemesis at work, you’ll learn this lesson painfully. When someone has a lot of anger and time, they can do a huge amount of mischief at work by simply repeating something over and over again.

Which is why when someone starts spreading a mistruth about you at work, you need to respond to it. Because what could seem outrageous to everyone today, can become a “health care takeover” juggernaut in just a matter of days.

Listen to the grapevine. And take out your pencil to try to erase the parts that aren’t true, while you still can.

I’d hope that most of you don’t take this as a strategy to get ahead, but rather as insight about the dynamics of how negative messages can resonate. And more importantly, how their damage can be limited.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

The arbiter of all things popular, Google, last Saturday said that Internet search was dominated by three topics: the suicide death of ponzi scam king Bernie Madoff’s son, the 2010 Army Navy football game and Santacon 2010 in New York City.

Okay, I probably weakened my point about Mark Madoff by bringing up the football game and Santacon, but how do you ever pass on a Santacon reference? I certainly couldn’t.

Mark Madoff’s life is simultaneously, something that very few people can relate to and also an amazing prism for everyone trying to navigate to choppy waters of today’s workplace. Before I explain, let me give a quick refresher course.

Madoff’s dad created a sink hole that eventually swallowed relatives, friends and some top charities. The more you think about what happened, the more you think that Bernie could be nominated as the top sociopath of this century. Okay, it’s early in the century, but you don’t see evil like that very often.

But remember, it was Mark who turned in his dad to authorities. Okay, some could argue that he saw it all coming and called the cops earlier, but at least he finally put an end to any additional financial bleeding.

The narrative immediately after Mark’s suicide is that it was timed with the second anniversary of the scam being discovered and by the inclusion of Mark’s kids in the lawsuits to recovery money from people who profited from Bernie’s evil finally pushed him over the edge.

Unemployable, disgraced and facing the prospect of years of litigation for everyone who shared his family name and friends you can understand the desperation. But the goal of this blog isn’t to make you feel sorry for Mark. It’s to make you aware of the ever present law of unintended consequences.

Sure, Mark knowingly or unknowingly profited from his father’s business ventures for years. He held high positions in the company. And yes, some can argue that there were actually legitimate, money making components of the Madoff business, in addition to the ponzi scam.

But once the enterprise started to crumble, the guilty, the innocent and everyone in between got painted by the same broad brush of shame and retribution.

I actually applaud the attempts to recover money for the people who lost everything. And I understand the scorn that people feel who never had anything to lose but who were asked to feel sorry for these rich people who are crying over their loss of stature and sustenance.

What’s the point for the rest of us? The importance of avoiding questionable financial dealings whenever you see them. From Enron to Lehman, the rule of too good to be true still applies.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

In my last blog I wrote about the huge profits that corporations made during the third quarter of 2010. $1.695 trillion, give or take a few bucks. Okay, I whined a bit about corporations hoarding this money and not giving our economy a chance to build back its consumer marketplace by hiring new employees.

Here is an interesting survey outlining the curious place where we’ve all ended up as the recession drags on and on (I know that economists are convinced that the recession is over, but with an official 9.8% unemployment rate, and an unofficial one approaching 20%, I beg to disagree with them).

HR Solutions, recently surveyed 30,000 employees, and their results put an interesting spin on where workers are at today in trying to respond to tough times. The number one employee request, according to their survey, a higher salary. Okay, that was to be expected.

But some of the other comments that were at the top of the list might surprise you.

Employees are pleased with their coworkers.
Employees like the atmosphere of their organization.
Employees are pleased with flexible work hours.

Compare this to 2006, the last time the company surveyed workers. Back then some of the top comments were, “workloads are too heavy” and “departments are understaffed.” Apparently we have accepted a new reality of the workplace. That’s its going to be leaner, meaner and we should all be grateful to even have a job.

Okay, asking for a raise did make the cut. But it’s stunning how much workers have just decided that any job is better than no job and are putting up with huge sacrifices.

I know what you’re thinking. Duh. So what is new here?

In a remarkably short period of time we’ve gone from a workplace where talent had clout to one where talent is scared to speak up.

