Sept. 15, 2005
A friend of mine quoted me this the other day:
"rule of thumb is the more you keep your body out of the water,
the more people think they can pile on you before you can drown.
Unfortunately, they often fail to remember the 1/9th philosophy
wrt icebergs. If only they knew what we are already carrying
before they threw more crap on us."
This is true of everyone who is competent at their jobs, I suspect,
but my experiences have been that it is even more so with women.
Women, at least those in my current immediate circle, tend to
be less apt to "blow their own horn", and just carry on with
their jobs, being
quietly competent. It's great to work with people like that, but
many (most?) people forget about all the unsung work that they
are doing in the background! We're just not good at tooting our
own horns. I'm sure this applies to plenty of men, too, but
majority of the
men I know seem to know how competent they are (or think they're
competent when they're not) and aren't shy about letting people
know about their opinions of themselves.
Is this something we can train? Or should we look at training
managers to better identify and recognize, in both senses of
the word, the quietly competent folks? Or, are we doomed to
have icebergs worth of tasks piled on us until we sink? Hmmm.