10 lessons I learnt from my dogs that I apply to corporate life - Part 2

5. Be loyal. There is never a day that I could ever doubt how loyal my dogs are to me - your organisation needs to feel the same. Chances are you have signed things like confidentiality agreements, Intellectual Property rights and other such documents your company uses to protect themselves. But in softer terms they depend on your discretion not to say negative things about them, reputation is a very important asset and one which should be protected.

If you feel you are being overlooked for promotion, or feel like you might want to start looking elsewhere, I have a big tip for you - tell your boss how you feel - in the right way of course! If they value you (and are loyal to you too - it works both ways) they will not want to risk losing you and will work it out with you. If they don’t value you, their reaction to your telling them how you feel will tell you immediately that it is time to move on. You shouldn’t take this personally; these are business reactions and business decisions and should be considered as such.

For example, I was made redundant early in my construction career. At the time this broke my heart, the person who had to do it was a man who had helped me up the ladder early in my career, he was a mentor and a role model (in fact I still consider him to be one of those pivotal people in my career path) but at the time, all I could see was the person who I had trusted now making me redundant. You see I was taking it personally when of course he was only following a decision made by the organisation at a much higher level - and he wasn’t feeling great about it either.

One thing the redundancy situation did teach me though is that I had to be loyal to me too - if I had an opportunity to further my career with a different employer, I would take it. Done in the right way you don’t need to burn bridges, nobody will really want to stand in your way of progress if you give them enough notice, reasoning and handover. Testament to this is I have twice returned to companies that I have previously worked for and handed notice. See - no grudges - the dogs know what they are doing!!

6. Dogs cannot ‘put on a front’, act like some-one they are not, adapt their behaviour so they fit in better. And we as humans can’t really do that either... we just think we can.

It takes up a huge amount of energy to go around the place pretending that you are somebody different to your true self.

My work on The Sirius System often refers to what I call Spiral Thinking and it leads to The Killer Conformist - women in the workplace dulling down their true personalities so that they ‘fit in’. We create a habit of giving our seniors the answers that we believe they want to hear, rather than coming from our authentic selves. This will usually manifest itself in verbal responses or ‘saying the right thing’ but can also be in behaviours or ‘doing the right thing’, dress or ‘wearing the right thing’, mannerisms etc.

This comes right back to my very first point - your workplace doesn’t want robots - the whole point of having a diverse workforce is that we all bring our individuality to work and your authentic, unique you is where your thoughts, ideas and dreams are stored...so whilst you might sometimes think it is easier to toe the line, be like Darby and Jess and show who you are in all your glory! Believe in your abilities and intelligence (they didn’t employ you as a last resort you know) and show your authenticity and brilliance - the only way to career success and happiness!

Final installment coming soon.....