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The Subtle Ways In Which Ego Shows Up at Work

Vinita Bansal — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:56:13 +0000

You may not realize it, but your ego plays out in many different ways. It quietly seeps into the decisions you make, the way you communicate and how you present yourself. It often shows up as defensiveness, insecurity, control and the need to protect image.

When your goal is to raise your self-esteem, prove to others that you’re smart, intelligent and capable or projecting an image of strength matters to you, your ego gets involved in everything you say and do.

Becoming argumentative when someone disagrees.

Trying to be right by proving others wrong.

Never accepting your mistakes.

Becoming a control freak.

If you don’t consciously watch out for ego, it can damage your relationships at work by coming across as arrogant, selfish, condescending, snobbish and superior. Considering your own ideas, thoughts and opinions as important while holding others in contempt, showing impatience or disrespect through eye-rolling, smirking or sighing or invalidating other people’s feelings, brushing off their suggestions or changing the subject to deflect attention away from an uncomfortable topic are some of the ways in which you may act when your ego feels threatened.

Competitiveness is an important force in life. It’s what drives the market and is behind some of mankind’s most impressive accomplishments. On an individual level, however, it’s absolutely critical that you know who you’re competing with and why, that you have a clear sense of the space you’re in. Only you know the race you’re running. That is, unless your ego decides the only way you have value is if you’re better than, have more than, everyone everywhere. More urgently, each one of us has a unique potential and purpose; that means that we’re the only ones who can evaluate and set the terms of our lives. Far too often, we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet, and as a result, squander our very potential and purpose.
― Ryan Holiday

You can either let your ego run the show which can stagnate your career and degrade your work experience or you can keep it in check by watching out for these small ways in which ego shows up at work:

Resisting help to prove you can do it yourself

When your pride and ego gets tangled up, you fear reaching out and asking for help. You don’t want to risk appearing incompetent. You don’t want to appear weak. You’ve built an identity of an independent person who can overcome any challenge. You want to protect it.

Asking for support feels like surrender when you put up a facade of strength and resilience. It feels like giving up and appearing vulnerable, defenseless and exposed. Hiding your struggles, covering up your feelings of doubt and inadequacy and masking your limitations does not raise your status—it only protects your ego.

Knowing your limits and saving your time by leveraging others’ expertise is a strategic move, not surrender. Accepting reality when you hit a roadblock instead of refusing to give up and pretending everything is fine signals high emotional intelligence, self-awareness and maturity of a person who prioritizes the right outcome over personal pride.

Asking for help does not make you look needy or incompetent. It requires humility and strength. It shows that you believe in your ability to find answers—that you’re open to do the work necessary to succeed.

Asking for help is a power move. It’s a sign of strength to ask and a sign of strength to fight off judgment when other people raise their hands. It reflects a self-awareness that is an essential element in braving trust.
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead

Ego check: Is your priority to solve the problem or protect your image?

Taking feedback personally

Your ego considers any constructive criticism as a personal attack. It forces you to obsess about a negative remark and view it as a measure of your self-worth. It makes you extremely insecure and jumpy about anything that concerns your skills and abilities. It keeps you trapped within your own bubble of self-assessment away from reality.

This makes you defensive—you instantly reject feedback without hearing others out. You look for excuses or blame to justify your results or the outcomes you achieved. You may even counter-attack by belittling others or calling out their own gaps. Ego makes you edgy, reactive, easily irritable and closed-off. You start doubting others’ intent. You turn an important critique into a debate.

Ignoring feedback or putting up a shield of self-defense lets ego protect what it cares about—your self-image. It thinks highly of you which makes it shun down the critiques that are necessary to grow.

Constructive criticism is not an attack on your identity or a sign of disrespect. It’s a useful tool to stay grounded, sensible and open to suggestions. It helps you bridge the gap between perception and reality by uncovering your blind spots and helping you focus on areas that need correction. Putting ego aside can help you pay attention to others inputs, separate signal from noise and accept and acknowledge the hard facts.

Feedback is harsh and uncomfortable. Know how to use it without letting your ego get in the way. Extract the signal from the noise, so you know what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
— Scott H. Young, Ultralearning

Ego check: Is your priority to look flawless right now or become better over time?

Struggling to admit mistakes or saying you were wrong

When you fail at something or make mistakes, instead of showing curiosity to understand what went wrong and taking responsibility for your actions, you may look for excuses and justifications. You may blame others or your circumstances. You may try to cover up your faults. Your ego will not let others discover your flaws, be judged or exposed. It will not let you accept defeat.

To hide your feelings of guilt, shame and inadequacy, you may mislead others, give them false information or deflect attention away from your mistakes. You may refuse to accept you were wrong or made an error. Fear that others will think less of you or you’ll look weak can make you cover up your tracks instead of owning them.

Given a choice, ego will choose denial over reality to keep your self-esteem intact. It wants you to think you’re smart, capable and always right and accepting a failure can shatter that image.

Acknowledging that you made a bad decision or took a wrong action does not make you a failure. It does not harm your reputation or credibility. Rather, taking ownership of your outcomes, finding a solution to your problem and working harder to fix the issue earns you respect—it shows that you can bounce back from a challenging situation stronger and smarter.

Being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem.
― Edward De Bono, Po

Ego check: Is your priority to be right or be effective?

Turning disagreements into personal battles

When you’re too attached to an idea or a viewpoint, any difference of opinion on it turns into a battle. You make it a part of your identity. Confirming views raises your confidence and boosts your self-esteem while disagreements instantly put you off. Your ego does not like dissent and triggers an intense response to shut down opposing views. It keeps you locked inside a tunnel vision where you fail to see the value in alternate perspectives.

Trying hard to prove your point without showing curiosity to listen invites pushback. Repeating your ideas and thoughts while disregarding others views makes you come across as closed-minded, argumentative and arrogant. This creates tension, strains relationships and makes others reluctant to work with you.

Your ego prevents you from seeing the flaws in your thinking—it makes you too rigid to notice the risks and drawbacks. To defend your image, it stamps others as ignorant, flawed or malicious. It creates a false illusion that your opinions signify your worth and someone challenging your idea is inherently challenging you.

Disagreements are not an attack on your identity. They are not a battle ground to win and lose. They’re an opportunity to create win/win situations—look at new ideas, see what you missed and collaborate with others to solve the problem together instead of attacking them. When you approach disagreements with the desire to find the right solution instead of being right, you make others feel safe, heard and valued. It strengthens your work relationships while also setting you up for success. Separate who you are from the idea you are fighting for. If someone proves your idea or argument is wrong, your identity shouldn’t feel crushed.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
― Colin Powell, It Worked for Me

Ego check: Is your priority to learn the truth or to win?

Refusing to let go of control

When you identify your worth with the outcomes you achieve, you have a hard time letting go—it’s too terrifying to trust anyone else to do the job as well and as correctly as you will. This makes you micromanage, refuse to delegate and be involved in the nitty-gritties of every day work. Your ego also fears being no longer needed or valued if things go well without your intervention.

This makes you too involved and too controlling to avoid feelings of shame and embarrassment if things go wrong later. You create dependencies, bottleneck decisions and withhold information to feel important. You dictate how things must be done, making others feel undervalued and suffocated. You jump in prematurely to fix situations without giving others room to self-correct or learn from their mistakes.

Your ego likes to feel secure and superior—dictating how others act and controlling every move makes it feel safe by avoiding future failures and surprises. It equates letting go with being weak, useless and unimportant because it wants to prove that you exist and that you matter.

Letting go is not giving up. It shows that you trust others, believe in their skills and their ability to learn from their mistakes and solve problems on their own. It not only creates space for others to grow, it also gives you time to focus on your own goals and priorities.

You don’t need to control everything that’s happening. You don’t need to push, struggle, fight, force things or try to manipulate people in order to make things the way you want them to be. It’s exhausting and unnecessary.
― John Purkiss, The Power of Letting Go

Ego check: Is your priority to achieve the best outcome or to have things done your way?

Interrupting others to redirect attention towards you

When your ego demands attention, it wants you to be at the centre of every meeting and discussion. It wants you to have the final word, be heard and can’t take it when others appear to be dominating the discussion. It doesn’t like when others get the spotlight. It feels hurt when someone else appears to be capturing interest and attracting attention.

This makes you say and do things that will redirect the focus towards you—hijacking the conversation by interrupting, giving unsolicited advice, passing mean remarks, fault finding or one-upping them by sharing your own experience.

Trying to hog the spotlight and focusing on an opportunity to speak prevents you from processing what the other person is saying. Cutting others off frustrates them as they lose their chain of thought. Treating every conversation as a competition for status and validation turns it into an exhausting game which only leads to loss of trust and backlash.

You cannot learn if your focus is on talking. You cannot build trust if you can’t celebrate others and let them shine. Deep connection is built by making others feel heard, valued and respected—not by owning the room at all times.

To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave; to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention. Listening is not about teaching, shaping, critiquing, appraising, or showing how it should be done (“Here, let me show you.” “Don’t be shy.” “That’s awesome!” “Smile for Daddy.”). Listening is about the experience of being experienced. It’s when someone takes an interest in who you are and what you are doing.
― Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening

Ego check: Is your priority to make a connection or make an impression?

Refusing to revisit decisions

When a decision you made earlier is no longer working for you, when the cost of continuing is more than its benefits and when you can no longer justify the investment in a certain direction, the right thing to do is to pivot, invest in other opportunities or simply quit. However, your ego can make changing course feel like a failure. Quitting can feel like giving up and accepting defeat.

Ego can make you continue investing in a failed cause because it can’t let go of the past investments and calling it quits. Instead of evaluating the opportunity cost of continuing, you focus on the sunk costs. Fear of being judged as incompetent, reckless or a failure makes you maintain an illusion of progress. You don’t want to lose your status. You don’t want to lose face.

Giving up on a failing path or changing direction is not weakness—it’s an act of intelligence to save your future from your past. It shows that you’re capable of making tough and uncomfortable calls. It’s a sign of agility and progress.

Sunk costs do have a small effect—decision makers are biased in favor of their previous investments—but three other factors are more powerful. One is anticipated regret: will I be sorry that I didn’t give this another chance? The second is project completion: if I keep investing, I can finish the project. But the single most powerful factor is ego threat: if I don’t keep investing, I’ll look and feel like a fool. In response to ego threat, people invest more, hoping to turn the project into a success so they can prove to others—and themselves—that they were right all along.
― Adam M. Grant, Give and Take

Ego check: Is your priority to save face or maximize your future potential?

Avoiding people who challenge your thinking

When you pride yourself on your knowledge and expertise, anything that you don’t understand or don’t know appears terrifying and intimidating. You don’t want to appear uninformed. You don’t want to be in a position where you can’t make decisions or lead the group. To avoid appearing ignorant, you avoid people who have the tendency to ask tough questions. You avoid those who typically challenge your thinking. Your ego does not let you accept that it’s normal to not know everything.

You refuse to say “I don’t know” or “I am not sure” because your pride tells you that it will make you appear as someone who lacks experience, wisdom or judgment. So, you either pretend to know or avoid facing such situations. Faking knowledge makes you come across as a fake—others can see when you truly know something and when you’re just faking it. Avoiding situations where you might be challenged prevents you from learning and growing.

Not knowing something does not make you inferior or less valued by others. What matters more is your curiosity, ability to ask questions and the quality of finding the right solution over trying to be right. What leaves a lasting impact is your humility and courage.

Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with “not knowing” is more important than whatever it is you do know. Most people make bad decisions because they are so certain that they’re right that they don’t allow themselves to see the better alternatives that exist. Radically open-minded people know that coming up with the right questions and asking other smart people what they think is as important as having all the answers. They understand that you can’t make a great decision without swimming for a while in a state of “not knowing.” That is because what exists within the area of “not knowing” is so much greater and more exciting than anything any one of us knows.
― Ray Dalio, Principles

Ego check: Is your priority to hide from what you don’t know or to grow from what you can discover?