Enjoy your profits corporate America. Because at the same time I’ve seen studies that talk about huge numbers of workers who are going to start looking for a job as soon as the economy picks up. In other words, when it comes to surveys like this one, what people say is often less interesting in what they don’t say.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

If you feel like the recent recession screwed most of us over and left the fat cats even fatter, the next bit of information is going to really set you off. So I’d suggest that you go into the room with the most padding, remove all sharp objects and concentrate to keep your last meal down. Really, concentrate.

Last week American corporations announced their best quarter ever. $1.659 trillion in profits during the third quarter of 2010. Trillion, with a “T”.

For the last 60 years, since such things were tracked, that’s the biggest profit ever. Even bigger than 2006 when it was a paltry $1.655 trillion.

2006, when the unemployment rate was 4.6%.

Do you see a problem here?

Okay, I understand that today’s economy is full of uncertainty. And that it’s important for corporations to stash away some cash for a rainy day. But with $1.659 trillion in profits in just three months, isn’t it a good time to start hiring again to take the unemployment rate down from it’s current 9.6%?

I had feared that corporations would take advantage of the recession to drive down salaries and hiring. And that appears to be happening, although the business press tends to lump those two phenomenon into the phrase “increasing productivity.”

There is one major problem here, corporations need people with money to keep the 70% of the economy that is based on consumer spending running. The more corporations only see their profits, at the expense of actual markets where people can buy their products, well that’s the rub.

Employment and markets matter. I just fear that a trillion and a half in profits with an unemployment rate of 9.6% or 4.6% might not matter that much to the corporate corner-office crowd. But it makes a huge impact on society as a whole.

I know what you’re thinking. That I’m some kind of socialist. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve got an MBA, I’ve taught at the MBA level and I’m current an executive for a company. It’s just that I take a longer view and think about who is really the foundation for our economy, the people with the paychecks that buy stuff. Whereas many corporate executives that I’ve talked to practice magical thinking where the people who buy stuff are separated from how the economy really functions.

It could be argued that the corporate sphincter muscle needed to be tight. But I can give you 1.659 trillion reasons why the time has come to relax it a bit and start spending some of the cash.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

A number of years ago I was running a small non-profit that I’d founded. We negotiated a big six-figure payday with a video production company to produce a four part video series. We also tossed in exclusive distribution rights to an award winning video we’d created.

Can you say windfall? We could.

Thinking that this was ongoing revenue for my organization, instead of a one-time bonanza, I went out and hired two new staffers.

Six months later, as the money was running out, I had to lay off the two staffers. Painful stuff that can still keep me awake at night.

At the time, a friend told me something he’d learned in his life guard training. If you were swimming back to shore with someone who couldn’t do it on their own, there is one cardinal rule. If you feel yourself being pulled beneath the waves, you need to let go of them. Because your primary job is to save yourself. Anything else is icing, not the cake.

Even though I’ve been speaking out against layoffs for a long time, I also realize that there are times where an organization needs to make tough calls for the good of everyone.

Given all the layoffs and turmoil in the economy, it never ceases to amaze me at how there are still people out there who believe that they are entitled to have their job. The float through their day partying like it’s 1999.

Organizations need to realize that if these sacred cows restricted their damage to their own lack of production, it would be difficult but not a back breaker for a company. But unfortunately these people often send the message out to everyone else that mediocrity is not only tolerated, it’s embraced.

Tough calls. It sounds tacky but addition by subtraction really does mean something in today’s workplace. Take a longer view and you might be surprised at how you look at your organization entirely differently.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

If you’re not sitting down when you read the next paragraph, please do.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the geeks you pay to watch such trends, the number of people quitting their jobs now outnumbers those being laid off. In August there were 1.998 million quits and 1.83 million layoffs.

How bad does your job, and boss, have to be in this economy to voluntarily leave it? Especially when 1.83 million of your closest friends are being pushed out of theirs.

Apparently pretty bad, 1.998 million times bad.

So exactly what is going on here? The Bureau of Labor Statistics believes that quit rates, “can serve as a measure of workers’ willingness or ability to change jobs” and that normally, “quits tend to rise when the perception is jobs are available, and fall when jobs are scarce.”

Sure some people move, get a better job or retire. Having more people quit than are laid off still shouldn’t cover this many workers.

Significantly, the quits represent most industry sectors, manufacturing, retail, real estate, construction and hospitality, but are MOST significant in financial services and professional and business service.

