During a large meeting, I was told I was rude when I said something in a previous meeting. They were trying to put me on the spot to apologize. In response, I said “if you want a friend, get a dog”
That’s empathy. They presented a problem, I heard their problem and provided a solution.
Beautiful.
Don’t know if this is a confession but here we go
So I’m in my last year of high school and a couple of months ago I sent my résumé to an IT company.
It so happened that on last two Mondays one employee of said company went to our school to teach us something about how it works “in the trench” (agile methodologies, scrum, if anyone’s familiar with the IT world they’ll probably know about these) and had us do some activities to mimic working in a company with a client.
I mentioned to him that I had received no response to my application and he told me he’d look into that. Today my teacher told me he spoke to the guy and he told him they are looking into hiring me part-time, they just need to figure out the burocracy.
That being said, my teacher wanted me to know what the guy told him about me. He said he thinks I have great potential, but my only (his word) flaw is that “I get and process things so fast I get bored easily and stop interacting with the rest of the team.” Basically they both agreed my weak point is teamwork, and I’ve known that for a while. The employee said they’d rather hire 10 mediocre people than 1 excellent one who can’t team up with others.
I told my teacher I’m very excited and looking forward to work on that once I am hired and I’ll make that a priority.
My confession, I guess, is that despite having disregarded this drawback of mine up until now, I’m starting to be seriously worried about how it might interfere with my future career and job life. I truly want to get better at this but I’m not sure how to tackle the issue.
Once you start dealing with real world problems and you have people relying on you to get their work done, these issues go away. It’s not there is ever a shortage of work and you will be stuck in a corner doing nothing.
I truly hope this is the case. I don’t want my potential to be held back by my inability to work in a group.
Like I said, working in a school group where everyone has the same skills and is producing the same thing for the purpose of being assessed is very different to a workplace. Where you have an area to work with and people depend on you and there is someone to answer to.
I wouldn’t conclude that you cant work in any group because you can’t work in a HS group.
When your paycheck depends on you working well with others, you’ll get it together.
I couldn’t give a shit less about working well with others in general, but at my job I don’t care, I just wanna see my paycheck hit my bank account every week and a half.
I wouldn’t worry about it. For one, most prospective employers won’t know you’re not good in a team environment. This is a weird situation. Second, there are plenty of jobs even in IT where you work primarily or even exclusively alone (that obviously depends on the company, what you actually do, etc…).
This. I am not a team player. It make take a while, but you will eventually find one that clicks.
Anyone that would rather hire mediocre talent over excellent talent is a sign of weak leadership and not a company I would be interested in working for.
When I owned my company, I had the best available talent. The guys I hired have moved on to be regional manager of national companies or #1 guys where they currently work. We kicked ass at our job ( and put the company that fired me out of business in 3 years).
If you are excellent talent you need to work with other excellent talent people to grow and stay moving foward.
Couldnt disagree more. I’ll take less talented people who can work as a team any day. You can take mediocre talent and train them, but you can’t train personality. Depending on the industry/position, team efficiency is more important than individual efficiency.
I’m a little confused at your point?
You’ll pick up teamwork working tips as you go along. Teamwork is basically navigating the human psyche. You find out what compels people to help, and you compel them.
I’m not above bribes and appeals to ego. Whenever I need someone’s help, I start out by admitting that I’m clueless, in over my head, and that they’re the person who can help me. People enjoy shifting power dynamics to put them as the superior. If you approach them as equals, they’ll rebut. If you approach them as though you’re in charge, they’ll get defensive.
Heck, one of my favorite things to do is completely pull away the curtain. When I showed up at my current job, there were 4 different secretaries for 4 different sections I had to work with. I had my wife bake 4 dozen cookies, brought each one of them a dozen cookies and said “Hello, I’m new here, I’m working over at X. I know secretaries run the world and I want you to be my friend, so I made you some cookies.”
I NEVER struggle on getting on someone’s schedule or routing something when it comes to dealing with those secretaries.
I’d say team-working skills are definitely more teachable than raw talent. I’d rather have a genius who needs their edges softening than a personable, sociable idiot, to use extremes.
I guess it depends a lot on what work we are talking about though, I suppose some front of house roles the reverse would be true in that inter personal skills are the USP of the role.
“It’s easier to make a fast driver consistent, than a consistent driver fast” is an F1 saying i feel works well as an analogy.
It’s a good thing you didn’t get blasted for calling them secretaries instead of administrative assistants.
It’s actually a specific job title/position, but I used secretaries just for the sake of telling the story.
Although we ALSO have secretaries. …its confusing.
He would have if he didn’t have cookies.
Bring me food and you can call me whatever you want.
The problem with using extremes is I wouldn’t even put a real genius with the team. He would be doing specific work that only a genius can do with a higher salary if I find one.
If we’re talking about just an above average employee who can’t work with a team, that’s a different story. I wouldn’t keep him if he’s affecting the performance of the team as a whole.
Basically you’re talking about being a people pleaser aren’t you? I know it works, but it’s really hard for me. Guess I need to learn and fake it.
That’s what I do.
Being a cantankerous a-hole is easy. It’s why so many people do it. People even revel in it, like it makes them special.
If you can feel that way on the inside, but still be likable and work well with others, you’re working hard.