Summary

Asking for help is not a sign of weakness or incompetence. It is a strategic and self-aware move that shows you prioritize the right outcome over protecting your pride.
Constructive criticism is not an attack on your identity but a valuable tool that helps you uncover blind spots, bridge the gap between perception and reality and grow over time.
Taking ownership of your failures and working to fix them does not damage your reputation. In fact, it earns you far more respect than making excuses or blaming others ever would.
When you separate your identity from your opinions, disagreements become opportunities to discover new perspectives, collaborate effectively and find better solutions together.
Micromanaging and refusing to delegate signals a lack of trust. Letting go not only empowers others to grow but also frees you to focus on what truly matters.
Constantly hijacking conversations to stay in the spotlight destroys trust and connection. Making others feel genuinely heard and valued is what builds lasting relationships.
Holding on to a failing path just to avoid looking wrong is costly. Recognizing when to change course and acting on it is a sign of agility, courage and good judgment.
Dodging tough questions and difficult people stunts your growth. Embracing what you don’t know with curiosity and humility is what leads to better decisions and continuous learning.

9 Signs You’re Stagnating at Work

Vinita Bansal — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:02:19 +0000

Most career slumps don’t announce themselves with a bang. The shift is subtle at first—you may not even notice the change in your work habits and routines that keeps you running on autopilot without forward momentum. You may ignore the signs that point to a sense of dissatisfaction and unfulfilment.

You may still go about meeting your daily expectations, but there’s no excitement or a sense of accomplishment. You may feel unmotivated, unchallenged and disconnected. Work that was exciting at first now feels repetitive and draining.

All your high aspirations, dreams and the desire to do something big seem like a thing of the past. Instead of getting close to the finish line, you seem to be moving further and further away. You feel stuck. You feel restless. You may believe that you have lost your spark.

But a career slump is not a total failure on your part. Whether you’ve outgrown your current position, prolonged stress has depleted your energy or there’s lack of alignment between goals and opportunities, you can get out of the rut by recognizing the signs, understanding the root cause and identifying what needs to change.

When we are stuck in a rut we are being invited to grow and expand.
― Dana Arcuri, Reinventing You

Here are the 9 signs you might be stagnating at work:

You are never in a state of flow

Do you struggle to focus? Have you stopped enjoying work which prevents you from being completely absorbed in the activity? Do you no longer enter into a state of flow, which is when you are completely immersed in a task and the time seems to stand still?

Not being able to focus and do deep work prevents you from experiencing the joy and pleasure that comes from being in a state of flow—it keeps you unhappy, stuck and dissatisfied. This is often one of the first signs of career stagnation that most people fail to notice.

Flow minimizes distractions, prevents procrastination and leads to high performance and productivity. It makes work more enjoyable, less exhausting and accelerates learning. It sparks creativity, heightens focus and deepens satisfaction.

Without flow, your attention shifts every few minutes to minor interruptions, relying on willpower to get things done depletes energy and tasks take twice as long to complete with often worse results. Work feels strained, highly inefficient and mentally draining.

Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done, and in doing work is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we use this energy. Memories, thoughts and feelings are all shaped by how we use it. And it is an energy under control, to do with as we please; hence attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow

You’re headed for career stagnation if you’re constantly distracted and don’t remember the last time you were in a state of flow.

You don’t feel challenged

Do you look for familiar tasks and responsibilities—things you already know how to do well? Do you avoid growth opportunities because they seem hard and untested? Do you resist new processes, systems and ways of working because the old way feels easy and convenient?

When predictability and routine takes priority over learning and experimentation, you rely on what you already know instead of stretching yourself and building new skills. You do the work that keeps you busy without expanding your thinking and problem solving skills.

Being scared of uncertainty and unknowns, you refuse to navigate the uncharted territory. You sit inside your comfort zone and fail to embrace the opportunities outside it. Career stagnation is obvious without doing the work that seems hard, unconventional and challenging.

Taking on challenges involves taking on risks—it involves solving complex problems, making tough decisions and facing obstacles with curiosity and resilience.

If we explore only well-trodden paths, if we avoid games we don’t know how to play, we’ll remain stagnant. Only when you’re dancing in the dark, only when you don’t know where the light switch is—or even what a light switch is—can progress begin.
― Ozan Varol, Think Like a Rocket Scientist

You’re headed for career stagnation if you’ve stopped taking steps outside your comfort zone.

You’re reluctant to ask questions or share ideas

Do you stay quiet in meetings? Do you contribute your opinion only when asked? Have you stopped asking questions because you don’t feel the curiosity to know or identify better ways to do things?

Becoming hesitant to share your opinion or holding back your views not only decreases your visibility, it prevents you from exploring different perspectives, updating outdated beliefs and learning new things. Not asking questions makes you come across as rigid, closed-minded and uninterested. It leads to career stagnation because without curiosity you shut the doors that are required to tread new paths.

When you keep your thoughts to yourself or become disengaged in meetings and discussions, you give up on the opportunity to share your knowledge. You refuse to leverage others’ experience. When it’s time to get promoted, your name is not on the list because you did nothing to showcase your value or be seen.

The truly curious will be increasingly in demand. Employers are looking for people who can do more than follow procedures competently or respond to requests; who have a strong intrinsic desire to learn, solve problems and ask penetrating questions.
― Ian Leslie, Curious

You’re headed for career stagnation if you don’t take the initiative to voice your concerns or share your opinion.

You’ve stopped taking feedback seriously

Have you stopped seeking feedback? Do you consider it as noise and don’t make an attempt to find how it could be valuable? Do you consider it unworthy of serious consideration without even listening?

When feedback no longer matters to you or you ignore the one that lands your way, you disengage from improving. Being unreceptive, defensive and dismissive to feedback makes you uncoachable. People find it hard to communicate and collaborate with you. They find you unapproachable.

Taking feedback constructively enables you to find better solutions, avoid mistakes and build relationships based on mutual trust and respect. It makes you come across as a person who cares about others opinion, their viewpoint and how they see the world. Avoiding and ignoring feedback prevents you from making changes to your behavior, actions and attitude. It keeps you stuck and stagnates you because you refuse to act on feedback that can help you grow.

How you react to the feedback and what you do afterwards will impact your career trajectory at the company. Your first instinct may be to rebut, defend, or explain the behaviors that led to the feedback. But perceptions don’t change because of explanations or more information; they change over time after you adjust your actions and behaviors.
― Marlo Lyons

You’re headed for career stagnation if you’ve stopped investing in seeking and giving feedback.

You’re driven by external pressure, not personal motivation

Do you feel a lack of sense of ownership and motivation? Do you work only when there’s a deadline approaching, pressure from your manager or something urgent shows up that demands your time and attention? Do you feel no personal drive to hit targets, achieve goals and exceed expectations?

Intrinsic motivation is driven by personal satisfaction, enjoyment of the activity and a sense of purpose. Extrinsic motivation is driven by obligations, experience of pressure, demand towards specific outcomes and a fear of negative consequences.

Enjoyment and importance are two main components of autonomously motivated goals. When you work on goals to meet other people’s demands or out of necessity, you rarely feel the satisfaction that comes with achieving goals. It’s the accomplishment of goals caused by internal motivations such as interests, desires, values and identities that fulfils you. Extrinsic motivation leads to career stagnation because it kills your curiosity, reduces enjoyment and turns work into a daily chore.

When you are intrinsically motivated, your own internal reward system in the form of positive emotions acts as a powerful force to pursue the task. You repeat behaviors that are fulfilling because the activity itself seems pleasurable. It’s a process that you enjoy repeating every single day. The joy of acting inline with your values inspires you to keep going even when you face challenges and setbacks.

The most successful people, the evidence shows, often aren’t directly pursuing conventional notions of success. They’re working hard and persisting through difficulties because of their internal desire to control their lives, learn about their world, and accomplish something that endures.
― Daniel H. Pink, Drive

You’re headed for career stagnation if you rely on external pressure to do the work instead of being self-motivated.

You’re surrounded by the same set of people

Have you stopped taking the initiative to expand your network at work? Have you limited yourself to a certain set or group of people? Do you prefer hanging out with some while ignoring the rest?

When you surround yourself with a certain set of people, your thinking gets limited by the topics they discuss, views they have and the perspectives they share. These interactions instead of expanding your thinking makes you more rigid in your ideas, thoughts and beliefs. You automatically lean towards certain decisions. You automatically favor some while disregarding others. You automatically act without consciously evaluating different options.

Forming echo chambers at work by gravitating towards people who share similar backgrounds, communication styles or personal philosophies can lead to blind spots and groupthink. You may fail to spot risks and flaws in your plan as you don’t let dissent in. You may rehash the same ideas instead of coming up with a completely new strategy. Echo chambers stagnate growth by keeping you trapped inside a bubble.

Increasingly, we take our disagreements not to the people we disagree with but to our own echo chambers—spaces where we can talk about, rather than to, the other side—where like-minded people echo our own beliefs right back to us.
― Justin Lee, Talking Across the Divide

You’re headed for career stagnation if you seek confirmation and groupthink instead of exploring diverse opinions.

You constantly complain about growth

Do you blame others for not being able to grow? Do you spend your time agonizing over the fact that nothing changes instead of acting in ways that will enable growth? Have you stopped investing in learning and improving because you believe that putting effort will be of no use?

If all you do is blame, complain and sob instead of identifying what’s blocking your growth and taking action to fix it, you’ll be left feeling undervalued, unappreciated and miserable. Blaming other people or external circumstances for your situation prevents you from accepting the reality of your situation—you fail to separate fiction from facts. You fail to notice the gaps in your own skills that’s holding you back. You fail to make your work visible which will establish your knowledge and credibility. Your career stagnates when you don’t feel empowered for your own growth.

Taking responsibility shifts your perspective from problems to solutions. You can look at the obstacles in your path and devise ways to navigate each one. You can create a plan of action to bridge the gap in your knowledge and skills. You can identify opportunities to showcase your value and make your work visible. You can schedule regular feedback conversations with your manager to stay updated on how you’re doing while also sharing your expectations and concerns.

Constantly focusing on the limitations, instead of all the possibilities, is how people become stuck in their lives. It only serves to recreate the same old reality from day to day. And soon the days turn into years, and lifetimes.
― Anthon St. Maarten

You’re headed for career stagnation if you refuse to take responsibility for your own growth.

You keep bringing up past achievements

Do you rely only on your past experience and knowledge to make decisions? Do you bring up your prior achievements and success in conversations frequently? Do you talk more about what you’ve accomplished earlier instead of something that happened recently?

Living in the past prevents you from paying attention to the present—you fail to notice when your old skills are no longer relevant. You fail to take into account the current context which demands an entirely new approach. You fail to challenge ideas because you assume that what worked in the past must still be relevant. Using your past successes to measure your current worth is a flawed approach—it stagnates your career by preventing you from striving for learning and getting better.

Applying old knowledge, experience and judgment to new decisions without validating their relevance to the current context leads to bad choices and poor decisions. Assuming what worked in the past must work in the present makes you ignore other options and possibilities. Your past keeps you trapped from paying attention to the future and its needs.

No matter how much you’ve done or how successful you’ve been, there is always more to do, more to learn, more to achieve.
― Barack Obama

You’re headed for career stagnation if you keep bringing up your past experience and achievements because your current work isn’t worthy of mention.

You feel threatened by high performing people

Do you compare yourself to others? Do you wish you could do what they’re capable of doing? Do you ruminate about the things you don’t have—intelligence, confidence, presence—and feel inadequate when you see it in others?

While comparison is naturally tempting and can sometimes be a valuable source of motivation and growth, not considering the downsides of using others as a benchmark of your worth can trap you within a frenzy of constant self-doubt. Playing the comparison game can lead to feelings of inadequacy if the rate at which you’re achieving things doesn’t measure up in comparison to others’ bigger and better accomplishments. Instead of feeling inspired by people who are excelling at work, you may feel insecure, jealous and resentful. You may consider them as your rivals.

If you constantly compare yourself to others, you unconsciously put yourself through a lot of mental agony—you obsess and ruminate about what you lack instead of your unique abilities. It kills the joy and pleasure of learning new things and getting better at your craft. It erodes your confidence and causes you to overlook your strengths. When you rely on others achievements to measure your self-worth, you set yourself up for inevitable frustration. Your career stagnates as you stop trying and putting in the effort that’s necessary to succeed.

Instead of beating yourself up with the accomplishments of those around you, what if you compared yourself to your own ideal self—the person you wish to become? When life is about becoming a better version of yourself, you’re no longer concerned with falling short in comparison to others. Rather, what matters is how you’re improving, what you’re learning and whether you’re getting better each day.

