The article begins with a description of potential reasons for the undervaluation of specialists, which can be read by following the .
III Confronting the Causes of Undervaluation.
The virus of the past is incurable â it wonât leave until it takes its toll.
But it can and must be resisted â complications should be prevented.
Elchin Safarli. (Recipes for Happiness)
Having identified the signs and nature of the issues leading to the undervaluation of a specialist in their professional environment, letâs find recipes to counter complications that severely impact their career and overall sense of place in the world.
However, to start, it is essential to acknowledge that: "I have problems, and the signs listed in the previous chapter are present in my professional career." Of course, one can use a tried-and-true trick and tell oneself that this isnât happening to me, but to the guy next door, and that I simply want to help him. Thatâs acceptable too.
Since the format of the article is limited, the issues discussed are inherently deep, and the diagnoses of symptom manifestations are varied, letâs, for example, choose solutions only based on some representative cases. Perhaps concerned users in the comments can supplement the topic with their own cases in the form of: problem/solution.
1. Develop Rhetoric
I achieved success because I spoke to each German, both verbally and in writing,
convincing them of the correctness of my actions.
Ludwig Erhard
An important tool for promoting a specialist is the transmission of quality information about their strengths and justification of their weaknesses to those around them. Not every specialist has their own speechwriter or press service capable of fulfilling these functions. Therefore, for someone striving to build a career, it is crucial to at least be able to engage as an interesting conversationalist, attracting attention and fostering trust. This, in turn, will allow them to convey the necessary information about themselves and their work in the most positive manner possible.
To begin with, if you're a bit shy, you can develop your rhetoric skills by writing texts, articles, reports, etc. However, there's one important detail â someone unbiased must review your efforts. It's ideal if this reviewer is not familiar with the topic. Their critiques will push you to express your thoughts clearly, in a structured manner, and in a way that prevents them from dozing off due to boredom by the second paragraph. This is when you'll start to think about how successful writers express themselves. This is when you'll begin to enrich your vocabulary with new words, looking up synonyms to introduce lightness and ease into your dry text.
And then, public speaking at platforms of varying levels and scales, with a mandatory analysis of why it was worse than others â the successful ones. This is when you'll start to notice in others' speeches not just the essence, but the techniques of conveying thoughts, methods of psychological impact on the audience, etc. Every conversation should become a testing ground for assessing your knowledge and skills in the field of rhetoric.
Most people, especially those with a technical mindset, find it difficult to instantly turn into skilled masters of verbal battles after reading a book on oratory. Understanding how it works only comes through practice, provided, of course, that you are genuinely trying to grasp it.
2. Develop the ability to evaluate yourself objectively in different conditions
The main difference between literature and life is that in books, the percentage of original people is very high, while trivial ones are low; in life, however, it's quite the opposite.
Aldous Huxley
In the part regarding the identification of self-esteem issues, we established in the first part of the article the importance of the "Level of Aspiration" indicator. The level that a person strives to achieve in various areas of life (career, status, wealth, etc.). We also discussed the formula for determining it:
Level of Aspiration = Amount of Success â Amount of Failure
But the question arises again: how do we calculate the 'Magnitude of Success' and 'Magnitude of Failure'? After all, it's just an individual's perception of events and phenomena, or that of a group of 'communicating' people. This self-assessment is often more objective when compared to the achievements and failures of those around them. Hence, your 'Magnitude of Success' is directly related to the capabilities of those assessing it. In light of these comparisons, the relevant boundaries of your evaluation scale are revealed. In other words, you need to measure your Success and Failures, just as such results are assessed by other team members or even a broader community of like-minded individuals.
Therefore, the most promising team for your growth and advancement will be a group where the average assessment scale of colleagues' abilities aligns with yours. Otherwise, there will be a dissonance. In a weak team, you will relax without motivation for further development. Moreover, if you are a responsible person, you will spend time trying to elevate the team to a higher level. In a team that is too strong, you may fall behind in keeping up with the overall growth of your colleagues' abilities, which is true when the potential of all team members is roughly equal.
3. Strive to stay informed about new promising professional directions.
Development and education cannot be given or communicated to any individual.
Anyone who wishes to gain them must achieve this through their own efforts, their own strength, their own exertion.
Adolf Distelweg
To gain an advantage in career advancement over colleagues, it's essential to always be in the loop and keep an eye on emerging trends that may become 'everything' to us tomorrow. The simplest way to stay in touch with innovations is by regularly monitoring periodicals, professional blogs, and so forth.
It's very beneficial to have technical leaders in a team who can share innovations that have already been filtered through their expertise and intuition. This greatly enhances self-learning efficiency and allows focusing on what truly matters, without getting distracted by trivialities. Therefore, working in a team with leaders â professional guides â is always preferable for your prospects.