I’d like to give a shout out to Globoforce for digging out these amazing numbers from the reams of data flowing out of the DOL. Remarkable stuff.

Wow, we really suck at management. In a terrible economy, more workers are actually jumping off the boat than are being pushed.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Angelo Mozilo, co-founder of Countrywide Financial, a.k.a. No-Income-is-too-Small-For-Us-to-Give-You-a-Mortgage, agreed to pay $67.5 million dollars to avoid a federal civil fraud suit about to go to trial.

I know what you’re thinking, let’s hold a bake sale for Angelo. He clearly must be hurting. But chances are slim that you’ll see him at any soup kitchen, because he pocketed many times that amount of money in salary and perks before he drove his company into the ditch.

But it does raise an interesting question: Why isn’t the government going after Lehman, WAMU and other high flying executives from corporations that went into the toilet over the past few years? Especially when top executives pocketed so much cash from the deception and fake profits?

We’re not talking Salem Witch Trials. I’m simply suggesting that we start skimming off some of the cash that these executives skimmed off of all of us. I know this sounds drastic, but the top guys from Enron actually went to jail for their misdeeds.

Why are we suddenly so timid when it comes to the billions that these fat cats are sitting on?

This is especially confusing to me because of the rush by State Attorney’s General to sue over the recently enacted health care reform bill. Why aren’t our public officials going after the banking swindlers for the huge stockpiles of money that they extracted from all of us?

I would have thought that Attorneys General would at least understand the Willie Sutton rule. Mr. Sutton, the famous bank robber was asked why he robbed banks. He replied, “Because that is where the money is.”

Isn’t it time that we went where the money went? Anything short of a major offensive here sends a simple message to all that crime pays. That would be the worst message to come out of the pain of the past few years.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Okay, the election is right around the corner. The purpose of this column is not to tell you who to vote for, or even what to vote for. It’s simply to try to help you to clarify what is important to you. If I do a good job, you won’t even know my political leanings.

Foreclosures — Do you think that the cash support should go to the bankers or the people being foreclosed on? Ironically words like responsibility can be applied or not applied to both sides of this equation.

Sure we’re all mad at the banks. They took huge risks, kept their profits and stuck us with their losses. Which candidates are most inclined to hold the banks accountable? And which candidates are inclined to take contributions from said bankers? The rhetoric isn’t as important as the money flows, in my humble opinion.

Health Care — Health care is another popular political piñata today. Do you long for the old system of health care? Or do you think it makes sense to have someone looking over the insurance companies’ shoulders?

The wars — Is this a question of pride and winning or is it more of an issue of cutting our losses?

Unemployment assistance — 99 weeks does seem like a long time to get help for being unemployed. Too many too long. But if you know people who’ve been out of work that long, you know the struggle that they’re facing.

Political theater or political action — Which candidates are inclined to roll up their sleeves and work to get things done?

This shouldn’t be done from the hip. Definitely take out your voting pamphlets and  do some research on your options. Your steady hand is needed on the ship of state’s rudder.

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Recently I saw an excellent speaker at an HR conference. She was enthusiastic, smart, well read and incredibly informed on her subject. Her topic was increasing employee involvement and I was very interested in her presentation.

Turns out she’d worked for a big company and she’d pioneered using online bulletin boards to solve work, and non-work related problems, by giving them a common space to solve problems. She gave examples of corporate problems that were solved quickly and efficiently. There was even a story about a worker who was able to locate a donor match for surgery quickly and efficiently.

There was only one problem, she never got the audience involved. During previous sessions speakers got the audience involved asking questions, making comments and offering solutions. It was truly an interactive experience.

But during the talk on employee involvement, nada. One person asked a question in ninety minutes. One.

Her session had great information. But she never modeled the topic she focused on, getting people involved.

We all have to be careful when we try to cut the same kind of corners at work. We should understand that our words are important, but not usually the most important part of our presentations. No, there is often a much bigger message that we need to understand and respect if our message is to gain maximum leverage for our audience.

It’s our actions. Read the speech that you’re about to give to see if your actions are aligned with it.

If they aren’t aligned, you’ve got options. You can increase your walk. You can decrease your talk. Anything to get them aligned will help the cause. Yours!

About The Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.