This fundamental shift is what Warren Buffet, one of the most successful investors in the world, refers to as keeping an “inner scorecard.” The inner scorecard refers to living through values that are important to you. The outer scorecard refers to what could be measured by those around you.

The only comparison for you to make is with yourself. You are the only person you should outperform.
― Cristina Imre

You’re headed for career stagnation if comparing yourself to others leads to feelings of frustration, low self-confidence, shame, resentment or envy.

Summary

You can’t remember the last time you lost track of time at work. Flow—that state of complete immersion where time stands still—is gone. And with it, the joy, the energy and the quality of your work.
Your to-do list is full but you’re not growing. You’re busy, not challenged. There’s a difference and it matters more than most people realize.
You’ve gone quiet in meetings. You stopped asking questions. You stopped sharing ideas. Curiosity didn’t disappear—you just stopped acting on it.
Feedback has become background noise. You hear it, but you don’t act on it. Without course correction, you keep making the same mistakes on a longer timeline.
You only move when someone pushes you. Deadlines and pressure have replaced personal drive. When external pressure is your only fuel, the tank is usually empty.
You’re surrounded by the same people, thinking the same thoughts. Familiarity is comfortable. It’s also where fresh thinking goes to die.
You talk about what’s not working more than what you’re doing to fix it. Complaining feels productive. It isn’t. Responsibility is the only thing that actually moves the needle.
Your best stories are from a few years ago. Past success is a reference point, not a resting place. If it’s all you talk about, your present isn’t saying much.
High performers make you anxious, not inspired. The gap between where you are and where they are doesn’t have to breed resentment—it can be a roadmap.

How to Handle Lazy Coworkers

Vinita Bansal — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:46:58 +0000

Amongst different kinds of people I have worked with, I find lazy people to be the worst. Not only are they casual about expectations, deadlines and commitments, they can make you doubt yourself if you’re someone who’s dedicated, committed and hard working. They consistently deliver low quality products and expect others to pick up their slack. They don’t feel bad about doing a half-arse job because that’s their general attitude towards work, responsibility and anything remotely meaningful.

Working with them is highly frustrating because they’ll make you feel bad about trying to do a good job.

You’re being dramatic.

There’s no need to do more.

We have done enough.

While you can’t expect them to take initiative, the worst part is not being able to rely on them for anything. Too lazy to communicate if they’re blocked on you or waiting for something. Too lazy to call out assumptions or expectation mismatch. Too lazy to consider better ways of solving a problem.

They stick to tried-and-tested approaches, old practices, outdated knowledge and look for shortcuts and easiest ways to get things done because doing anything new requires effort and dedication. Arguing with them, challenging them or blaming them does not change their perspective—rather, they tend to turn more rigid and defensive when confronted with an attitude problem. The walls they’ve built around themselves prevents them from seeing the comfort bubble they’re living in.

Weak-minded people are willing to catch any random train that’s going to ‘somewhere’ because going somewhere is easier than having to sit down and determine a ‘somewhere.’
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

While not always easy, following these practices can make working with lazy people a lot less stressful and more productive:

Check if it’s a temporary thing

While some people are lazy out of habit, for others it may be situational or circumstantial—they may be dealing with a personal problem or some issue at work. What may seem laziness to you, may actually be a motivation problem—they may not be excited about work or feel stagnant in their current role. They may be dealing with a health issue that prevents them from focusing and meeting expectations. Other challenges at work or in personal life can also distract people, making them appear uncaring, unprofessional or indolent.

Before stamping people with a “lazy” label and placing them into specific buckets, take a moment and try to understand if their behavior is a temporary thing or a general attitude problem. Not all “lazy” behavior is the same. Some of it is fear. Some of it is confusion. Some of it is misaligned effort. And some of it is actually an attitude problem.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to distinguish between a temporary dip vs a behavioral pattern:

Do they lack skill (can’t do) or lack motivation (won’t do)?
Do they show energy for certain types of work but not others?
Have they always shown this behavior or is it recent?
Could you be biased? Would you judge the same behavior differently in someone else?
Is there a pattern of doing the bare minimum regardless of the scope of work?
Could it be burnout or stress rather than laziness?

If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don’t understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

Before labeling someone as lazy, ask: is it fear, lack of clarity, poor incentives, burnout or truly unwillingness?

Discuss expectations and hold them accountable

Lazy people often get a free pass to keep repeating the behavior as you may find it easier to do the work yourself than holding them accountable. But without setting up accountability upfront and aligning on expectations, you let their default tendency to avoid work overpower their sense of commitment and responsibility.

Without setting clear expectations on what they need to do or what you expect of them, lazy people will find a way to disregard your concerns using excuses like lack of clarity, lack of direction or lack of alignment.

By agreeing on deliverables, timelines and quality expectations, you leave less room for excuses later. By asking them to call out if they’re blocked without waiting for a follow-up, you tell them to be proactive and push information instead of relying only on a pull. By calling out their dependency and how it impacts others, you make them understand why their effort matters.

When setting expectations or aligning on goals, hold them accountable by making them verbally agree and commit to a plan. While silent commitment is easy to ignore, spoken commitment is harder to break. When you tell someone what to do, the responsibility stays with you. But, when they say it themselves the ownership shifts. The shift is powerful because verbalizing a commitment creates the internal pressure to stay consistent and do what they said they’re going to do.

In the end, ask:

Can I count on you for this?

Can I trust you to meet this commitment?

Can I rely on you for this deliverable?

Do you promise to make this work?

Setting boundaries and holding people accountable is a lot more work than shaming and blaming. But it’s also much more effective. It’s hard for us to understand that we can be compassionate and accepting while we hold people accountable for their behaviors. We can, and, in fact, it’s the best way to do it. The key is to separate people from their behaviors—to address what they’re doing, not who they are.
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Lazy people tend to drift or disengage with vague expectations, unclear deadlines and lack of accountability. Make them follow-through by being upfront on deliverables and having them verbally commit to it.

Setup daily or bi-weekly sync up

Lazy people tend to commit and disappear, often using excuses to justify their lack of progress. When the gap between follow-up and commitment is too wide, it’s easy for lazy people to drift and hide.

Shortening this loop by setting up regular sync ups makes it harder for them to avoid work—they can’t state “still thinking” or accept “doing nothing” in every update. They can’t give the same excuse in every meeting. Frequent check-ins also enable you to identify blockers and work on solutions instead of letting them become a reason for delays and inaction. When issues are caught early, course correction can happen sooner instead of letting it show up as a surprise failure later.

Make it hard for lazy people to stay vague, deflect or over-talk by asking these questions during sync-ups:

What exactly has moved forward since last time in terms of what’s actually done and not just in progress?
I need to see a tangible outcome. Can you show the current version?
What’s blocking you and when did this show up?
This was due on [some date]. What’s preventing you from completing it?
What will be completed by the next sync up and what does “done” look like for that?

The mechanism that pushes an organization’s execution is the accountability built into relationships. Tough conversations that are uncomfortable are a part of building relationships. There is increased accountability when you ask another person to follow up or check in – to share in this accountability with you.
― Henry J. Evans, Winning With Accountability

Lazy people will procrastinate without a push. Use checkpoints and regular sync-ups as a strategy to ensure they don’t go for too many days without producing a meaningful outcome.

Give direct feedback when things don’t improve

Some people don’t intentionally act in sluggish ways—they just don’t understand the impact of their behavior on others. This happens when others silently keep making up for their lack of effort without giving them concrete feedback. They keep producing mediocre work and others keep trying to polish it. They keep missing deadlines and others stay back late to finish their work. Over time, lazy people stop trying to be good because they’re not expected to do well.

An honest face-to-face conversation can sometimes wake them up from lethargy and put them right into action. You need to be careful and cautious though. Words matter. Calling them lazy or using blame and other belittling tactics will do more damage than good—attacking people or their character is bound to put them on the defensive and make them turn against you.

You’re lazy.

You’re not serious.

You always do this.

Instead, talk about specific behaviors—what they’re expected to do and what they actually do. Discuss the impact of not producing quality work, missing timelines or not being proactive in communicating. Use calmness, not aggression to convey your concerns.

It’s important to be candid though. You can’t sugarcoat your feedback and expect them to understand it. You need to be direct without coming across as pushy, rude or insensitive. Avoid words that sound judgmental or have the potential to be misinterpreted. Don’t come across too strong. Talk about the problem without making it personal. Express your concerns in a non-judgmental neutral tone. Stick to facts, not opinions.

I’ve noticed your updates are often vague and the team ends up spending extra time chasing clarity instead of moving forward. That’s slowing overall progress. Going forward, what will you change in your updates so they’re clear and actionable?

This deliverable was committed for Friday but wasn’t completed. That caused timeline shifts and rework for others, which we need to avoid. What will you do differently to ensure you meet your commitments next time?

Right now, your share of work is lower than expected and others are having to compensate. That’s creating frustration in the team. How will you take more ownership to ensure the workload is more balanced?

When your deadlines slip, it directly impacts others. They either have to pick up the work or delay theirs. That’s not sustainable. What specific steps will you take to prevent this from happening again?

The goal shouldn’t be to remove interpretation or judgment. It should be to make judgments thoughtfully, and once made, to have them be transparent and discussable.
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback

When giving feedback to a lazy person, don’t pick them apart or criticize them for their failing. Rather, talk about how resolving the challenges they’re facing will lead to growth and opportunity.

Keep their manager in the loop

Some lazy people are smart, manipulative and highly political—they’re the most dangerous kind. Strategic avoidance while doing image management makes them appear useful while minimizing real accountability.

They use long explanations, strategic language and jargon-filled conversations to create an illusion of contribution. They spend more time discussing things and hashing them out instead of doing the actual work. They’re smart to stay at the forefront of highly visible and high credit work while avoiding tasks that involve execution. They overcomplicate things to create confusion and dodge responsibility. They use likability and strong rapport with managers and leaders as a shield to protect themselves from being challenged.

With such people, the only way to get them to take their commitment seriously is to document everything and add their manager to the loop. Looping in the manager increases seriousness and raises the cost of not meeting commitments. Without documentation, their talking can be perceived to be their contribution, but with documentation, it’s only the deliverables that count. Documentation also makes it easy for managers to see the gaps—missed tasks, repeated delays and lack of follow-through are not one-off incidents, they expose patterns over time.

To make work and ownership visible to their manager, include these in your emails:

Don’t use “we” statements, establish clear ownership by stating who is responsible for what.
Share specific deadlines. Don’t use words like “soon” or “this week.”
Clearly define the expected outcome and what “done” looks like. This prevents them from doing a poor job.
Document meetings and discussions—what was decided and what’s expected to happen next.
Highlight gaps between what was promised and what actually happened.
Call out patterns of repeated slippages and missed follow-ups.
Mention questions asked which never got addressed.
Keep focus on the impact of delays and rework.

Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.
― Stefan Molyneux

Lazy people who are manipulative and political don’t care about work, but they do care about their reputation. Shift their focus from talk to output by escalating and making their commitments visible.

Summary

Lazy people at work can be a real nuisance due to their casual attitude and lack of commitment at work.
What may appear laziness at first can be situational or temporary. Before stamping people with a “lazy” label, take a moment to understand if their behavior is a pattern or a one-off event.
Lazy people tend to use excuses like lack of clarity and lack of alignment to cover up for their lack of effort. Hold them accountable by setting clear expectations and making them verbally commit to it.
Leaving a gap between commitment and follow-up can make lazy people procrastinate for long without any meaningful progress. Setting up a regular cadence around sync-ups can break this habit.
Laziness is sometimes not intentional and may simply be a result of lack of concrete feedback. Have a candid conversation with them to help them understand the impact of their slack on others.
Lazy people can employ manipulation tactics to dodge responsibility and still look good. Save yourself from getting sucked into their political moves by writing things down and adding their manager to the loop.

10 Work Habits to Leave Behind This Year

Vinita Bansal — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:04:30 +0000

Our habits define not only who we are today, but also who we can become. They shape how we act, what we achieve and where we end up. Consciously adopted habits empower us to feel in control at work—we can determine where to pay attention, when to act and how to manage emotions. We can decide, choose our reaction and respond with intention. We can take responsibility, solve problems and lead with better judgment.

Habits make us or break us. They determine how we are perceived, whether we are valued and what opportunities land our way. When we ignore our bad habits or don’t pay attention to them, we make a choice to let those habits decide our future. These habits may seem small at first, even unharmful, but when repeated over weeks and months, they become part of our identity—we behave a certain way, make decisions and respond to situations without our conscious awareness. Our brain which has learned from our habits creates the wiring necessary to run on autopilot.

