Principle

Your boss owes you a written-down job description

Get clear on what your job is, your defined scope of responsibility, and your scope of authority.

Why this matters

It’s amazing how many employees don’t have a clearly set expectations for what their job is. We’ve all become generalists, doing things far outside of our job responsibility as we see it.

Before anything else, you need your boss to give you a written job description that clearly states what your responsibilites are.

Your job description should clarify who you report to. Too often, we get caught in a trap of having multiple people demanding that we complete tasks assigned to us by them, all the while we get no help from our manager to clarify what we’re actually responsible for doing.

When to push back

Your responsibilites are about what gets done, not how they get done. If you see overprescriptive how-tos invading your job description, ask if it’s part of the job that it be done that way or if you have the autonomy to decide how it gets done.