Perspectives Part 1
When I reflect on my career thus far, one of the most important lessons I have learned is how to change my perspective on my work. In this post, I’ll be talking about how my school life impacted my work life and what changes in perspective have helped me build a healthier relationship with work.
School Conditioning
From early on in our lives until we graduate from college, we attend school where there’s a teacher (the leader of the classroom) and where you are a student (someone who reports to the teacher). There are many advantages of attending school - you learn to interact with a wide range of other students, how to absorb information, and how to measure your success…at least in a school setting. However, I see some negativity with school, not necessarily at it’s core but some of the ways that school conditions our brains to react in specific ways to specific situations.
Deadlines
Ever felt like this before? Probably when you were cramming for an exam or trying to finish that project right before the deadline. How did you feel when that was happening? Frustrated, upset, anxious, nervous, right? School conditions us to feel these negative emotions when we’re under the stress of a deadline. It’s both good and bad - deadlines have to exist otherwise no work would ever get done! But the difference that you can make in your life is to change your perspective at work when you’re in these high pressure situations. Not only can this help make you feel better emotionally, it can also you strive to be more successful.
Here’s my old thought process when I performed really well in the past but was still crunching through work all the way up to a deadline:
“Ugh, it’s all my fault that I’m in this situation. I should have worked 60 hours last week and not gone out to dinner with my friends after work on Monday. I must not be performing well if I’m this far behind.”
After years of feeling this way, I started to really put thought into why I would snap straight to these thoughts and emotions. It boiled down to my experiences from school! In school, when you’re in these types of situations, they tend to be self-inflicted (especially if you like to procrastinate). At work, sometimes it is your fault and you have to make sure that you understand when it is and when it’s not. Let me show you my current thought process when I know it’s not my fault:
“I’ve been performing well and I have a lot of work to do for this upcoming deadline. This work I have isn’t a punishment - it represents the trust that my leadership and my peers have in my ability to deliver. It’s also an opportunity for me to stretch and grow.”
It took me a long time to reach this point but now I look forward to that pressure and difficulty. Just like happiness cannot exist without sadness, growth cannot exist without being challenged. If you have a good manager and a good team, they’ll be looking for those opportunities to stretch you but it’s up to you to have the right perspective and understand when you’re in a situation that produces growth. Flip your perspective and keep yourself a little more sane.
Teacher/Student
When I think about the student/teacher relationship in school, I see it as one where the teacher has a set of knowledge that they are trying to teach the student. It can feel like a one way street a lot of the time because the teacher is the one delivering the lectures, handing out homework, and giving you exams. This is another aspect of school that conditions individuals to look at the employee/manager relationship in a similar way.
Let me ask you a question - what’s the most important asset a company has? You might say something like, “Product X! That makes us tons of money!” or “Clearly, the money itself!”. But I believe that the most important asset a company has are its people. Without them, nothing would be possible. And what’s one important responsibility that a manager has? Growing their people.
Notice that I said “growing” and not “teaching”. A great manager will not teach the employee step by step how to accomplish X/Y/Z. Instead, they will define the outcome of completing X/Y/Z and help find you resources to guide you along the way. But the journey of collaborating with others, having design discussions, reviewing test cases, and evaluating security risks - that is where the growth happens and that’s where I see a difference between a teacher and a manager. Don’t go to your manager expecting them to give you all the answers, that’s not how you’re going to grow. Instead, go to your manager to understand how you can grow, what experiences you want/need, and how you can work together to further your career.
Your relationship with your manager is also not a one-way street. Think for a minute, is there something that you dislike about your job? Or something that you wish you were working on? Okay, great. Now ask yourself, “Does my manager know this?” If you answered “no”, ask yourself, “How is my manager supposed to help me fix that part of my job?” No, your manager cannot read your mind. Therefore, if you don’t talk to them about the experiences you want or the problems in your job, they have no chance of being able to figure out how to help you. When you feel like your needs are not being met and you feel like it’s your manager’s fault, make sure to take the time to put yourself in their shoes and understand if they are actually aware of what you need.
This two-way dialog is also important for your long term career goals. I’ll use myself as an example - about two years ago, I made it known that I was moving in the direction to become a manager. I discussed this with my manager and other leaders on my team. As a result, there were opportunities that I was given to grow my skills as a manager because I had those conversations. If your manager and leadership understand the type of role that you want, they can find opportunities to grow you in that direction. Then when the opportunity to put you in that role comes, you’ll be ready - it’s a win-win!
Conclusion
To be clear, this post is not meant to discredit school - school at it’s core is great! I just think that school and work are very different and sometimes require different perspectives. No matter what stage of your career you’re in, I hope that this information is useful to you in some way, whether it can help you personally or help you help others. More discussion on perspectives to come in Part 2!
