Career types

Life is fair to some and unfair to others. Someone is born into a family of a wealthy owner of factories and steamships, is educated at Harvard and runs a family company. Well, if you are not so lucky, then you will have to climb a steep career ladder to the chair of a company manager, winning every step from people like you - young, enterprising and promising. It is very easy to get lost in this sea of professionalism, and you may have to wait for a promotion long enough simply because you are unlucky … or because you are a woman … or because you follow certain rules that your colleagues easily bypass, overtaking you. in career growth.

Remember how you discussed in the smoking room that Masha from the advertising department makes a career "through bed", Vasya from the financial department is "a sucker, which are few", and Marina from the accounting department "will stop at nothing", and try to look at it from another sides as on career types.

Raising through the bed?

Most of the top managers are men. Professional, serious, career-focused, but still men, with their own weaknesses and shortcomings. And one of these weaknesses can be a young and beautiful subordinate. And a young and beautiful girl, being a purposeful girl, sometimes takes advantage of her boss's weakness to her advantage.

My former classmate Francesca is currently the Marketing Director of one of the product lines of a well-known Italian corporation. She is a very beautiful girl, and also capable and quick-witted, and the problem is that in the company where she works, all the young employees are capable, hard-working and smart. It is almost impossible to stand out against this background, so my classmate did not even hope to take off in her career until she went to the group weekly training of the corporation in Paris. On her first night, the CMO spotted her and, without much ado, invited her to spend the rest of the week in his room. During the day, my classmate tried to show her boss her marketing knowledge at corporate seminars, but at night … at night she showed everything else. The week passed unnoticed, and when parting Francesca did not insist on continuing the story, but the boss noted her successes not only in bed, but also at daytime seminars, and at the next management meeting suggested promoting a young talented girl.

Francesca herself is calm about the fact that she achieved her career advancement "through bed." “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she says. "I have the brains and the ability to do my job, but if I hadn't been in the bed of the CMO, I would never have been able to share my ideas with him and show me where I am professionally."

End justifies the means?

In every office there are such wonderful nice guys who know how many spoons of sugar the boss puts in coffee, always congratulate the wife of the president of the company on her birthday and take the CFO's mom's dog to the veterinarian. Ordinary employees hate them and call them sycophants, but their bosses love them, consider them promising and pleasant people in all respects and actively promote them up the career ladder.

And why just sycophants? Let's call this knowledge of psychology and the ability to find an approach to any person - qualities that are appreciated in any professional environment. Demonstrate to your boss that he interests you primarily as a person, with all his interests, hobbies and family joys, and he will also be interested in you, and then another promotion is not far off.

Whose Idea?

Plagiarism reports appear in newspapers almost every day. Famous singers steal songs from lesser-known ones, filmmakers copy ideas for films from each other, and Toyota has just admitted to using Ferrari's technical findings.

In everyday life, especially in the office, you also hear that one employee presented the idea of another as his own and received an undeserved promotion from his superiors. Harsh prose of life and such career types very common.

Is it possible to steal an idea at all? And how can you prove that this idea came first into someone else's head, and not yours? If people work together for a long time, in the same team and on the same project, then over time they begin to think in the same direction. Your colleague came up with an idea, and you conjectured it and presented it to your superiors. From a corporate point of view, the one who understands and navigates the situation faster is worthy of promotion!

Towards the target for the "corpses"?

Probably, almost every one of us has in the office such cute and calm creatures that "do not have enough stars from the sky", are not interested in a career and often inadvertently make various oversights of one degree or another. The problem is that most companies lately have relied on the principle of "teamwork" and one such daisy girl can pull everyone who is associated with her at work to the bottom of her.

Like, for example, Valentina, who worked as a dispatcher in a large transport company together with Alexandra. Valentina was engaged in the formation of groupage cargo from different factories at the intermediate warehouse, and she coped with this task brilliantly. Unfortunately, Sasha, who later had to transport this cargo to the end client, sometimes inadvertently sent the goods in the wrong direction … As a result, the clients made serious claims to the company, and the authorities thought to fire both girls. When the clouds were completely thickened, Valya went to the boss and told him everything as it is. As a result, she was promoted to the level of logistics manager, and disorderly Alexandra was fired.

What would you do in her place? We have been told since childhood that it is a shame to complain. We grew up with the firm belief that problems in the team should be resolved quietly among ourselves, without handing over the guilty to the authorities.

Have you ever thought that while you cover up the shortcomings of another fool and worry that she would be fired, she calmly hovers in the clouds and absolutely does not worry about how her mistakes can affect you? Learn to appreciate your own work and do not feel sorry for those who are not interested in it - your career will only benefit from this.

All of the above career types unacceptable for most of us. It’s a shame to get promoted in this way, but… effective! If for the sake of a career you are ready for anything, then intelligence, lack of remorse and a healthy dose of selfishness will always help you advance in the service, bypassing more principled colleagues. Will it make you happy? You know better … Will you find new friends? Definitely not … But you will make a career.