When I look back on all the jobs I’ve held since first entering the workforce at the ripe age of 14, there’s one thing that remains the same. The level of enjoyment, satisfaction and motivation are mostly influenced by one thing, the interactions with other humans.
The people you work with has a big impact on how you perceive and enjoy each job. That’s where I’ve learned my lessons. I’ve been lucky to have met many different and all interesting people. From long term retail employees, to IT specialists and construction workers. It’s taught me how to deal with people, how to solve problems in different ways and how to identify the different expectations.
At times I’ve very much cherished the workplace relations with other colleagues, other times I’ve been affected by them. Each experience has given me something to think about and learn about. If I had the same attitude and approach to people as I did 10 years ago, I probably wouldn’t do so well in my current employment. So in a sense, I’m glad I’ve had both positive and negative experiences.
So to share a lesson with you, I’d say that tolerance is the greatest thing I’ve learned in the last decade of working. Understanding that every individual has the capacity to think and act differently to you is important. Guessing or assuming people will respond a particular way to something isn’t very clever. It’s important to accept people and to always respect them, even in times of irresponsibility. We are all at different stages of our lives and careers. We are unaware of different aspects that could be affecting one’s personal life. Often we perceive each other incorrectly, we perceive them according to our standards, not according to a general standard. People who we think are working against us are probably just curious as to our way of thinking and analysing problems.
Meeting difficult people is a two way lesson. We can learn how to deal with uncomfortable situations better but we should also be assessing whether we contributed to the difficulty in the first place. We often say to ourselves “gee, that person has a negative attitude, they don’t contribute to team morale do they”. What we should be thinking is “how have my actions helped in bringing about the best outcome given the circumstances”
If we focus more on ourselves and what we can do then all our concerns of others tend to have less importance. If we are making the contribution because we want to solve problems and contribute to our organisation then there would be less time to judge and point the finger at others.
Whether we like it or not, for most tasks we need to rely on others to accomplish them. If we can ignore minor distinctions in peoples’ personalities then the focus is placed on the work. As long as you are adding value, there will be people sceptical of you but it’s much better to sit back and reflect on what you accomplished than to talk of the flaws of your colleagues. We all have flaws. It’s better to work with peoples’ strengths.