But habits determine your behavior, not who you are. Habits can trigger automatically, but they aren’t hard wired. You can change them. You can break old patterns and replace them with new circuits. You can build habits that can help you stay productive, do impactful work and achieve growth without killing yourself in the process.

Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize—they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.
― Charles Duhigg, The Power Of Habit

Here are the 10 work habits that you should leave behind this year:

Starting the day with your inbox

If you have the habit of starting your work by checking emails, you aren’t alone. Most people unconsciously open it as the first thing at work. Getting emails out of the way before getting down to real work may seem like a good strategy—afterall, once you have responded to all pending communication, your mind will be free to focus on other priorities at work.

However, emails hijack your schedule. Instead of working on tasks that you had set aside for the day, you start inheriting other people’s priorities.

Urgent report requirement.

Bug affecting customers.

Request to review a design document.

Integration issues.

Emails don’t leave you the moment you read them. They make you put your own planned work aside to create space for new priorities. You start doing the work that will help you seek closure on each email—thinking it will only take a few moments—but these small units of work add up and eat up your time. Even if you try to put aside what you’ve read and decide to respond to it at a later moment, the thought of a pending email response makes it hard to concentrate and get other meaningful work done.

Instead of checking your email first thing in the morning and then getting sucked in and reacting to other people’s priorities, deal with email at the end of the day. That way, you can use your prime hours for your Highlight and other important work. You’ll probably have a little less energy at the end of the day, but that is actually a good thing when it comes to email: You’ll be less tempted to overcommit by saying yes to every incoming request and less likely to bang out a multipage manifesto when a simple reply would do.
— Jake Knapp, Make Time

Emails are important. But instead of starting with them, add a mid-day and end-of-day email routine to tackle them at a specific time. Add it to your calendar—knowing that you have a time set aside for later reduces the temptation to take a quick look or browse through them.

Change your habit—check your email twice per day, never first thing in the morning.

Confusing busyness for effectiveness

If you have the habit of working long hours, accepting every meeting invite and jumping in whenever there’s a fire to be put out, you may be trying to showcase your value by appearing “busy.” You may believe that staying busy will establish your importance and put you in front of people who have the power to fast-track your career.

However, busyness dims the light around you because you fail to produce work that will make you stand out or be visible.

Attending meetings all day long.

Being part of every decision.

Handling urgent requests.

Never saying no.

Busyness creates an illusion of productivity. Being caught inside the ‘busy trap’ makes it harder for you to see that productivity is not based on the number of hours you put in; it’s the time spent creating value. Being overwhelmed and swamped with work makes you overcommitted and under-strategic about where you add value. Busyness also saves you from the discomfort that comes from doing hard things—things that will move you forward but require you to step outside your comfort zone.

Beating busy isn’t easy, but it’s a fight worth having. The harder you struggle against the broiling froth of demand, the harder you resist the lure of the immediate, or the call of the ping, the clearer you become about what really matters to you.
― Tony Crabbe, Busy

Being productive requires intentionality. It requires purposefully making time for work that’s useful and cutting down on inconsequential activities. When you don’t know what you want or don’t have clearly defined priorities, your effort is stretched out in too many directions. Being spread too thin in too many places leaves you exhausted without creating value.

To break from the busyness trap, pause, zoom out and reassess where your time is going. Identify what truly drives results and let go of the rest. Don’t fill your day with endless tasks—make strategic choices about what to take on, what to delegate and what to say no to.

Change your habit—stop focusing on things that don’t matter and start spending time on things that do.

Overcommitting to prove your value

If you have the habit of saying “yes” to every incoming request without paying attention to how it fits into your schedule, the value it adds or the time and energy needed to fulfill those commitments, you may be over-committing to establish your worth and prove to others how skilled, knowledgeable and experienced you are.

However, making commitments without thoughtful consideration leads to over-promising and under-delivering as you can’t possibly achieve everything you said you’ll do.

Missed deadlines.

Poor quality work.

Half-baked ideas.

No-show.

You complain about too-much work. You’re exhausted from juggling too many priorities. You struggle to focus. You’re distracted by the overwhelming demands and expectations others have from you. Overcommitting to show your worth reduces it—breaking promise strains relationship, reduces your credibility and tells others to not trust you with key projects and initiatives. Trying to do more makes you do less as your attention is spread across too many priorities.

Will some people consider you selfish when you say no to them? Of course. You can’t control that. And it’s worth noting, you’re not responsible for them feeling that way.
― Damon Zahariades, The Art Of Saying NO

You earn trust and respect by carefully evaluating your priorities, pushing back on unrealistic timelines or irrational demands and committing to work that are inline with your goals. It’s not about doing less or being pessimistic, but knowing where your effort matters, getting your priorities straightened out and putting your time and energy into it. Saying “no” can upset some people in the short-term, but leads to overall better long-term results—fcousing on a few things and doing them well maximizes your impact.

Change your habit—endure short-term pain for long-term gain; say “yes” less often and “no” more.

Reacting when emotions are high

If you have the habit of reacting to people who say or do things that conflict with your opinion—criticism turns you defensive, disagreement makes you resentful or mismatch in expectations makes you lose your cool—you may be responding to strong emotions that such situations tend to evoke.

Uncontrollable, sudden, and intense emotions that overwhelm you, can dramatically and unexpectedly shift your mood, making you say or do things you regret later.

Shouting.

Saying impolite things.

Negative body language.

Bursting into tears.

Emotions cloud your judgment. You start taking things personally. You act without thinking. You become a victim of your thoughts and circumstances. Instead of calmly handling the situation, you respond with unrest and unease. Your voice grows louder, posture turns rigid and your tone loses its warmth signaling stress and agitation. Reacting to emotions instead of carefully and thoughtfully responding does not lead to a resolution and instead makes the situation worse.

Empowering emotions help you discover the lessons of every situation and move toward your goals. Disempowering interpretations tie you to negativity and get in the way of your goals. Reappraisal involves recognizing the negative pattern developing in your thoughts and changing it to one that is more desirable, but in a manner that is still based in reality.
― Leonard Mlodinow, Emotional

Emotions are powerful signals that guide us towards what matters to us—use them as input without letting them control your behavior. You don’t have to ignore or avoid them, but you don’t have to trust every narrative they create. Learn to challenge, question and doubt your thinking. Look for alternative explanations or other ways to interpret your situation. Choose to reply after giving it a thought without responding to your impulses.

Change your habit—stop reacting emotionally, start responding rationally.

Waiting for permission before taking action

If you have the habit of waiting for the work to be assigned—tasks to be completed, projects to be delivered, issues to be fixed—you may be dependent on others for your own growth. This may happen because you may assume good opportunities will land your way if you keep delivering on your promises or you’ll get the promotion you deserve by showing you’re reliable and trustworthy.

However, work environments aren’t designed to lift people up who do the assigned work or those who wait for permission to grow.

Someone else gets the new project.

Someone else gets the promotion.

Someone else gets the recognition.

Someone else gets the visibility.

You may be frustrated from feeling invisible at work despite your contributions. You may constantly face disappointment and dissatisfaction of being overlooked and neglected. Yet, ruminating by replaying the same negative thoughts or wallowing in your misery prevents you from doing the one thing that can make you stand out and be visible at work—taking initiative. If you keep waiting for work to be assigned or keep waiting to be told what to do, you may never get the attention of people who have the power to shape your career.

You won’t be rewarded with exciting new opportunities by keeping your head down and following the rules. If you want a new challenge at work or more responsibility, it’s on you to pitch your boss or your client on what needs to be done, why it’s a good idea, why you’re the best person to do it, and why everyone will benefit. Lead the way with your own creativity and initiative, and back it up with enthusiasm and a strong business case.
― Jocelyn K. Glei, Maximize Your Potential

Doing just the assigned work earns you a “meets” expectation, however people who excel at work constantly exceed expectations. This requires taking responsibility for your own growth and not blaming others for it. You need to identify what you want and take the necessary steps to get there—take an initiative to speak up in meetings, find creative solutions to problems, proactively share updates and advocate for your contributions. Actively seek new opportunities without waiting to be assigned. Build next level skills through small daily practice.

Change your habit—actively seek what’s best for you, don’t settle for what others think is right.

Avoiding difficult conversations to keep the peace

If you have the habit of pushing aside difficult conversations—giving tough feedback, handling disagreements or differences of opinion—you may prioritize keeping harmony over solving problems. You may be worried about what to say, how the other person will respond or the impact of the outcome on your relationships at work.

However, unresolved conflicts don’t disappear. Small problems turn into big issues if not handled on time.

Anger, resentment and frustration.

Assumptions and misunderstandings.

Wrong choices and poor decisions.

Delays and missed opportunities.

We avoid difficult conversations because it’s much easier to avoid emotionally draining and mentally exhausting situations than step right into them consciously. But putting off difficult conversation is a bad idea because issues left unaddressed escalate over time. What was once a manageable problem can grow into a much larger issue if not addressed on time. Constant worry about unresolved issues can take a toll on your mental health and lead to increased stress, anxiety and even feelings of helplessness. When important issues are being ignored or swept under the rug, it can erode trust, build resentment and damage relationships.

Beginning a conversation is an act of bravery. When you initiate a conversation, you fearlessly step into the unknown. Will the other person respond to favorably or unfavorably? Will it be a friendly or hostile exchange? There is a feeling of being on the edge. That nanosecond of space and unknowing can be intimidating. It shows your vulnerability.
— Sakyong Mipham, The Lost Art of Good Conversation

Difficult conversations by nature are tricky. They are touchy topics that no one likes to talk about. They are challenging because they require us to navigate through discomfort, uncertainty and a wide range of complex emotions. No matter how hard a conversation is, you can’t put it off or delay it forever. Addressing issues directly, providing clarity and seeking closure can help you gain trust, respect and also alleviate stress.

Change your habit—stop avoiding and start embracing the conflict.

Apologizing too often

If you have the habit of saying sorry even when it’s not required—asking questions, seeking clarifications or seeking additional information, sending reminders or following up on requests, sharing disagreement or a difference of opinion, asking for help or someone’s time and attention, joining a conversation to express your views or speaking up in a meeting, making a small mistake or acting in a way that doesn’t harm anyone, receiving or giving feedback or not meeting expectations for things beyond your control—you may do it out of fear of not being accepted or not being liked or you may assume that putting yourself in a bad light will earn you sympathy.

However, apologizing often can hurt your image and credibility—you may come across as defensive, submissive or someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

I’m sorry to ask you again.

I’m sorry to disturb you.

My bad. I’m a fool for not seeing it sooner.

Sorry. I am a terrible person for missing you in the invite.

Saying sorry for trivial matters or taking responsibility for things beyond your control not only makes you come across as a person with low confidence, it actually lowers your confidence too. Putting yourself down may seem like a good strategy to gain others sympathy and avoid having to face the shame and humiliation associated with feelings of saying sorry, but using self-deprecating language makes you look undeserving, incompetent and timid.

Having a low opinion of yourself is not ‘modesty.’ It’s self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not ‘egotism.’ It’s a necessary precondition to happiness and success.
— Bobbe Sommer

Very few situations at work warrant apology. Apologizing does not make you more likable or deserving of others forgiveness. Rather, it can ruin your career by making you come across as a person with low confidence and low self-esteem. To stop apologizing unnecessarily, connect with your inner voice—identify why it’s expecting you to say sorry. Express an apology only when the situation really demands it. Instead of using excuses to justify your behavior or cover up the mistakes you made, take responsibility for your actions or the outcomes you achieved.

Change your habit—say sorry only when it’s really needed and mean it when you say so.

Comparing yourself to others

If you have the habit of comparing yourself to others—wishing you could do what others are capable of doing, achieve their success or build their kind of confidence—you may measure yourself against others’ definition of success as opposed to what you truly desire.

However, comparison is not only time-consuming, the unconscious realization that you can never be as good as others can be self-destructive.

You may procrastinate.

You may engage in self-doubt.

You may feel unworthy and inadequate.

