Women's career: 10 tips from my grandmother

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

After my first unsuccessful work experience, I was tormented by a terrible depression. I felt insignificant and worthless to myself. And the only person who managed to take me out of this state is my grandmother.

It so happened that I have the closest and most trusting relationship with her. In any situation, she finds the right words for me. But he never regrets, but tells stories from his own eventful life. And these stories of hers are the most invaluable lessons for me. They helped me a lot in their time. Maybe they will help some of you.

My grandmother was once a big boss. And this despite the fact that she grew up in the most ordinary family, and her student years coincided with the first years after the war. Not the easiest time, especially for a girl.

She began her first job searches while still studying, simply because it was an unaffordable luxury to study in those turbulent times. Although among her classmates there were "dragonflies" who preferred to have fun in their free time. But my grandmother was not one of those. She was never afraid of work, she gradually began to earn good money, gained experience, and after receiving her diploma she was able to choose the most interesting proposal. She became an economist, in the first five years she managed to move to a higher organization, get married and give birth to a son. After the decree, she was invited by her former director, who was transferred to another industry. Then another chain of promotions, and so on to the chief economist and head of the planning department of a large furniture factory.

"Dear granny, how did you manage to achieve everything yourself?" - I asked her in the hours of despondency. This is what she told me, a loser, then, and what I will definitely teach my children when their turn comes:

1. Education. The one that comes in handy, the one that you need. If I chose the university and the faculty correctly, it means that I solved half of the problems at once. I was wrong - I wasted several years in vain.

2. When looking for a job, check all the options., analyze in advance what this or that will give you, and strive persistently, without lowering your hands, head and corners of your mouth. In life, even in difficult moments, one must defile with a smile.

3. Perform yourself with delicacy, diplomacy and intelligence right from the start … Never go forward (initiative is punishable), but do not sit in the last rows either.

4. Do not argue with the guide over trifles, but if you are sure that you are right, go to the end.… Never be rude and do not raise your tone, argue and prove the truth with facts. Then you will be able to sit out 13 directors (three of them were demoted to prison in my grandmother's practice) and remain an impeccable employee and the right person.

5. Don't look for easy ways … never trade yourself in order to get a place higher. There, the first places are distributed faster than in sports competitions, the medal is usually given with the reverse side, as a consolation prize. At one time, the minister invited my grandmother to “look at the renovation at the dacha,” but he respected it more when she refused.

6. Don't take left moneyif you don't want to get a deadline. My grandmother had an appointment with the KGB more than once, but she was never within their walls for more than two hours, because her conscience was clear.

7. Do not reckon with the work scheduleif you want to achieve heights, if necessary, work on weekends and after the end of the working day. Then everything will be credited to you.

8. If you have become a boss, you must remember that a good leader is a person who can sit at any table in his department and not fall face down in the dirt … Only in this way will you prove your objectivity in the assessment and only in this way will you be able to help when circumstances require. Plus, you'll get respect from your employees, which is important. My grandmother could replace the entire department for a couple of days - nothing, the work was in full swing.

9. Never make your privacy in the public domain, your problems are only your problems, while others have enough of their own.

10. Do not stop there, if there is an opportunity to go further - go … Sometimes there is not enough knowledge and experience, so use any perspective to raise the bar of your capabilities. You can and should learn all your life.

And one more, the last one: if your career doesn't work out in any way, and work does not bring pleasure, it is time to change something, and this is never, believe me, too late. It is better to spend a few years mastering a new interesting profession than to spend your whole life trying to find yourself in a business that does not bring you any joy. Do you know what I ended up doing? She changed her profession.