Are you a problem solver or a problem? Do you ignore people around you; calling it being serious. Do you show interest in the work your colleagues are tasked with and do you appreciate and applaud their successes, whether they are your senior’s or your junior’s?
Are you only engaging in conversations for the sake of gossiping? Or maybe you are a flirt or an inappropriate person? Or you are the work place ‘moody one’ such that it is hard to get a smile or laughter out of you? Are you sociable, open, honest and supportive?
Who are you at work?
Your work place takes up 8 to 9 hours of your time and unless you are a night shift worker, truck driver, an astronaut or a pilot you spend this time with other workers. Working a whole day with other people demands that you build and establish a kinship with them. That you make an effort to say more to them than just give them orders, respond to their questions or reprimand them for a task not to your satisfaction.
Be part of the team, whether or not you are the boss. In fact, if you are the boss subordinate yourself in order to achieve a common goal. Your voice does not have to be the only voice heard all the time.
Whether the employee or the boss when you are tasked with something avoid having a
“What I am I going to get out of this?” attitude.
Sydney Harris said, “the hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded and to say,
‘I was wrong.’”
Be fair, cooperative and courteous whether or not you will get something for it. Be interested in your colleagues work. Be a fixer and not a finger pointer. Be the bearer of an injustice and forget about having to get even. Be empathetic, be kind, be firm, be capable; ‘show don’t tell’!
Be reliable and dependable and relay crucial information at the right time, even when it will benefit someone else’s career or pocket. Be the one to be discussing matters and solving problems. Be the one to be handling conflicts well and not gossip. Gossip is usually only half the story and feelings get hurt, someone gets fired or reprimanded and reputations are ruined. As a professional reputation is all you have, treat another’s like it is your own, with care and respect.
