Do I Need Elbows for a Career?

Here is a group of top-class HR and career experts who regularly provide tips on Application, salary, and career. In this episode, our sage Bernd Slaghuis answers this question:

 “Mr. Slaghuis, do you still have to use your elbows to make a career?”

Bernd Slaghuis: “Yes, of course, every young professional should definitely take a course in hand-to-hand combat and train his elbows hard to defeat the brightest colleagues and toughest competitors in the race for the best career on the track. Only the tough come into the garden – and have a career. You know that, right? Joking aside, so-called “Elbow careers” should actually be a thing of the past. Careers with reckless behavior, wrong play, and selfish walking over dead bodies usually end as soon as they started. No boss promotes you because you are masters at it is to box your way free and successfully fight colleagues. In our working world, togetherness is becoming more and more important: whether in projects, agile work, or in the vision of the boss as a mentor at eye level with his Employees. Hartes G One another and the elbow mentality are out of place here. Rather, you should use your elbows with good intent to achieve goals together as a team hand in hand. But what might sound like a cuddle course and nice collegial togetherness will not help you get ahead in your job either. Anyone who goes down as a nice and always helpful colleague in the team, does it to everyone else more than himself and sacrifices himself for the common cause, will not for further Task nor the assumption of more responsibility make visible and recommend. Rather, it depends on the correct integration of collegial we for the mutual success as a team as well as the independent control of personal professional development. So don’t waste your energy in close combat with your boss and colleagues, nor should you forget yourself at work. A career is made by those who are successful as part of a strong team and who, as the boss of their own lives, consciously control their professional development

Six tips for your career with a head instead of an elbow:

1. Take on a role and function in the team that corresponds to your strengths, talents, and also your personality, and which you can contribute so well to mutual success.
2. Make your strengths and potentials as well as your achievements and successes visible to your boss and other decision-makers in the company. Show what you have achieved as a team and also talk about what part you have played in it.
3. Position yourself as an expert, get involved in projects and develop topics that will continue to be important for your employer in the future.
4. Consciously work continuously on your social skills and qualify yourself for management positions or tasks with greater responsibility.
5. Create clarity for yourself about your personal values ​​and goals at work and talk to your manager regularly about development opportunities that appear attractive to you in the next few years and suit your life situation.
6. Network with interesting people inside and outside your employer to broaden your horizons and build a valuable network for your professional future.

And if you now think “This is all too exhausting for me!”, you can of course also decide to continue the tough fight against your colleagues and to bet everything on it, to make the race the lone winner in the end. ”