Focus on whether you are fulfilling your own potential than comparing yourself to someone else. The fact that you have a natural limit to any specific ability has nothing to do with whether you are reaching the ceiling of your capabilities. People get so caught up in the fact that they have limits that they rarely exert the effort required to get close to them. Genes can not make you successful if you’re not doing the work. Until you work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.
― James Clear, Atomic Habits

This fundamental shift is what Warren Buffet refers to as keeping an “inner scorecard.” The inner scorecard refers to living through values that are important to you. The outer scorecard refers to what could be measured by those around you.

Change your habit—stop competing, start achieving self-mastery.

Blaming others instead of taking responsibility

If you have the habit of blaming—complaining, pointing fingers, engaging in excuses and justifications—you refuse to take responsibility for your actions by considering others as the source of your problem. It stems from feelings of being victimized and a sense of lack of control in creating your own path to success.

However, blaming, complaining and sobbing distracts you from putting in the effort to fix your problem.

Refusing to take accountability.

Expecting others to change their behavior.

Showing no intent to solve the problem.

Many things can go wrong at work—conflicting priorities, unknown problems, uncertainty of decisions, misalignment of expectations, communication gaps, unrealistic deadlines and so on. Adopting a victim mentality in such cases prevents you from thinking clearly, finding solutions and moving forward.

Considering others as the source of your misery makes you feel powerless and helpless. You feel out of control. It hits you mentally. Blaming absolves you of responsibility, makes you want to give up and accept defeat. Also, discussions tailored around pointing fingers and identifying who is at fault instead of finding solutions spreads pessimism and negativity.

Complains are like the clouds that produce no rain no matter how thick they gather. Never depend on your complaint thinking they are stair cases. Drop that thing.
― Israelmore Ayivor, Shaping the dream

When things don’t go as expected, get rid of all the complaints, whining and drama and instead identify what you did or did not do that contributed to this result. Talk to others and get their perspective. Implement a new strategy, launch a new experiment or find creative ways to move forward. Finally, implement a feedback loop to learn and adapt.

Change your habit—stop blaming and start taking responsibility.

Bringing home work stress

If you have the habit of constantly checking emails at home, working late into the nights and on weekends or worrying about an important meeting the next day while having dinner, you may be carrying the work burden back with you home. You may do this because you don’t know when to draw a line and stop working.

However, not giving yourself personal space to relax and unwind can lead to exhaustion and burnout, making you perform poorly and also affecting the quality of your life.

Health issues.

Poor decisions.

Constant irritation.

Unable to rest.

Work environments can be stressful and taking back all that stress home may leave no room to enjoy life. Work stress can distract you from things that matter—replying to emails while talking to your kids, refusing to help at home because you’re occupied with work, not paying attention to your growing belly and not making time to pursue personal growth goals.

Respectful boundaries are needed so that we can look after ourselves and continue to give to others. After all, nobody can be expected to pour from an empty cup.
― Mungi Ngomane, Everyday Ubuntu

Clearly define what matters to you and what you want to achieve in life. Set boundaries at work—both for yourself and others. Hold yourself accountable to respect those boundaries—don’t fall into the trap of making exceptions every now and then, be flexible and do it only when it’s absolutely necessary.

Change your habit—don’t let stress from work seep into your personal life.

Summary

Starting the day with emails may seem harmless before getting down to other priorities, but this habit makes you adopt other people’s priorities instead of working on tasks you had set aside for the day.
Busyness gives you an illusion of productivity which keeps you occupied throughout the day, but this habit leads to long work hours with less creation of value.
Overcommitment can make you feel accepted and valued, but this habit breaks trust and damages credibility as you fail to keep up with your promises.
Reacting emotionally may be your default response to unfavourable circumstances or situations, but this habit makes you say or do things that you regret later.
Waiting for work to be assigned can make you come across as reliable and trustworthy, but this habit cannot lift you up and give a boost to your career.
Avoiding conflicts and difficult conversations can help you avoid discomfort in the short-term, but this habit can lead to bigger problems in the long-run.
Saying sorry for every small thing at work, even those that don’t warrant it, can get you others attention temporarily, but this habit makes you come across as a person with low confidence and low self-worth.
Comparing yourself to others can help you improve and grow, but this habit can also lead to feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem and self-doubt.
Blaming others can relieve you from feelings of shame and embarrassment, but this habit does not lead to growth as you fail to learn from your mistakes.
Constantly thinking about work when it’s time to relax may not seem like a huge issue, but this habit impacts your personal well-being and mental health in the long run.

10 Work Habits That Can Make You Unstoppable

Vinita Bansal — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 08:03:23 +0000

From the very first day of job, there’s one thing that’s top of everyone’s mind—success. Success is what we desire. It’s what we seek. But what makes some people more successful than others? What makes them appear valuable? What accelerates their career growth? What makes them land better opportunities?

Is it how hard they work? Is it their intelligence and skills? Is it their thinking ability or their aptitude to solve complex problems?

Intelligence, knowledge, experience and skills are important to do well at work, but those things can only give you the initial thrust to get started, they can’t make you unstoppable. Being remarkable and outstanding at work requires a set of daily practices—habits that make you shine and puts you in front of the right people. These habits determine how others see you as a person—what makes them admire your skills, appreciate your knowledge and find your experience worthy of their time and attention.

These habits shape everything—how you communicate, collaborate, stay productive, address conflicts, take risks, build relationships and solve problems. Not consciously choosing these habits and making them a part of your life can leave a tremendous amount of your potential under utilized. You may get passed up for an opportunity. You may not get promoted. You may not be invited to meetings where your knowledge and experience could have made a difference.

These habits can help you push through when you hit a roadblock, trust yourself when you engage in self-doubt and motivate you to take action when you get bogged down by inconsequential details. These habits can help you bring your best version to work every day.

The concept of the best possible version of me is not merely an intention, it is an action. It is the daily practice of taking full responsibility for my thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and actions.
― Tanya Valentin, When She Wakes, She Will Move Mountains

Practice these 10 habits daily to be unstoppable at work:

Taking accountability instead of playing blame games

When outcomes don’t turn out as expected or expectations aren’t met, the default reaction for most people is to blame someone or something else for their situation. But, blaming, complaining and sobbing deflects responsibility—it shifts your focus from solving problems to finding excuses. Relying on blames and excuses to justify outcomes, spiraling in despair when faced with challenges and setbacks and feeling paralyzed when required to make tough decisions keeps you trapped in a toxic cycle of negativity, which leads to avoidance and inaction.

Taking responsibility and holding yourself accountable on the other hand gives you the power to make choices that are aligned with your growth and the goals you want to accomplish. It frees you from the burden of justification so that you can focus on what lies ahead. It shifts your mental energy to adopt the role of a creator who sees the obstacle in their path as a challenge instead of acting as a victim who offloads responsibility to others and gives up.

The true key, if you want to live an unstoppable life, then you need to take 100% control of your life. Stop blaming others for your failures and faults and start accepting responsibility for your life.
― Thomas Narofsky, You are Unstoppable!

When you fail or make mistakes, feel disappointed much like everyone else, but don’t let that disappointment get in the way of taking action or making progress. Push ahead with the relentless drive to find solutions instead of complaining about the problems. Expand your boundaries of influence, push yourself to navigate the uncharted territory and do the work that’s necessary to succeed.

Asking questions instead of leading with answers

When you’re part of meetings and discussions, you may be tempted to show-off your intelligence—you may jump to solutions without understanding the problem, be quick to remark on a flawed strategy or state your opinion without being asked. Acting as the person who has all the answers does not make you come across as a smart, intelligent and informed person. Rather, it frustrates others, subjects you to mockery and builds resentment. Your opinion that may carry real value is ignored, given less importance or rejected just because others don’t trust and respect your judgment.

Asking questions on the other hand invites others to collaborate, share their perspective and feel heard and valued. Questions also make way for clarity. Hearing diverse perspectives leads to more informed decisions. It creates an opportunity to validate assumptions, reduce misunderstandings and align on a common measure of success. Well framed and thoughtful questions not only challenge others to think differently, they also develop a bond—a connection based on shared knowledge, experience and mutual respect.

Don’t we all know how to ask questions? Of course we think we know how to ask, but we fail to notice how often even our questions are just another form of telling—rhetorical or just testing whether what we think is right. We are biased toward telling instead of asking because we live in a pragmatic, problem-solving culture in which knowing things and telling others what we know is valued.
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry

Questioning expands the range of possible solutions, gives others an opportunity to contribute and makes the discussion feel like a shared experience instead of a one-sided conversation. As you help others navigate problems and reach their own conclusions, it builds confidence and conviction and a trust in your ability to guide them.

Speaking up instead of staying silent

When confronted with a difficult situation, disagreement, difference of opinion or a conflict, staying silent may seem like the safest approach. You can’t annoy others or upset them when you keep your mouth shut and refuse to share your feelings. But, ignoring the conflict or pushing it aside does not make it disappear. It only makes whatever you’re trying to avoid “worse.” Staying silent also takes away the opportunity to speak your truth, voice your opinion and state your concerns. Unresolved conflicts waste your mental energy as the thoughts of pending issues keep popping up every now and then. Your relationships suffer as you try to avoid these people or turn resentful for not being able to speak your mind.

Speaking up on the other hand, though uncomfortable and scary, can bridge the gap between your thoughts and others’ expectations. It can resolve your differences and achieve alignment. Engaging in a meaningful way can build long-lasting, genuine connections. Handled mindfully, conflicts can build relationships instead of breaking them. It can heal instead of scarring. It can bind instead of creating a divide.

In an age where noise surrounds us, silence can seem like a precious commodity. Silence often masquerades as a protective layer, one that shields us from confrontation and the complexities of communication. It allows us to avoid difficult conversations and uncomfortable truths. When we hold back our thoughts and feelings, we create a divide that can be difficult to bridge. True connection requires vulnerability, something silence often obstructs.
― Carson Anekeya

Confront your fears. Face your insecurities. Don’t be paralyzed with the thought of disagreeing with others or sharing your concerns. Facing conflicts head-on can be uncomfortable at first, but it’s the only way to move forward together instead of continuing to stay stuck.

Seeking continuous feedback instead of avoiding criticism

When you ask for feedback with the intent to validate yourself or seek approval, a positive response raises your self-esteem, makes you feel worthy and enables you to believe in yourself. However, even a hint of criticism puts you off—you feel attacked, targeted and may even engage in self-doubt with the belief that you don’t have what it takes. Taking feedback personally or attaching it to your identity makes criticism feel like a threat, something that hurts your credibility and makes your work matter less.

Engaging in feedback conversations that make you feel good about yourself without highlighting areas where you need to improve may temporarily boost your self-esteem, but they’ll do nothing to advance you in the direction of your goals. Without getting clear, actionable feedback on habits you need to change, skills you need to build and knowledge you need to expand, you’ll be locked in an illusion of greatness—you’ll be trapped with a false belief about your competence which will prevent you from embracing opportunities required to evolve and excel.

Actively seeking criticism on the other hand changes your game. Criticism stings. It’s hard. At times, it may even be unfair. But, it’s also necessary. It’s what shows you the path when you’re stuck. It’s what gives you direction when you’re lost. It’s what gets you back on track when you’re distracted or lose focus. It’s what helps you stay grounded, truthful and real.

Seek feedback from people who have valuable things to contribute even if they make you uncomfortable. Channeling constructive criticism into useful signals can help you unlock your potential. You can bridge the gap between how you see yourself and how others perceive your work. Showing curiosity to learn from others also builds positive relationships at work—when they see that you value their inputs, they’re more likely to engage with you and stay honest.

The art of taking feedback is such a crucial skill in life, particularly harsh and critical feedback. We not only need to take this harsh feedback, but actively solicit it, labor to seek out the negative precisely when our friends and family and brain are telling us that we’re doing great. The ego avoids such feedback at all costs, however. Who wants to remand themselves to remedial training? It thinks it already knows how and who we are—that is, it thinks we are spectacular, perfect, genius, truly innovative. It dislikes reality and prefers its own assessment.
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

Praise can bolster your ego and make you feel capable, successful and respected. But seeking only praise can turn you blind to your flaws. Criticism isn’t meant to undermine your confidence. It’s a powerful tool when viewed through the lens of growth. Seek it actively and often. Consider feedback as a growth catalyst, not a dagger.

