The beginning of the article describing the possible reasons for the underestimation of specialists can be read by clicking on .
III Confronting the causes of underestimation.
The virus of the past is not amenable to treatment - until it takes its toll, it will not go away.
But it can and should be resisted - to prevent complications.
Elchin Safarli. (Recipes for happiness)
Having identified the signs and nature of the problems that lead to the underestimation of a specialist in his professional habitat, let's select recipes to counteract complications that are very detrimental to a career, and indeed to the feeling of one's place in the sun.
But, first, it is necessary to recognize that: “I have problems and the signs listed in the previous chapter have a place in my professional career.” You can, of course, use a proven trick and tell yourself that it’s not with me, but with the guy next door, and I just want to help him. That will do too.
Since the format of the article is limited, the problems considered are inherently very deep, and the diagnoses of the manifestation of symptoms are diverse, let's, for example, select a solution for only some representative cases. And in the comments, caring users will probably supplement the topic with their cases in the form: problem / solution.
1. Develop rhetoric
I have been successful because I have addressed verbally and in writing to every German,
convincing him of the correctness of his actions.
Ludwig Erhard
An important tool for promoting a specialist is broadcasting high-quality information to others about his strengths and justifying his weaknesses. Not every specialist has his own speechwriter or press service capable of performing these functions. Therefore, it is very important for a person seeking to build a career, at least, to be able to act as an interesting interlocutor himself, attracting attention and inspiring confidence. That, in turn, will allow you to convey the necessary information about yourself and your affairs in the most positive way.
For starters, if you are a timid ten, the ability to rhetoric can be developed by writing texts, articles, reports, etc. But there is one important detail - be sure someone who is not biased should review your efforts. Very well, if this censor is not in the subject. Then, with his nit-picking, he will be able to make you express your thoughts clearly, structured and in such a form that will allow him not to fall asleep from boredom, already in the second paragraph. It is then that you will think about how others write - successful ones. It is then that you will begin to replenish your vocabulary with new words, picking up new turns in the directory of synonyms and introducing lightness and ease into the dry text.
And then, public performances at venues of different levels and scales. With obligatory analysis, why was it worse than others - successful ones. It is then that you will begin to notice in the speeches of others not only the very essence, but the methods of conveying thoughts, methods of psychological influence on the audience, etc. Any conversation should become a testing ground for testing your knowledge and skills in the field of rhetoric.
Most people, especially technical minds, find it hard to read a book on oratory and immediately turn into a skillful master of verbal battles. Only in practice comes an understanding of how it works, provided, of course, that you are trying to figure it out.
2. Develop the skills 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 the percentage of trivial people is low; in real life it's the other way around.
Aldous Huxley
In terms of identifying self-esteem problems, in the first part of the article we established the importance of the “Level of claims” indicator. The level that a person seeks to achieve in various areas of life (career, status, wealth, etc.). And also discussed the formula for its definition:
Aspiration level = Success rate - Failure rate
But then again the question arises: how to calculate the "Value of success" and "Value of failure"? After all, this is only the perception of events and phenomena by a specific person, well, or by a group of “communicating” people. Such an assessment of one's own claims is most often more objective against the background of comparison with the achievements and failures of others. And from this it follows that your “Success Value” is directly related to the capabilities of those around you who work in the field of assessment. Against the background of these comparisons, the actual scope of your rating scale is actually revealed. In other words, you must measure your Success и Dips, in the same way that similar results are evaluated by the rest of the team or an even wider community of like-minded people.
Therefore, it turns out that the most promising team for your growth and advancement will be a team in which the average scale for evaluating the capabilities of colleagues will coincide with yours. Otherwise, there will be dissonance. In a weak team, you will relax without motivation for further development. In addition, if you are a responsible person, you will spend time pulling the team to a higher level. And if you are too strong, you will not keep up with the general growth of the capabilities of your colleagues, which, however, is true for the case when the potential of all members of the team is approximately the same.
3. Strive to be aware of new promising areas of a professional nature
Development and education cannot be given or communicated to any person.
Anyone who wishes to partake of them must achieve this by his own activity, his own strength, his own exertion.
Adolf Diesterweg
In order to gain an advantage in career and professional growth over peers, you must always be in trend and follow new trends that can become “our everything” tomorrow. The easiest way to stay in the flow of innovations is to constantly monitor periodicals, professional blogs, etc.
It is very good when there are technical leaders in the team who can share with the team the innovations already sifted through the sieve of their competence and intuition. This greatly increases the effectiveness of self-learning and allows you to focus on the most important thing, without spraying yourself with all sorts of husks. Therefore, working in a team with leaders - professional reference points - is always preferable for your prospects.
Recently, our team participated in a project to redesign software for a medical clinic. We were surprised to stumble upon a development that looked like a student's coursework from…twenty years ago. It turned out that this creation was created by a lone programmer, boiling in his own world. He constantly changed something, corrected constantly occurring errors, but for all that, the application essentially did not change. All attempts to cooperate with him ran into severe obstruction. We could not explain to him that technology has long gone ahead and that it is simply not ethical to force people to use morally and functionally obsolete software. They did not injure the human psyche and take him out of the Matrix.
