Life Lessons from a Challenging Workplace
The other day, a very good friend of mine came to me for advice. She was having a lot of challenges in her work place, and she asked me if I had any life lessons for her. I suggested that the best way for her to move forward was to think what lessons she could find in it. She came back to me with a few life lessons, which I’ll share here:
Different people need different things
One important lesson that I could have learned earlier in that job was that when you are new to a role, you need to pay very close attention to what is important to different people. Each person will be impressed by a different type of work product or communication style. Some people put a premium on personal communication and will ignore emails sent to large groups. Others place importance on the quality of deliverables, but don’t require a lot of communication about the process. Any time we are in a work place, we need to take the time to understand the work styles of our various team members. The most successful people will take a tailored approach to working with each person, according to that person’s strengths and preferences. This is especially important with our supervisors, but also applies to our other colleagues.
Help may come from unexpected places
