It's not your poor ability in the workplace, it's these three "traps" that are holding you back

"Before New Year's Day, there was a vacancy for a leadership position in the company, and everyone thought that the colleague with the strongest business ability would be elected, but it turned out that the person who was promoted was a person with average business ability, does it not need the ability to be a tie?"

Many people in the workplace will have the question, "Obviously I am better at my job than he is, why is he the one who gets promoted and given a raise?" If you're struggling with this, you may have fallen into a trap that you can't get out of.

If we are asked to do something we are good at k, we are motivated because we know that it is something I am good at and I are confident that we can do it well, whereas if we are not good at it, we will not touch it easily and we may even resist.

It's an unspoken rule in the workplace that "I just need to do my job", and it's a rule we all agree on that limits our possibilities.

While you are reluctant to try new jobs, other colleagues are already ahead of you and have tried many management positions, so you will naturally fall behind on the way to promotion, and this is where you are held back by your ability trap.

In addition, it is a logic shared by all staff to plan in advance and then achieve it step by step.

For example, if you want to be a leader, according to this logic, you must have a "plan", because in this logic, if you do not want to be clear, you will never know what to do.

But in our current state, can we know how to be a leader just by thinking about it? The chances of being able to think are almost zero, and if you can't think clearly, you naturally don't have the action to follow, and you stagnate.

So what we need is to do it first, to learn how others do it first, to learn from others to do what a leader should do. By doing, you will understand the reasoning, not just "thinking".

So to seek change, you need to change your thinking and your way of doing things, which is the process of "acting before thinking".

01

Redefine your work and don't be swayed by your strengths

Like all engineering boys, he was interested in technology and had first-class business skills. He has been working in his current company for 8 years, and in the opinion of outsiders, with his current business skills, he could have been a supervisor, but he is still a programmer, a senior programmer.

But he is still a programmer, a senior programmer. His colleague, Wei, who joined the company at the same time as him, has long since moved up to the management level and become his cousin's leader. Many people think that his cousin must have problems with a certain aspect of his work and that is why he is not promoted, but the result is just the opposite.

Because his business is too strong, this post can not do without him, a lot of technical problems are only he can deal with, and no one dares to let him have a change, he is like a nail is nailed in this post, you see, the too strong business ability can sometimes become a hindrance.

His colleague Wei, on the other hand, not only does his work but sometimes learns to do some of the work of a management post, which gives him added leverage to his competitiveness.

So do you still think that if you are good at business, you will have a chance of promotion?

One of the characteristics of the competence trap is that we hate change. This is because we are used to defining our jobs by what we are good at or what we are skilled at, like my hairdresser who thinks he is a programmer and just needs to be good at the technical side of things, which makes him draw a blank and blocks out other possibilities.

So if you want to be a leader, it's essential to try out other jobs, the ones you're not good at can give you more possibilities, and your chances of promotion are probably hidden in your attempts, and when changes happen in your life, it's an opportunity to reinvent yourself as a leader.

02

Rebuilding networking relationships and beware of interpersonal pitfalls

We all post friendships about our companies at work, your colleagues go on to post work-related statuses, and on top of that big data gives you some relevant tweets, which makes us open our friendships and see mostly this content, making us feel that our company or the field we are involved in has a good future.

If you are an entrepreneur, be extra careful, it can lead you into the illusion of false prosperity. When the social circle becomes narrower, when we only deal with people who have the same hobbies, we don't see the truth, we don't see more opportunities and we can easily fall into groupthink.

One is the "narcissism principle", which means that we all like to associate with people who are similar to us, so we can check if our friends around us are more or less like us in some way.

The other is the "laziness principle", we only like to associate with people who are close to us, even if we were close friends before, once we are far away, we will slowly drift apart.

These two things create an interpersonal trap that makes it difficult for us to break out of our circles and reach out to more possibilities.

When it comes to breaking the circle, many people think: "Don't be too utilitarian in your friendships", but if we think about it more deeply, there is also a utilitarian aspect to relationships between relatives and partners, as both involve the exchange of resources, which is inevitable.

So the question of "utilitarianism" is meaningless, and we should not discuss it too much, but just get to know more different people and feel their value.

Meeting different people will prevent us from falling into groupthink. You will see different ideas and more possibilities in different people, and someone's inadvertent remark may be a turning point for you.

03

Change the way you do things and look for a different direction of development

There is a saying: "Be true to yourself". When we are young we always want to be ourselves.

When we were younger we always wanted to be ourselves. For example, when our fathers advised us to be on good terms with our colleagues, we would scoff because we thought it was hypocritical I wanted to be myself, so I wouldn't deliberately try to be "nice".

When is "being yourself" really about being who you are, who you are today, or who you were yesterday? There is no point in being yourself if you can choose to be better than you are.

I believe that many people resist change when they say "I want to be myself", and that "being myself" is just a way of saying that they don't want to get out of their comfort zone, which is what we call the authenticity trap.

In American politics, there is a man who is known as a "chameleon", because he can integrate quickly in any environment, he can communicate with people in the language of that environment, and he can empathize with them, so he became President of the United States.

In his case, "chameleon" is a positive word. He is not hypocritical, but because he has his outlook on life and his ideals, his outward appearance is one of positive integration.

On the contrary, many people insist on being "real", and their insistence on being real makes them feel out of place, which makes it difficult for them to fit in.

So if you want to be a leader, you have to learn to "adapt", to learn and embrace the people and the environment around you, to "conserve all things without contention", to be able to adapt to any environment when we are in it, and this is how we all grow.

Aristotle once said: "Do more good, and you will slowly become a good person". If you want to become a leader, you must first think of yourself as a leader and learn to do things the way they are done.