Pre-blocking time for deep work instead of being ad hoc

When you don’t plan your day consciously, unannounced work keeps knocking at your door and keeps eating into your precious time and energy—you get pulled into random meetings, your product manager asks you to build a quick prototype an hour before their demo, bugs show up which demand your immediate attention and colleagues keep dropping by your desk to engage in idle gossip. All good intentions die when you’re running on autopilot. Moving from one problem to the next, one meeting to another and one crisis to the next leaves no time for important priorities. According to Parkinson’s law, work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. When you’re not purposeful with your time, you’re bound to fill it with insignificant activities that leave you exhausted at the end of each day without adding value.

Busyness creates an illusion of productivity. Being caught inside the ‘busy trap’ makes it harder for you to see that productivity is not based on the number of hours you put in—it’s the time spent creating value. Busyness is also addictive. It saves you from the discomfort that comes from doing hard things—things that will move you forward but require you to step outside your comfort zone. Being busy is then the perfect excuse to avoid doing the work you fear or find particularly difficult to do.

Consciously planning your calendar on the other hand prevents you from engaging in inconsequential activities—it removes the busy element and replaces it with constructive choices that makes life not only more fun but also more productive. Being productive requires giving life to your intentions. You need to take action. A great strategy to do this is to create implementation intentions and put them into action using Pomodoro technique.

Implementation intentions involve making a plan beforehand about when and where you intend to take action. In other words, when situation x arises, you will perform response y. Research shows that by simply writing down a plan that specifies exactly when and where you intend to engage in taking action, you are more likely to follow through. Once you have implementation intentions identified, pre-block time on your calendar. Pre-blocking time on the calendar for important activities takes away the need to make a decision on the fly—which in most cases leads to poor choices—and instead allows you to attend those activities when the time arises.

Pomodoro technique helps break down your big goals into small tasks, limit distractions and build more consistent work habits. It keeps you focused on the one next thing you need to do rather than feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the work ahead of you. It trains your brain to focus with time bound work sessions and frequent short breaks.

Make Time is a framework for choosing what you want to focus on, building the energy to do it, and breaking the default cycle so that you can start being more intentional about the way you live your life. Even if you don’t completely control your own schedule—and few of us do—you absolutely can control your attention.
— Jake Knapp, Make Time

Don’t rely on good intentions or willpower to achieve your goals. Decide in advance what time you’ll be working, how long you’ll be working for and what you’ll be working on. Put this on your calendar and get down to work with deep focus and concentration when the clock strikes.

Showing appetite to take risks instead of playing safe

If stepping out of your comfort zone gives you the chills, you may lean towards ideas, projects and opportunities that feel safe instead of taking a risk. You look for solutions based on how problems have been solved before. You try to preserve the status quo. You let go of opportunities that have many unknowns and uncertainty involved. You align with decisions that are favored by others because disagreeing with them requires standing out and the courage to take risks.

But, playing it safe keeps you trapped in a cycle of mediocrity—when you keep doing what comes easy, you don’t learn to navigate complexity. When you pick tried-and-tested methods, you give up on innovation, creativity and a chance to make things better. When you cling to projects you have done before, you let go of the opportunity to step up and build new skills. Safety feels comfortable, but it also limits your growth.

Taking risks on the other hand enables you to push boundaries—looking beyond personal limitations to recognizing new possibilities, building on skills and taking on challenges by embracing new opportunities and thinking and planning ahead by considering the future and its needs. Developing the capacity to take risks gives you the power to shape the future and meet tomorrow’s demand instead of catering to business-as-usual. Your impact and the value you create gets multiplied.

Taking risks does not mean being negligent or inattentive—it requires careful analysis of risks worth taking and being prepared to handle the situation if it does not work out. It requires confidence without arrogance, judgment without biases and decision-making that’s grounded in logic and intuition.

Embracing risk is key to succeeding in the bigger game of life. Those who lose aren’t those who have dared greatly and fallen short of the mark. They are those who played so safe that they never lived at all.
― Margie Warrell, Stop Playing Safe

Making safe bets may seem less risky, but staying within a safety net limits your growth. Instead of leaning towards comfort, stretch your abilities by taking one step outside it. If it isn’t scary, it probably isn’t worth it.

Optimizing for long-term instead of seeking short-term gratification

When an urgent problem needs to be solved—for example, a production bug impacting a large customer base—looking for the quickest solution that will make the problem go away may be a smart strategy, but falling for short-term mentality for everything that shows up can lead to bigger problems in the future. Issues that were fixed in the past with patchy solutions keep repeating, solutions that were implemented to cater to current demand do not scale and rushed projects keep showing up with new bugs everyday.

Living in a fast-forward, on-demand culture, we all crave instant gratification. We want things quickly. We want them now. Most of the time we improvise and react to events with insufficient information—we don’t have patience, time and energy for more thoughtful long-term solutions. Unwilling to put in the effort, we fall for short-term thinking at the cost of better results in the future. The pursuit of a quick and easy fix to an issue is definitely more alluring than the prudent decision. Quick fix provides short-term relief from whatever it is we are facing at the moment—it creates an illusion that the problem is out of the way. But, we fail to realize that these short-term fixes are a series of steps into our long-term failures.

Avoiding the lure of short-term rewards and showing patience and persistence towards a growth-oriented long-term strategy on the other hand can reduce rework, make solutions better aligned with future growth and leave plenty of time to focus on work that matters. Reviewing important decisions with a big-picture context provides the clarity to attack the source of the problem and avoid the temptation to seek temporary relief by implementing a quick fix in the moment.

We live in a fast-paced, demanding, results-oriented world. New technologies place vast quantities of information at our fingertips in nanoseconds. We want problems solved instantly, results yesterday, answers immediately. We are exhorted to forget “ready, aim, fire” and to shoot now and shoot again.
― Michael J. Marquardt, Leading with Questions

Instant gratification relieves short-term pain at the cost of bigger problems in the future. Taking a more long-term approach can be painful in the beginning, but it can lead to tremendous growth. Don’t settle. Don’t go with the quickest, dirtiest path to get what you want. Invest in a more thought-out and well-planned strategy.

Staying away from office politics instead of weaponizing it

Personal motives at work can make you act in undesirable ways—using tactics and manipulation to further your agenda, making biased decisions in favor of a certain group of people, talking behind other people’s back and engaging in gossip, pushing others under the bus when things don’t go well or using power plays to gain advantage over a situation. When advancing your career or boosting your self-esteem becomes the primary focus, your behavior is not only unproductive, but it can also be toxic and unpleasant to those who experience it. You may engage in office politics because you feel exploited and misused by some people or you may do it to keep close connections with some powerful people who like to play dirty. Whatever may be your reason to engage in office politics, being manipulative and evil is not the way to become unstoppable.

Consciously choosing the path that does not involve playing other people’s game on the other hand can set you free to create your own path to success. You can choose to ignore such people if they don’t directly impact your work. You can try to disarm them by not reacting to their negativity. You can have a candid discussion with them and openly express your concern if they seem to be holding a personal bias or grudge or if their behavioral issue stems from lack of self-awareness. The idea is not to keep your eyes shut to what’s happening around you or to be blind to other people’s insincere and exploitative strategies, but rather to learn to navigate office politics as a skill without stooping to other people’s levels.

This applies to when people are playing office politics or forming their cliques or working their personal agendas. Of course – sometimes you have to play those games too. But when dealing with people like this, let your first course of action and the fundamental core of how you handle things be very clear and direct: Outwork and outperform every last one of them. While you’re over there watching me and talking about me – I’m working. When you’re gossiping – I’m working. When you’re talking smack – I’m working. When you’re chattering – I’m working. While you continually focus on what everyone else is doing – I’ll focus on what I can do right. And when you finally look around at where you are and where I am – you will realize that you have nothing to talk smack about.
― Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom

There’s only one way to win at office politics—not letting the negativity consume you and channeling your energy into doing great work, making it visible and taking control over your own success. You become unstoppable when you don’t let other people’s toxic behavior become an excuse to play bad too.

Strengthening relationships using give and take

If you tend to put your own interests ahead of other people’s needs, you may evaluate every situation based on how it benefits you—Will sharing knowledge increase your visibility? Will solving other people’s problems earn you credit? Will attending an office party lead to better connections with the higher-ups? Your interest and participation is based on what you’ll gain and what you have to lose. Anything that involves a lose-win situation is out of scope. Anything that involves a sacrifice without getting anything in return is a big “no-no.” Anything that does not make you look better or supreme compared to others is of no value. You try to give based on what you can get.

This keeps your relationships superficial and need based. You don’t connect with people at a deeper level or earn their trust and respect—they don’t vouch for you when you’re in need or recommend you for better positions. They don’t support you when you make a mistake or fail terribly. They don’t consider you as their first choice when they need help. “Take-based” relationships are like weak signals that work rarely and fail most of the time.

Putting other people’s needs ahead of your own on the other hand can build special bonds with people and strengthen relationships. Sharing your knowledge and experience without boasting, helping those in need without expecting anything in return or mentoring others without any recognition makes you come across as a genuine person who actually cares about others. Your “giving” attitude plays a big role in the love, support and respect you gain—your likability makes you favorable when you’re put up for a promotion or in need of a better opportunity. Your selfless demeanor gets you the attention without any noise. When you need help, others reciprocate in kind.

Giving does not mean sacrificing to the level of personal harm or always putting others ahead of your own needs. It means not evaluating every situation through the lens of gain and loss. Not trying to turn every situation to your advantage. Not making a big deal out of every contribution. Not treating others as your points of leverage.

Success depends heavily on how we approach our interactions with other people. Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?
― Adam M. Grant, Give and Take

Relationships that are built using give and take last long. They aren’t fragile. They aren’t one-sided. They make you unstoppable by garnering support from people when you need it the most. Be there for others. Lift them up. Try to give more than what you take from them.

Prioritizing self-care instead of giving boundaryless freedom

Replying to an email even if it’s late, saying yes to every request that comes knocking at your gate and pushing your personal priorities aside to make more room for work can get you the attention and visibility you seek, but it also sets you up for exploitation. You may be asked to work late, pick other people’s slack and expected to reply to every message instantly. You may be able to keep up with these expectations in the short-term, but constantly enduring significant pressure to meet others’ demands can leave you tired, exhausted and burnt out. You can’t perform in this state. You can’t keep missing commitments and still expect to be credible. You can’t people-please your way to success.

Thinking about your boundaries and clearly defining them on the other hand protects you from going overboard. It gives you the freedom to make choices that are aligned with your goals. It gives you the courage to say “no.” It allows you to contribute at your highest level without losing sanity. Boundaries are the invisible gates that protect your peace.

Setting boundaries in no way implies less dedication, less passion or less commitments towards work—if anything, it develops respect for knowing what matters. Making space for things in your life beyond work, saying no to inconsequential activities and not feeling obligated to respond at odd hours keeps you energized, dedicated and focused to produce your best work. You contribute more, not less. You excel in your work. You exceed expectations.

Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where i end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. Taking responsibility for my life opens up many different options. Boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with.
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries

Self-care is the most important aspect of growth that gets the least attention. Most people ignore it unless it starts affecting their day-to-day work. Prioritizing it without guilt keeps you sensible and sound to bring your best self to work every day. It makes you unstoppable by keeping you sane and real.

Summary

Finger pointing and blame games relieves you from feelings of fear, shame and guilt by criticizing others and assuming they’re the source of your problem. But not taking accountability for your results keeps you trapped in negativity, which prevents you from taking action and solving problems. Stop finding excuses and start taking responsibility.
You may think that providing solutions to other people’s problems or being the one with all the answers will make you come across as smart and intelligent. In reality, it frustrates others and makes them give less value to your opinion. Instead of leading with answers, ask questions. Let others find their own answers and reach their own conclusions.
It’s easy to avoid conflicts and hard to speak up, but putting the conflict aside does not make it disappear. Lingering issues waste your mental energy, strains relationships and prevents you from focusing on your goals. Don’t be silent. Voice your opinion and share your concerns.
Positive feedback can make you feel proud and give you momentary happiness, but not knowing where you’re falling short can prevent you from learning, growing and getting better. Actively seek criticism, even if it stings at first. Lean towards areas of improvement, not just what you’re doing well.
Not prioritizing what you intend to achieve each day can fill your calendar with ad hoc work and time-wasting activities. You can feel exhausted at the end of each day without accomplishing much. Set aside dedicated time blocks to do important work, don’t let it be derailed by urgent requests.
If you don’t embrace ambiguity, uncertainty and unknowns, you’ll sit inside your comfort zone which will keep you safe, but also prevent you from growing. Without taking risks, you’ll miss the opportunity to plan for the future, solve challenging problems and expand your skills. Be fearless. Build the courage to navigate the uncharted territory.
If short-term thinking is your default strategy to handle problems at work, you may lean towards easy and quick fixes instead of more thought-out and well-planned solutions. But always solving problems in a hurry leads to bigger issues. You end up wasting more time and energy as the issue keeps repeating. Instead of seeking instant gratification, invest in a long-term approach.
When other people at work like to play dirty, engaging in office politics may seem like your only choice. But, playing other people’s games messes with your mind and distracts you from focusing on your own goals. Find out a way to minimize their impact without stooping to their level.
When you treat relationships like business transactions, you try to maximize your gain by leaning towards activities that will benefit you and say no to things where you may not get anything in return. This keeps your relationships superficial—people don’t vouch for you, show their support or come forward when you need help. Instead of a “take-only” relationship, selflessly give. Gain trust and respect by putting others first.
Work without boundaries can soon kill your enthusiasm and leave you feeling tired, exhausted and burnt out. Instead of trying to do it all and failing on your commitments, identify what really matters and double-down your effort on it. Nothing is worth your mental health and personal well-being.