4. Level out your weaknesses and promote your strengths
It is the weak who must be able to become strong and leave when the strong are too weak to be able to hurt the weak.
Milan Kundera
It is not at all difficult to find out about your weaknesses, for this you just need to hear what they say about you in the team. In the word "hear", in this context, I put the concepts - to perceive, recognize, wind on a mustache, etc.
Admitting your shortcomings is always difficult. As part of my professional activities, I have repeatedly come across talented people who, in conversations, do not formally accept their mistakes and weaknesses, but later, having overcome their big “I”, nevertheless quietly, without advertising, change their minds. That will do too.
To solve most of the problems that you can learn about by listening to the opinions of others, you can use the numerous blogs and trainings published in large numbers on the Internet. The main thing is not to let problems take their course.
The reverse side of the issue under consideration is related to the presence of your strengths. To emphasize them, you need to concentrate your efforts as much as possible in the area in which you have a chance to realize yourself in the best possible way. Don't knock on the doors of a specialization that's worse for you than an alternative. Software production process ) is very wide and you can always find a worthy place for yourself in it, corresponding to your abilities and mentality.
For example, having worked successfully for 18 years as a programmer, I moved into the field of system analysis and project management without regret. In my opinion, in this field everything is more fundamental, durable and stable. On this path, I feel more comfortable.
5. Beware of self-identification mistakes in an ecosystem you don't understand
Responsibilities are a quite tangible, concrete thing, and opportunities ... in essence, these are chimeras - fragile, meaningless, and sometimes dangerous. As you get older and wiser, you realize this and give them up. That's better. And calmer.
Nicholas Evans.
The topic of this chapter closely intersects with the chapter “2. Develop Skills to Evaluate Yourself Objectively in Different Conditions”, in which we looked at how you can evaluate your claims to a place in the team of associates. In other words, determining our position on the team's ability scale, in comparison with other team members. And we found out that it is good when our assessment of this situation, perhaps with a small error, but still coincides with the opinion of the majority. Otherwise, you are on the wrong team.
But there is another rating scale. Assessment by management of your position in the team. It may not coincide with the assessment described above, since it contains additional parameters that are important specifically for management, which solves its tasks in the common cause of the team.
The fundamental difference between these two assessments is that the performers evaluate the position of a specialist in Opportunities (knowledge, skills, communication skills, etc.), and the manager for Value created (the results of task completion, in relation to: quality, productivity, usefulness in interaction, impact on other team members, etc.). Feel the difference?
Thus, to the error in assessing one's position on the scale of "opportunities", errors in determining the position on the scale of "created values" can be added.
It is much more difficult for an employee to get an assessment on a scale of the second type due to the fact that he most often has little information about how the value he creates is measured. Accordingly, to the question: “Why am I getting paid less than that guy?” The easiest way to get an answer is to learn more about the "value created" scale.
How to do it? In each specific case it is different. The easiest option is to ask the manager (if he is motivated to talk about it). The option is a little more complicated - to become a manager yourself and scout everything from the inside.
6. Perform your duties always with maximum interest, regardless of motivation
The one who does not do what he is told will never break through to the top,
and one who does no more than what he is told.
Andrew Carnegie.
If you are doing a task, always do it with the highest quality, or don’t take on the job at all!
There is such a thing in business as "Exceeding Expectations". In short, this is a technique when a client receives a service or product that not only fully satisfies the declared characteristics, but also with additional options that were not declared in the original offer. In this case, the cost does not change. This approach causes an emotional imbalance that gives rise to a whole chain of positive reactions that bring additional bonuses to the seller. In the form of a loyal customer, positive recommendations that bring new customers, purchases of additional accessories, etc. All together, this causes a certain resonance, which, without your participation, works for your profit for a long time.
This concept of resonance holds true for enterprise social engineering as well. The results of the employee's work, which each time slightly exceed the expectations of the management, involuntarily hook this leadership on an emotional hook. But this is just bait on the hook. And if we don't set off specific requests for preferences, then these excesses of expectations can become the norm and cease to be excesses. There is a fine line to be understood here. After all, we said that the “Exceeding Expectations” effect occurs without changing the cost of the product / service, due to additional bonuses that allow you to lead among other competitors (in our case, team members).
If we discard cynicism, then we can advise you to always perceive any task as your personal challenge and do it with the highest quality and efficiency, regardless of the expected reward. As a rule, this approach causes the resonance mentioned above, which affects career growth.
In my practice, there was a case when a caring developer, who took the life of the company as “his own”, eventually received an offer to become its co-owner.
7. When making a decision, act naturally, not trying to please someone.
It is better to be decidedly wrong than to be hesitantly right.
