På jobbmöte

På ämnet arbetsliv och att hantera kollegor på jobbet kommer här en redogörelse från en särskilt begåvad individ jag varit i kontakt med vid några tillfällen.

"Why I enjoy being self-employed.
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I no longer have to do the following...
In order to keep the peace at work, or at least keep my job, I'd often have to learn to use a strategy that required me to get my colleagues and/or bosses to think my ideas were theirs. The way it usually worked was like so:
Colleague or boss: “Hey, I think we should do [insert really stupid thing]!”
Me: <thinking…No, you don’t want to do that. That is going to be incredibly costly and foolhardy. I can even show you how that will be, if you need visuals. But I actually say> “That sounds promising! Oh, I wonder if we could do [insert a hyperbolized version of the stupid thing they just suggested that highlights the flaw in what they want to do].
Colleague or boss: “No way! We can’t do that!! If we did, then it would be incredibly costly and foolhardy.”
Me: “Ohhh…Hmm, I guess that won’t work. [If they don’t catch on by now, continue with stronger hint] So what other kind of situations like that would be silly? I don’t want to make that mistake again.
Colleague or boss: [Now feel like they’re doing me a favor…schooling me]. Well, any kind of situation that [voice lowers as it dawns on them] blah blah blah. [Time to save face, and get on the right course]
And that *may* sound like what I said we should do, but the key difference is we’re going to {insert whatever that should have been obvious in the first place, IMO} and make this amazing.”*
Me: “Wow! You really think of everything! How do you do it?”
Colleague or boss: “Well, you just keep hanging with me, and you’ll learn.”
*sometimes they still didn’t see the error in their revised suggestion, so I'd have to do the whole hyperbole thing again.
Alas, it all kind of got too nerve wracking for me. As you likely guessed, the benefit of being that über-friendly lackey is that I’d get the job, even keep the job, but consequently when it was time to get advanced or promoted, I’d be constantly overlooked. “Well, you’re a nice guy, but [Colleague or Boss] has had some really impressive ideas that when we implemented them, made us an incredible profit. ”
Yeah, not missing that!"
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Not: När man läser berättelsen ovan är det lätt att se någon som analyserar och löser problem snabbt. Jag själv ser också någon som gör ett etiskt ställningstagande där organisationens bästa prioriteras högre än erkännande och personlig framgång. Någon som kan läsa av andra och anpassa sig till en miljö som inte inte tillåter honom att vara sig själv, men som inte stod ut i längden.