Brown-Nosing 101

Brown-Nosing is all about Communication

Many of my younger students, those with limited work experience,  often ask me, "What is a brown-noser?"

Hum...a tricky question.  Most of us know brownnosers to be corporate suck-ups who seek out people of influence and then try to gain some sort of favor from them by kissing up, fawning and being overly agreeable and compliant.  The worst of these sorts do this instead of doing what they were hired to do - i.e. their jobs. 

When I started digging into the brownnosing phenomena I learned that there truly are very few of these people in the workplace.  They are the people we love to hate because they typically leave us with extra work to do and many of us have work a ethic that dictates we pick up the slack.

In fact, the vast majority of people we call brownnosers are people who are actually decent at their jobs but simply happen to be very good communicators - better than the rest of us.

Brown-Nosing and recession

If the economic indicators are right, it looks like we will be in for a bumpy ride for a while longer.  Difficult economic times always make for interesting career times since increases in unemployment usually force people to rethink their lives in ways that the status quo does not typically encourage.  So too, do other unexpected events in our lives.