Tallulah Bankhead
We discussed in the first part of the article, such a flaw as indecision and ruled that he is an enemy of career growth.
In this publication, we will consider only one of the common reasons for indecision, such as the desire to please the curator. Against the background of this puppyish desire, doubts arise as to what will conquer the patron more: this or that. And instead of just looking for the optimal solution in a given situation, there is an internal struggle to select a path that can win over. As a result, some kind of falsehood, cynicism and other unpleasant shades appear. From the outside, this fawning is certainly visible, and it looks most often pitiful.
When making decisions, don't get hung up on how the decision will look from the outside. Do not leave food for cockroaches in your head, getting rid of them later will be very problematic. This is your decision, it cannot be bad (in extreme cases - erroneous). Discuss it with others, prove your case, especially to yourself. But at the same time, it is very important to listen to others and admit your mistakes.
A result-oriented manager is more comfortable working with self-confident people. They are more difficult to manage, but much easier to make decisions in conditions with greater certainty.
I have a slogan in my Skype account: “Success is not necessarily achieved by the one who makes the right decisions, but by the one who makes the decisions right.”
8. Beware of illusions of success
The main rule of reality is not to get lost in your illusions.
x/f Beginning (Inception)
Once I had to work with a team that turned retrospective - an Agile methodology tool designed to analyze the results of the completion of the current stage of work, with the subsequent improvement of the workflow, turned into a ritual of team self-praise.
Just a manager, I read somewhere that a team is the nature of a complex nervous organization, and it should only be praised and cherished, while protecting it from criticism. Therefore, during the retrospective, the team came up with at least five positive moments of the analyzed stage. Since the team was very young, it was precisely they who invented their victories, and did not state successes.
From the outside, the process looked like a groom making his way to the bride’s apartment at a wedding through the line of her relatives and girlfriends, squeezing out a promise in front of each new outpost, in what other way will he make the life of his future wife and her relatives happier. “I will carry it in my arms! I will pamper my mother-in-law!..” These achievements, sucked from the finger, the team wrote down in a journal so that they would never be remembered again, and not in order to project success onto less successful processes.
To my question, when are we going to sort out problems and mistakes, I received an answer that the team is still young and we don’t need to traumatize it with unpleasant memories. According to the manager, this motivating approach has worked great in his previous projects, is an agile methodology, and hasn't let him down so far. But in the next larger project, with this approach, the whole scheme crumbled like a house of cards. The team, living in the euphoria of their own illusions, did not pay attention to obvious problems in the product being developed and the processes of its creation until it was time to transfer the complex result to the customer, and that to pay for all this disaster.
This story is about how you can easily fall into a trap if you managed to successfully drag a simple case through a mechanism built only on your feelings and guesses, which is far from a really working scheme. The first successful experience causes the euphoria of success, driving a sense of caution into the most remote corners of consciousness. But the next really difficult case puts everything in its place. Often, problems do not appear immediately, but remain behind, gradually driving into a trap, lulling attention with deceptive impressions from past fleeting experience. When a critical mass of errors accumulates behind you, the whole structure begins to collapse.
You must be wary of new methodologies that you have not tested, even if they are hung with numerous laurels and treated with honors. Especially if the instructions for their use are declarative in nature, there is a high probability that you will pick up only a ritual from the surface, without understanding the deep subtleties that are very individual for various everyday cases.
9. Pump emotionally when changing professional roles
I am not a pessimist. I'm a cold, tired, hungry optimist
Olga Gromyko. (Loyal enemies)
With age and professional “mothering”, most often the spark of innovation goes out in the eyes of a specialist. No, he does not necessarily cease to be an innovator, but from the young and hot side, this innovation looks like in slow motion: boring, uninteresting and annoyingly slow. Time is running out, competitors are on the alert, every minute counts and any delay is just criminal negligence.
Therefore, when changing jobs, areas of activity and other movements in professional spaces, on the one hand, it is desirable to pump yourself emotionally, for example, with the help of energizing trainings or special literature, and on the other hand, to load younger, but less experienced colleagues, delegating authority to them. And let them perform the miracle that they expect from you. Teach them how to do miracles, and keep them busy with the process!
10. Don't project your product implementation experience onto a process management model.
Someone else's happiness always seems to you exaggerated.
Charles de Montesquieu
We found out in the first part of the article that it is not comme il faut to evaluate the work of managers from the point of view of performers uninitiated in the art of management. They have a different set of indicators for evaluating effectiveness. This is due to the fact that the requirements for the production process of a product and for the organization of the production of this product are two completely different functions that require different skills and competencies, different personal characteristics, psychological and ethical preparedness, etc. for their effective implementation.
The only indicator that in this case can be used to whip a manager, while observing morality and ethics, is “failure to implement projects”, for which he is directly responsible. Here is his score. Of course, he has a million reasons that objectively prevented him from doing everything “as it should”, but these, as they say, are no longer your problems.
Source: habr.com