How You Can Move From Proving to Improving

Vinita Bansal — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 11:33:36 +0000

What drives your actions at work—the desire to prove yourself or the desire to improve yourself?

Proving yourself is about establishing your worth, raising your self-esteem and showing to others how knowledgeable, talented and skilled you are. People who try to prove themselves turn every moment into a contest—someone else must lose for them to win. How can they outsmart others with a better argument? How can they find flaws in their logic? How can they show the value they bring to the team?

Competitive mindset keeps them constantly stressed and anxious about how they’re perceived—do others like them, are they admired for their skills, do people see the effort they put in? Approval and validation from others is the key focus area that drives their thinking. They evaluate every opportunity based on how it benefits them as opposed to what’s good for their team. They argue tirelessly to prove their point because accepting they’re wrong undermines their competence. Every day at work seems like a battle to be fought and a race to be won.

Improving yourself involves measuring yourself against your own past self—how much are you learning, what’s getting better, are you evolving each day? People who focus on improvement turn every moment into a learning opportunity—it’s not about winning or losing, but progress each day. What are they missing? What are the gaps in their skills? What can others teach them?

Curiosity mindset keeps them excited and focused as every new challenge is an opportunity to learn something new and grow their skills—pleasure is not in reaching the destination, but the journey they take. They don’t attach their identity to their point of view and show willingness to listen to others when a better perspective shows up. They aren’t concerned about being liked or popular because they build strong relationships with others by working together and not against them. Their self-esteem isn’t fragile and dependent on external validation—they lead with an internal measure of their worth. Every day at work feels like a joy ride with many twists and turns.

Moving from proving to improving gives you a sense of control over your decisions, actions and the way you want to lead your life. You no longer have to pretend or be someone else just to please others. You don’t have to worry about being judged or criticized when you measure yourself against an inner scorecard, not external pressures or ego.

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you?
― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset

It starts with the desire to be a better person each day—prioritizing learning and growth over external measures of worth. These 5 practices can help you make that shift.

Ask questions with the intent to learn, don’t show-off intelligence

When your focus is to prove yourself, you use every opportunity to put a spotlight on your work—why your ideas are better, the quality with which you delivered something, how you were praised for your work. You keep highlighting your achievements to earn trust and be seen as more credible. You show off intelligence by using jargon, over-complicating the problem and exaggerating the possibility of a failure.

In order to be the smartest person in the room, you try to outshine others—by interrupting, challenging them and questioning their decisions. You disagree with them only to make yourself heard.

No need to waste time on it. I can tell you that it won’t work.

I have a better solution.

Let me handle it. I know how to do it.

But trying to outwit others or self-trumpeting all the time does not make others like you. Quite the opposite—they resent you for showing up as a know-it-all or always one-upping them. Your knowledge, experience and skills are valuable, but you don’t have to brag about them or put others down to be seen. By shifting from proving to improving, you can get the attention and build the influence to drive meaningful change at work.

Instead of leading with answers, show the attitude to learn by asking meaningful questions. When your intent is to collaborate, not overshadow or trick others, it makes them more likely to value your inputs and acknowledge your experience.

Can you share some data and insights on how this will work?

I need your feedback on another solution that might be better suited to this problem. Would you like to hear it?

This appears like a challenging problem. What ideas do you have?

Questions ignite meaningful conversations which aren’t about who is right and who is wrong. They encourage problem-solving with a shared goal to find the best solution. They challenge everyone to think creatively and show openness to accept differences of opinion. Questions unlock improvement.

We awaken by asking the right questions. We awaken when we see knowledge being spread that goes against our own personal experiences. We awaken when we see popular opinion being wrong but accepted as being right, and what is right being pushed as being wrong. We awaken by seeking answers in corners that are not popular.
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun

Trying hard to prove yourself leads to distance and repulsion while working on improving yourself builds trust and connection. Don’t lead with answers. Ask questions. Make your knowledge, experience and skills visible without boasting.

Sign up for new opportunities, don’t sit inside comfort zone

When proving is the goal, comfort and safety takes priority over new opportunities. You keep doing things you’ve already mastered because they come easy to you—you don’t need to re-establish your worth or worry about the delivered value. You let go of a new opportunity that has unknowns and uncertainty involved because doing it comes at a certain risk.

The fear of not doing it well and the impact it will have on the image and reputation you have built for yourself scares you from stepping into the unknown.

What if you don’t know how to do it?

What if it fails?

What if it doesn’t work as expected?

But staying within your comfort zone prevents you from improving. You refuse to take on tasks that will require building new skills. You let go of projects which require navigating complexity. Desire to prove makes you give up on excellent growth opportunities. Without the skills needed to take on higher level responsibilities, you get stuck in your job and role. Relying on expertise for too long makes you redundant—others who have caught up to you or those who have moved ahead will be more in demand.

Instead of working within a safety net, take one step outside it. Sign up for opportunities that require you to stretch, that make you uncomfortable and challenge you to grow your abilities. Your value will multiply by taking these steps and failing than staying where you are.

What’s making me uncomfortable? How can I put together a plan in place to tackle it?

What gaps in knowledge and skills can prevent me from meeting my objective? How can I bridge this gap?

Who can I reach out to for the help and support I need?

Proactively building new skills keeps you better prepared to tackle future needs. They build the courage and confidence to face your fears instead of letting them stop you from embracing difficulties. Stepping up in times of need also makes you come across as someone who can be counted on and trusted to lead. Make embracing challenges as your goal, not showcasing your talent.

You will never improve in life if you’re always living on easy street. Strength and progress can be gained if only you just step outside of your comfort zone.
― Dee Waldeck

Doing the work that lies in your zone of expertise keeps you mired in mediocrity while expanding beyond it into the stretch zone unleashes your potential and multiplies your impact. Stand out at work by building skills that lead to long-term growth, not short-term wins.

Seek feedback with focus on criticism, not praise

When someone points out gaps in your approach or suggests a better alternative, you take it the wrong way and hold it against them. When your manager tells you that your work needs improvement, you begin to justify and turn defensive.

They must be jealous.

They don’t value me.

I am not good enough.

Engaging in feedback conversations that make you feel good about yourself without highlighting areas where you need to improve may temporarily boost your self-esteem, but they’ll do nothing to advance you in the direction of your goals. Without getting clear, actionable feedback on habits you need to change, skills you need to build, knowledge you need to expand, you’ll be locked in an illusion of greatness—you’ll be trapped with a false belief about your competence which will prevent you from embracing opportunities required to evolve and excel.

Criticism stings. It’s hard. At times, it may even be unfair. But, it’s also necessary. It’s what shows you the path when you’re stuck. It’s what gives you direction when you’re lost. It’s what gets you back on track when you’re distracted or lose focus. It’s what helps you stay grounded, truthful and real. Seek feedback from people who have valuable things to contribute even if they make you uncomfortable.

Who might have valuable information about my performance on this project, idea or strategy?

What’s wrong with it? How can I make it better?

What might I be missing and who can give me feedback on it?

Channeling constructive criticism into useful signals can help you unlock your potential. You can bridge the gap between how you see yourself and how others perceive your work. Showing curiosity to learn from others also builds positive relationships at work—when they see that you value their inputs, they’re more likely to engage with you and stay honest. Consider feedback as a growth catalyst, not a dagger.

Feeling bad is not just an unfortunate consequence of hearing honest feedback, it is a necessary consequence. Anxiety and sadness serve a key motivational function—they make your brain want to take action to get rid of them. Negative feelings focus attention and resources on the task at hand. They are like fuel for your fire.
— Heidi Grant, Succeed

Acknowledge mistakes to prevent future errors, don’t hide them

Mistakes have a negative connotation. They evoke strong feelings of shame, disappointment and regret. You may hide mistakes with the worry that accepting them will damage your image and hurt your reputation. If others know about your errors, they may not trust you or you may be passed up for better opportunities. You try to portray an image of perfection because anything less will put your knowledge and experience at risk.

You may also synonymize mistakes with defeat. One mistake and you lose interest and drop out—you just don’t want to look stupid. Mistakes for you aren’t disappointing and temporary, they are powerful forces that pull you down by casting a shadow over months of effort and hard work.

I am worried about what others will think about me.

I don’t want to look incompetent.

I am scared of failing.

But not acknowledging mistakes or using them as an excuse to quit prevents you from learning valuable lessons—what went wrong, why did it occur, what changes are required to get back on track, how can you prevent this from happening again? Accepting mistakes and learning from them ignites curiosity to do better next time. It gives you the confidence to face the challenges and obstacles in your path. It shows the power of consistency and persistence.

Fear of mistakes also creates a strong desire to play safe. When evaluating opportunities, your inner voice may tell you to stick to the known, do things you have always done before, avoid experimentation, ignore challenges and reject opportunities that are risky. Constant vigilance to “avoid mistakes at all costs” can lead to further stress and anxiety. Treat mistakes as a temporary diversion that requires you to reevaluate your path, but does not prevent you from reaching your destination.

Am I giving up because I am worried about failing?

What risks can I see upfront and how can I plan for them?

What changes to the strategy can help me continue without having to quit?

A mistake is an experience, choice or concept it is necessary for us to have or make in order to evolve beyond it. Errors can be the launchpad of great ideas.
― Stewart Stafford

Mistakes are not terrible personal failings that need to be denied or justified, they are inevitable aspects of life that can help you grow. Stop hiding. Let yourself be seen as a flawed human being who makes mistakes and fails at times.

Approach others with the intent to collaborate, not compete

When your focus is to be recognized, seen and rewarded individually for your work, you see people on your team as competition and try to fly solo instead of being a collaborative team member. You hide information to have an upper edge. You refuse to help out to gain appreciation for your work as others are struggling. You don’t communicate often which leads to misunderstandings and confusion. Thinking that others’ disadvantages can be your advantage, their challenges can be your opportunity and their failures are your moments to shine, attract attention and flaunt your achievements can make you engage in behavior that benefits you, even at the cost of teamwork.

Believing that others’ success can lower your chances to succeed makes you extremely cautious about how your contributions benefit you and not others.

I am here to get my work done, not help others.

I have to do what’s best for me.

If they succeed, I’ll fail.

But seeing others as competitors instead of partners breaks down collaboration—wrong assumptions are made, deadlines are missed and misunderstandings become a common phenomenon instead of a one-off thing. Victim mentality and rivalry leads to wasted time as everyone tries to protect themselves by offloading blame to others—there are long debates, complaints, disagreements and unnecessary discussions instead of focusing on resolving issues, designing solutions and working hard to provide quality deliverables.

Instead of trying to win alone, invest in succeeding as a group. You can create more impact and contribute your true value by seeing others as people on your team and not your rivals. Working together can lead to better generation of ideas, quick resolutions and the shared camaraderie can have positive effects on the mental well-being of everyone involved in the effort. Share ideas, help others, give credit. Treat others as your allies, not your means of leverage.

How can we work better together as a team?

What do others know that I might be missing?

In what ways can I help others or seek their help to achieve shared goals?

