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.