Are you currently in employment? Do you desire to get to the top in your career? Or you simply want to mark time and join the multitudes who only work to pay the bills? Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing with you certain things that every employee that desires to get to the top in their career should know.
The first thing every employee needs to know is that time is the number one asset you bring into the establishment. You must therefore invest it fruitfully. When he offered you employment, your employer simply bargained for a portion of your time. So, technically speaking, your employer didn’t really employ your person, he was bought your time. By accepting the offer of a job, you were accepting the employer’s assessment of and offer for the value of your time. Your salary is a reward for your time. So, if you want to earn the reward, spend the time! In many developed countries of the world, people are paid based on the number of hours spent on the job as well as for quantifiable productivity.
In this part of the world, it is not unusual to see people blame the traffic and report at 9 am to an office that opened at 8.00 am, take a break for ‘breakfast’ at 10 am, return at 11 am and take excuse by 12 noon to go to the bank, mosque or church fellowship. He returns at 1.30 pm only to go for school run to pick his children from school at 2 pm. He returns at 3.15 pm (if at all he does) and closes at 3.30 pm! Did you think this sounds ridiculous? Then you have not had much to do with the civil service. This is what gave rise to the aphorism, “Nobody sweats while doing government job”. Another way this nonchalance is manifested is seen in the statement “Whether the master makes profit or not, the servant (employee) must get his pay”
To be a top-notch, high-value employee, have value for time. If you treat time well, time will in turn do you good. According to Ephesians 5:16, we should be “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” The easiest way to attract your boss’ attention and earn his respect and trust is to be the first to arrive in the office and one of the last to leave.
Every day is not Christmas, and your employer is not Santa Claus.
Never work with the misguided notion that the employer is Father Christmas who gives jobs out of deliberate benevolence. Wake up! Christmas comes only once a year! Your employer does not run a charity. He is in business for a definite reason. His commitment to you is only for as long as you are relevant to that cause. Unfortunately, government has been largely responsible for this complacent mindset by institutionalizing an entitled mindset that makes the citizenry believe that the government owes everyone a living. So, people are employed to fill tribal quotas or as their compensation for political loyalty or some other reason that suits the whims and caprices of the government in power. Many civil servants know nothing about the job (and no expectations are set anyway since it is government money they will be getting.
Not so the private sector where your employer considers your salary as an investment that must yield dividends. When it stops doing so, you become an expendable part of the equation. Simply put, your employer does not owe you a salary if you do not oblige him with value. Great employees earn their salary. They don’t just collect it.
In the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30, three servants received seed money from their master for a definite purpose. Each one of them was endowed according to the level of the master’s assessment of his competence. When it was time to render accounts, two of them had justified the master’s confidence in them while the third who got one talent only proved that he was not worthy of even the one he received! The master promptly rewarded the two productive servants to the degree of the value added to his enterprise and he didn’t hesitate to sack the one who had not added value to what he received.
In the field of play called life, the team player is the best player.
If you want to make it to the top in your career, you must recognize that the silo operator is an endangered species. We were created for connections. No one person or thing in creation enhances his – or its – value all by itself. Trying to run a one-man show on the job by trying to be the superstar of the collective only reveals a morbid character deficiency that smirks of a stultified self-esteem. No man succeeds all by himself. The self-made man does not exist, QED! Listen to others. But even more than that, learn from them. Offer a helping hand to other members of the team. Never try to sabotage the efforts of any colleague because you want to prove a point. It portrays you as petty, unreliable and inordinately and vindictively ambitious. Collaboration and synergy will always get any job done faster than solo, individualized efforts. In the wisdom of the Yoruba, running alone is what hastens the death of a snake, no matter how venomous. If the puff adder would collaborate with the python and the cobra and they walk together, no one alive would dare venture to attack, talk less of killing any of the trio.
Learn to reinforce and acknowledge the contribution of every member of your team. Be mindful of the fact that all the members of the team, including you, came on board because of their perceived strengths. Organizations don’t recruit people because of their weaknesses but based on their strengths. This is the value they have been called to add to the enterprise. So, stop relating with your colleagues based on their weaknesses, or else you will never have the benefit of their best performance and co-operation. Identify with your team members in their pains and in their joys.
Even when the Almighty God Himself wanted to create the universe, He did not work alone. He engaged the Godhead-in-council, which we refer to as the Trinity. Jesus came to save the world, but He took the time to assemble and work with a team of disciples. The Bible teaches us that one will chase a thousand and two will chase ten thousand. Synergy helps us to get results that are in multiples of effort put in. How awesome! If you attempt to engineer the failure of a member of the team, bear in mind that when the chips are down, he may also have sympathizers from within the team who will eventually administer to you a generous dose of your own hemlock. If you carry yourself around with a Messiah complex that makes you feel that you are the next saviour of the world, do not be deceived, success has never been a solo effort. Even the Messiah needed people to make His earthly assignment a reality. You need others as much as they need you…continued.
Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!
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