Recently, our team was involved in a software redesign project for a medical clinic. To our surprise, we came across a development that resembled a student's coursework from a decade ago. It turned out that this creation was made by a lone programmer, operating in his own world. He continuously made changes, correcting constantly emerging errors, yet the application essentially remained the same. All attempts to collaborate with him faced stiff obstruction. We were unable to make him understand that technology had long since moved on and that forcing people to use software that is both morally and functionally outdated is simply unethical. We chose not to traumatize him or pull him out of the 'Matrix.'
4. Neutralize your weaknesses and promote your strengths
It is precisely the weak who must be able to become strong and leave when the strong are too weak to inflict pain on the weak.
Milan Kundera
It's not difficult to learn about your weaknesses; you just need to listen to what others say about you in the team. In the word 'listen,' in this context, I include notions such as perceiving, acknowledging, remembering, and so forth.
Acknowledging your shortcomings is always challenging. In my professional experience, I have encountered talented individuals who formally refuse to accept their flaws and weaknesses in conversations, but later, overcoming their large 'Ego,' quietly change their minds without making it public. That also works.
To solve most problems that you can learn about by listening to what others think, you can utilize numerous blogs and training resources available in vast quantities across the internet. The key is not to let the issues go unchecked.
The flip side of the issue at hand relates to your strengths. To emphasize them, you need to focus all your efforts in an area where you have the best chance to realize yourself. It's not worth forcing yourself into a specialization that you find more challenging than an alternative. The process of software production ( ) is quite broad and you can always find a suitable place that aligns with your abilities and mindset.
For example, after successfully working as a programmer for 18 years, I transitioned into systems analysis and project management without regret. In my opinion, this field is more fundamental, lasting, and stable. I feel more comfortable in this path.
5. Beware of self-identification errors in an ecosystem you do not understand.
Responsibilities are quite tangible and specific, while opportunities... essentially, they are illusions â fragile, meaningless, and sometimes dangerous. As you grow older and wiser, you realize this and turn away from them. This is better. And calmer.
Nicholas Evans.
The theme of this chapter closely intersects with the chapter titled '2. Develop the skills to assess yourself objectively in different conditions,' where we explored how to evaluate your claims to a place among your peers. In other words, determining our position on the collective's capability scale compared to other team members. We found that it's good when our assessment of this position, possibly with a slight margin of error, aligns with the majority's opinion. Otherwise, you are not in the 'right team.'
But there is another assessment scale. The management's evaluation of your position within the team. This may not coincide with the assessment described above because it includes additional parameters that are important specifically for management, which is solving its own tasks within the team's overall objectives.
The fundamental difference between these two assessments is that performers evaluate a specialist's position based on Capabilities (knowledge, skills, communication, etc.), while managers evaluate based on Created value. (the results of task execution, applicable to: quality, performance, usefulness in interaction, impact on other team members, etc.). Do you feel the difference?
Thus, the inaccuracy in assessing one's position on the 'capabilities' scale can be compounded by errors in determining one's position on the 'value created' scale.
Getting an assessment on the second type scale for an employee is much more complicated due to the fact that they usually have little information on how the value they create is measured. Consequently, in response to the question, 'Why do I earn less than that guy?' the easiest way to find an answer is to learn more about the 'value created' scale.
How can this be done? In each specific case, it varies. The simplest option is to ask the manager (if they are motivated to share this information). A slightly more complex option is to become a manager yourself and uncover everything from the inside.
6. Always perform your duties with maximum engagement, regardless of motivation.
No one will rise to the top who does not do what they are told.
And those who do no more than what they are told.
Andrew Carnegie.
If you undertake a task, always do it to the highest standard, or don't take it on at all!
There is a concept in business called 'Exceeding Expectations.' In short, this is a technique where a client receives a service or product that not only fully meets the stated characteristics but also includes additional options that were not mentioned in the original offer. At the same time, the price remains unchanged. This approach creates emotional imbalance, generating a chain of positive reactions that bring additional bonuses to the seller, such as loyal customers, positive recommendations leading to new clients, purchases of additional accessories, etc. All of this creates a certain resonance that continues to work in your favor for an extended period, even without your involvement.
This concept of resonance also applies to enterprise social engineering. The results of an employeeâs work, which slightly exceed management's expectations each time, inadvertently hook this management on an emotional level. But this is just bait on the hook. And if specific requests for preferences are not made, these exceeded expectations can become the norm and cease to be exceptional. Itâs important to understand the subtle line here. After all, we said that the effect of âExceeding Expectationsâ occurs without changing the cost of a product/service, thanks to additional bonuses that allow one to stand out among other competitors (in our case, team members).
If we put cynicism aside, itâs advisable to always treat any task as a personal challenge and to complete it as effectively and efficiently as possible, regardless of the expected reward. Typically, this approach creates the aforementioned resonance, which influences career advancement.
In my experience, there was a case when a concerned developer, treating the life of the company as 'his own', eventually received an offer to become a co-owner.
