(FORTUNE Magazine) – Dear Annie: I was under consideration for a big promotion, and the man who would have been my new boss was enthusiastic about me. But when he put my name forward to the global head, he was told to find someone else since I would be "too nice" for the job. I'm bewildered by this, and so far I've scheduled two meetings with the global head to try to pin down what he meant, but he's missed both of them. It's hard to see what kind of future I have here, and although I'd rather not, I'm thinking of looking elsewhere. What should I do? --Valerius

Dear Valerius: "Too nice"? This was certainly a new one to me. (What's next? "Too honest"? No, that was last year.) It turns out, though, that your dilemma is a fairly common one. "Management, especially senior management, is a constant balancing act between being 'nice'--that is, compassionate, considerate, and so on--and being tough, as in making hard decisions and standing up for unpopular ideas," says Nancy Friedberg, president of New York City--based executive coaching firm Career Leverage (e-mail: nancy@careerleverage.com). "In a leadership job, which it sounds as if your promotion would have been, it's more important to be respected than it is to be liked. By saying you're 'too nice,' the global head may mean he thinks you're too worried about whether people like you. He's saying you're perceived as a pushover."

So what can you do about it? Take meanie lessons from Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap? Well, no. First, she says, you need to look back over your performance for the past couple of years and try to analyze your own behavior as others might have seen it. Was there a situation, like a contract negotiation, in which you weren't assertive enough to come out on top? How much influence do you have among your peers? Can you persuade people to get behind your ideas? If you've done formal evaluations of subordinates, were you too kind to be frank with them about their shortcomings? Do you have trouble pushing back or saying no? Do you usually back down right away if someone disagrees with you? Any or all of these kinds of things may have given the global honcho the idea that you're a milquetoast. If you're not sure, and since the global head isn't talking, ask a few colleagues you trust and respect for their observations--"or even," Friedberg says, "ask one of the global head's peers for some feedback, if you have a good relationship with any of them."

Once you've pinpointed the problem, she suggests, "seek out opportunities to show you can be firm. If you can't get those opportunities in your current position, try making a lateral move into a job where you can--and let the global head know it. Write him a memo. He needs to see you as proactive and aggressive, with a definite plan of attack. It shows you're willing to take the bull by the horns." Friedberg believes, by the way, that the Big Guy actually did you a favor by saying you need to grow a backbone. "This kind of constructive criticism is a gift," she says. "You'll never move up unless you can act on it." Leaving the company wouldn't help, she adds. If you're too easygoing and softhearted for senior management at this outfit, you probably would be elsewhere as well--except that, there, they might be too nice to tell you.

Dear Annie: I know this isn't the kind of question you normally answer, but I'm getting a little frantic. I have a son who is halfway through his junior year in high school, and while he's very bright, he refuses to apply himself in school. I can't get him to see that he'll never have a decent career unless he goes to a good college. All he cares about are cars and computers. (He's a whiz with both.) How can I get through to him? --Hail Columbia

Dear Columbia: He might decide to go to college someday, but in the meantime, cheer up: The auto industry is desperately seeking people who are handy with both cars and computers. More than 60,000 automotive service technician jobs are going begging in the U.S. right now, and the U.S. Department of Labor predicts there will be 35,000 more vacancies by 2010. Why? Says Tom Purves, CEO of BMW of North America, who is leading an industrywide crusade to recruit a new type of car-repair person: "There are more computers in a typical new car--as many as 70 in some BMWs--than there were in the first U.S. lunar landing module." Fixing the cars demands such sophisticated know-how that automakers are forced to compete for employees with other high-tech industries, which is tough, because so many people still think of auto mechanics as grease monkeys. When research firm Wirthlin Worldwide recently surveyed 1,500 teens, parents, and educators about career choices, only 2% of the teens said they would consider automotive training--a proportion that jumped to 65% when the kids learned that computer-savvy master technicians can earn $100,000 a year. Maybe you could encourage your son to pursue his passions and see where they lead. For starters, he might check out a nonprofit coalition called Automotive Youth Educational Systems, at www.ayes.org, for information on its 310 training programs at high schools in 44 states. (It also has details about college-level programs supported by companies like DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Honda, and Toyota.) If there's one nearby, it could put him on a career track that will really get his engine going. And hey, try to relax a little. Mr. and Mrs. Gates doubtless weren't thrilled when their kid Bill was too busy tinkering with computers to bother graduating from Harvard, but he's doing pretty well these days.