7. When making decisions, behave naturally, without trying to please someone.
It's better to decisively make mistakes than to be tentatively right.
Tallulah Bankhead
In the first part of the article, we discussed the drawback of indecisiveness and concluded that it is an enemy of career advancement.
In this publication, we will consider only one of the common reasons for indecisiveness, such as the desire to please the supervisor. Against the backdrop of this puppy-like desire arise doubts about what will impress the patron more: this or that. And instead of simply searching for the optimal solution in this situation, an internal struggle ensues to find a path that can win favor. As a result, some kind of falseness, cynicism, and other unpleasant shades emerge. From the outside, this ingratiation is certainly visible and often appears pathetic.
When making decisions, do not get caught up in how that decision will appear from the outside. Do not leave food for cockroaches in your mind; getting rid of them later will be quite problematic. This is your decision, it cannot be bad (at worst, it may be mistaken). Discuss it with others, prove your point, primarily to yourself. But it is very important to listen to those around you and acknowledge your mistakes.
A results-driven manager finds it easier to work with confident people. They are harder to manage, but much easier to make decisions in a more certain environment.
My Skype account features the slogan: 'Success is achieved not necessarily by those who make the right decisions, but by those who make their decisions right.'
8. Beware of the illusion of success
The main rule of reality is not to get tangled in your illusions.
Movie: Inception
Once, I had to work with a team that turned a retrospective â a tool from Agile methodology meant to analyze the results of the current phase of work and subsequently improve the workflow â into a ritual of self-praise for the team.
A simple manager read somewhere that a team is a complex nervous organization, and it should only be praised and nurtured while being protected from criticism. Therefore, during retrospectives, the team would come up with at least five positive points from the analyzed phase. Since the team was very young, they indeed invented their victories rather than acknowledged successes.
From the outside, the process looked like a groom sneaking into the bride's apartment through a lineup of her relatives and friends at the wedding, squeezing out before each new fortress a promise of how else he would make the life of his future wife and her relatives happier. 'I will carry her in my arms! I will spoil my mother-in-law!..' These made-up achievements were recorded in a journal by the team, so they would never think about them again, not to project success onto less successful processes.
In response to my question about when we would address problems and mistakes, I was told that the team is still young and should not be burdened with unpleasant memories. According to the manager, this motivating approach worked well in his previous projects, is flexible, and has yet to let him down. However, in the next larger project, this approach caused the entire scheme to collapse like a house of cards. The team, living in the euphoria of their own illusions, was oblivious to obvious problems in the product being developed and the processes behind its creation until it was time to deliver the comprehensive results to the client, who then had to pay for this disaster.
This story illustrates that you can easily fall into a trap if you manage to successfully navigate a simple case through a mechanism built solely on your feelings and guesses, far from a truly effective scheme. The first successful experience creates an euphoria of success, pushing the sense of caution into the farthest corners of consciousness. But the next genuinely complex case puts everything in its place. Often, problems do not appear immediately; they linger behind, gradually leading you into a trap, lulling your attention with misleading impressions from past fleeting experiences. When a critical mass of mistakes accumulates behind you, the entire structure begins to crumble.
You must approach new, unproven methodologies with caution, even if they are plastered with numerous accolades and honored with praise. Especially if their application instructions are largely declarative, there is a high probability that you will catch only the ritual from the surface, without understanding the deeper subtleties that are very individual to various life situations.
9. Enhance your emotional intelligence when changing professional roles.
I am not a pessimist. I am a frozen, tired, hungry optimist.
Olga Gromyko. (True Enemies)
As one ages and matures professionally, the spark of innovation often dims in the eyes of specialists. No, it doesn't mean they stop being innovators, but to the younger and more passionate, this innovation appears as if in slow motion: dull, uninteresting, and frustratingly slow. Time slips away, competitors are active, every minute counts, and any delay is simply criminal negligence.
Therefore, when changing jobs, fields, and other transitions within professional spaces, it is desirable to emotionally develop oneself through energizing training or dedicated literature, while also engaging younger, less experienced colleagues by delegating authority to them. Let them perform the miracle they expect from you. Teach them to create that miracle and keep them busy with the process!
10. Do not project your experience of product realization onto the management model of that process.
The happiness of others always seems exaggerated to you.
Charles de Montesquieu
We established in the first part of the article that evaluating the work of managers from the perspective of executors, who are uninitiated in the art of management, is not acceptable. They have a different set of metrics for assessing effectiveness. This is due to the fact that the requirements for the production process of a product and for organizing the production of that product are two completely different functions, necessitating different skills and competencies, different personal characteristics, psychological and ethical readiness, etc.
The only metric by which a manager can be justly criticized, while adhering to morality and ethics, is the 'unsuccessfulness of project realization' for which they are directly responsible. That is their metric. Of course, they will have a million reasons that objectively hindered them from doing everything 'as it should be,' but as they say, thatâs already not your problem.
Source: habr.com