Collaborators don’t steal others’ ideas, take advantage of people, or sit back while others accomplish their tasks for them. Collaborators take action to ensure that everyone with whom they work can enjoy the maximum potential outcome.
― Raoul Davis Jr., Firestarters

When you look at others with the desire to beat them, individual goals become a primary focus area instead of collective wins. But your success does not matter when your team loses in the end. Change your goal from competing to collaborating. Succeed together, not alone.

Summary

The goal to prove your worth makes you come across as boastful, needy and insecure while the desire to improve yourself earns you respect, builds your skills and prepares you to take on whatever comes next.
When you flaunt your achievements or try to show off your work, you come across as an egoist and a self-centered person. Others try to avoid you instead of leveraging your knowledge and experience. Instead of boasting, showcase your value by asking meaningful questions and helping others arrive at their own solutions.
Ambiguity and uncertainty scares you off when your goal is to maintain your image and establish your expertise. You stay inside your comfort zone and keep doing work you’ve always done before. But staying within your comfort zone and rejecting new opportunities makes you stagnate as others move ahead. Instead of playing safe, take risks by signing up for activities that require you to navigate complexity, build new skills and solve problems you’ve never solved before.
Praise brings happiness, satisfaction and pride. But, while it boosts your self-esteem momentarily, it prevents you from investing in long-term growth. Not knowing where you’re falling short keeps you blind to your own flaws and inadequacies. Instead of seeking constant praise, ask for criticism of your work. Look for ways to do better, not proving you’re the best.
Mistakes seem bad when you tie them to your competence. You try to hide them as you worry they’ll damage your credibility and hurt your reputation. But, failing to learn from mistakes keeps you from preventing them in the future. Instead of treating mistakes as personal failings, treat them as opportunities to reduce your errors. Improve your future by accepting the present mess.
When others’ success is considered a threat to your own accomplishments, you prioritize individual goals over collective team success. But, treating people on your team as your competitors makes you achieve less. Instead of focusing on winning, work on better ways to collaborate and fulfil shared goals. Partner with people. Treat them as your allies, not your rivals.

7 Reasons You Aren’t Getting Promoted

Vinita Bansal — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 08:44:48 +0000

One of the most dreaded weeks at work is when you’re going through the performance appraisal process. It’s when you lose your sense of control because someone else is given the power to decide your fate. You’re anxious, unable to sleep or focus on the tasks at hand because all the chatter going on in your mind distracts you and keeps you busy.

Will I get promoted this time?

What if I am overlooked again?

Will the mistake I made recently impact their decision?

What will others think about me if… ?

Finally, the day comes. You walk up to the room where your manager is waiting to declare their verdict. You feel your heart beat faster, your shoulders are tense and there’s even a flicker of anxiety in your gut—what will they say? You scan the room for clues: Is their smile warm or forced? Are they making eye contact or trying to avoid it? Do they seem upbeat about this conversation or there’s hesitation in their voice?

Irrespective of how much you’ve prepared yourself mentally, knowing you haven’t made it is a devastating experience. You’ve been doing all the right things—working hard, hitting deadlines, delivering results, staying away from conflict, helping others and even staying late when needed. What more do you need to do to prove you’re ready for the next level?

You feel stuck, under valued and unappreciated as others seem to move ahead while you’re being stalled in the same position. You blame the system and maybe even your manager for being biased and unfair. You show your frustration at those who got promoted because you think they deserved it less. Instead of identifying what held you back, you adopt a victim mindset and fail to do work that will increase your chances of getting promoted in the next cycle.

Remember this: All these negative feelings aren’t going to get you promoted. Yes, it’s frustrating. Yes, it’s discouraging and may even be unfair. But, ruminating about it isn’t going to change the decision or make you appear more worthy.

Try giving up all the thoughts that make you feel bad, or even just some of them, and see how doing that changes your life. You don’t need negative thoughts. All they have ever given you was a false self that suffers. They are all lies.
― Gina Lake, What About Now?

Instead of complaining, blaming and sobbing, you need to look for patterns that unintentionally might be holding you back. You need to look for behaviors that might be getting in your way. Here are the seven reasons you may be held back from being promoted:

Your work is invisible

One of the most frustrating experiences at work is feeling invisible despite your contributions. You may be putting in the hours, delivering more than expected and even taking initiative to help others and find creative solutions to problems, but despite doing great work, you constantly face disappointment and dissatisfaction of being overlooked and neglected.

You may be delivering results, but no one knows the full extent of your impact because you may prioritize work at the cost of building relationships. You don’t engage with people who shape decisions. You don’t take an initiative to speak up in meetings, share updates or advocate for your contributions. Quietly working behind the scenes makes you unpromotable.

Promotions aren’t just about how well you do your current job. They’re about how visibly and strategically you position yourself for the next one. How you showcase your strengths and present your skills is just as important. Keeping your head down and doing good work makes you come across as reliable, not necessarily someone who’s ready for bigger and better responsibilities.

Visibility matters. You don’t get credit for invisible work. Doing great work quietly and hoping someone will recognize it isn’t a strategy—it’s a gamble. The harsh truth is this: The perception of what you do matters more than your capability.

Making yourself seen at work is important because when your work is visible, not only are you likely to land with better opportunities, you are more likely to get promoted too.

But you can’t rely on your manager to do this for you. Your manager is often busy, juggling competing priorities and stretched across multiple initiatives—they may not track your progress or be fully aware of the extent of your contributions unless it’s clearly communicated. Without knowing your achievements, they may be flawed and biased in deciding who gets the opportunity, who has knowledge and skills and who’s ready to succeed at the next level.

Self-promotion is a leadership and political skill that is critical to master in order to navigate the realities of the workplace and position you for success.
― Bonnie Marcus, The Politics of Promotion

Self-promotion isn’t boasting. It’s not bragging if it’s based on facts. If you don’t share your wins, someone else will take the spotlight—possibly for your work. Make your work easier to see—share what you’ve built, solved or improved. You’ll get promoted if you not only contribute, but also make it easier for others to see the impact and the value you created.

You stay within your expertise

You may be the go-to person for your domain—someone who acquired knowledge and experience by keeping at it for a long time. Others value your expertise and rely on your depth because you may know the problems inside out. But when it comes to extending beyond current scope, you may choose to stay in your comfort zone and refuse to take one step outside it. You avoid bigger challenges and don’t sign up for stretch assignments. You refuse to build the next level of skills.

Excelling in your current role doesn’t automatically prove you’re ready for the next. When you keep solving what you’ve always solved, you come across as someone who isn’t ready to stretch—it keeps you trapped and operating in a narrow lane which makes it hard for others to envision you outside it. Your zone of expertise makes you reliable and keeps you stuck in the same role because you keep opting for safety over learning and growth. By avoiding risk, you signal that you’re not ready for more responsibility.

Promotions don’t go to people who operate from a familiar territory, but those who take initiative outside their current responsibility, who can think cross-functionally, navigate the uncharted territory, stretch beyond boundaries, connect the dots and make decisions with limited information and thrive in complexity.

Growth requires stretching beyond comfort into the unknown. It doesn’t require giving up what you’re good at, but applying it in new projects, new challenges and new areas of responsibilities. Volunteer for work outside your current scope. Sit in on meetings that involve multiple cross functional teams. Share your insights in different forums and contexts. Build on your expertise instead of sitting comfortably in it.

Growth isn’t found in comfort—it’s born in courage. The familiar may feel safe, but it rarely asks more of you. Staying where it’s easy keeps your potential out of reach. To rise, you must be willing to risk, to stretch, to stumble and stand again. Discomfort is not a punishment—it’s proof you’re evolving. It’s the space where your skills sharpen, your faith deepens, and your character strengthens. Each brave step into the unknown expands your boundaries and reveals what you’re truly made of.
― Mlungisi Simelane

You can’t sit in your comfort zone and also signal that you’re ready for the next level. When you stick to what you know, you miss chances to grow beyond it. Don’t just deepen your skill, broaden its impact. You’ll get promoted if you’re willing to grow, explore and look beyond your lane to apply knowledge in new and creative ways.

You resist feedback

You may be producing excellent work, but if you resist feedback—dismiss input, get defensive or quietly ignore it—you come across as someone who’s difficult to coach or not open to change. Not taking difficult feedback constructively makes it hard for others to have a productive conversation—they not only avoid sharing criticism, they may hide critical information that’s necessary to communicate and collaborate. You’re met with silence, avoidance and fake nods—anything to avoid friction, resistance and conflict. This widens the gap between how you see yourself and how others perceive you leading to inadvertent blind spots.

You may be highly skilled, but you aren’t perfect. Not showing maturity to handle hard truths signals you aren’t serious about growth. It shows that you’re more focused on being right than being better. Feedback is uncomfortable but it’s also an opportunity to reflect and evolve. Facing your shortcomings stings a little, but you don’t have to take it as a personal attack.

Promotions aren’t given to people who treat feedback as a threat to their success. It’s given to those who show openness to being challenged and close any skill gaps.

Being promotable means being teachable. It’s not treating feedback as a yardstick to measure your competence, but rather as a tool to grow and develop. People who not only welcome feedback, but actively seek it, use it as a fuel for improvement—they show curiosity to ask questions, intelligence to identify what’s relevant and humility to act on it.

Those who handle feedback more fruitfully have an identity story with a different assumption at its core. These folks see themselves as ever evolving, ever growing. They have what is called a “growth” identity. How they are now is simply how they are now. It’s a pencil sketch of a moment in time, not a portrait in oil and gilded frame. Hard work matters; challenge and even failure are the best ways to learn and improve. Inside a growth identity, feedback is valuable information about where one stands now and what to work on next. It is welcome input rather than upsetting verdict.
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback

Defensiveness shuts down learning. Instead of protecting your ego, work on evolving your edge. Use feedback to identify exactly where and how you’re falling short. You’ll get promoted if you embrace feedback without judgment and show willingness to evolve.

You prioritize harmony over impact

Being likable at work is not a bad thing, but in trying to be one if you constantly avoid conflicts, fail to challenge ideas, question decisions or push for what matters, you come across as someone who’s agreeable, not influential. When keeping peace, making others comfortable and people pleasing are your goals, you refuse to take a stand, hold back hard truths and nod in agreement even when every bone in your body is shouting “I disagree.”

Without influence, you can’t persuade others to adopt your ideas, support your initiatives or align them on mutually agreeable goals. Influence also plays a key role in resolving conflicts, handling negotiations and inspiring others to take action. De-escalating tension, creating win/win situations and uplifting others by encouraging them to take ownership of their responsibilities are highly valued skills that can draw attention from higher-ups and make you stand out at work.

People who get promoted learn to navigate tension, not avoid it—they prioritize what’s right over what’s easy, share disagreement respectfully, push back on important matters and take a stand when it matters the most. They build trust not by avoiding conflict, but engaging with it constructively. They don’t try to make everyone happy because they understand that making hard decisions and driving better outcomes can’t always be achieved with a consensus—it may upset a few people in the short-term, but the end results will be exemplary.

Conflict is constructive when it improves the quality of decisions, stimulates creativity and innovation, encourages interest and curiosity among group members, provides the medium through which problems can be aired and tensions released, and fosters an environment of self‑evaluation and change.
— Stephen P. Robbins, The Truth About Managing People

Keeping the peace might make you likable, but it won’t drive results or earn you a promotion. Promotions go to those who can handle tough conversations, make hard decisions and put goals before comfort. Real impact requires the courage to speak up, even when it’s uncomfortable.

You confuse busyness with value

If you’re busy throughout the day jumping in to solve every crisis at work, saying yes to everything that comes your way, attending every meeting that shows up on your calendar and responding to emails as soon as they show up, you may mistake motion with value creation.

Being overwhelmed and swamped with work makes you overcommitted and under-strategic about where you add value—you keep hustling to stay afloat instead of stepping back to steer. Your energy gets spread thin. Your contributions have low impact. You’re seen as someone who may get the job done, but lack vision and judgment to take on more responsibilities.

Promotions aren’t given to those who do more, but those who do what matters—those who step back to look at the big picture, dedicate their energy to high impact activities and filter noise to say no to work that will keep them occupied but won’t move the needle. They don’t mistake output with outcomes, motion with progress or time spent with value creation. What sets them apart is not how busy they are, but how deliberately they choose where to invest their effort.

To break from the busyness trap, pause, zoom out and reassess where your time is going. Identify what truly drives results and let go of the rest. Don’t fill your day with endless tasks, make strategic choices about what to take on, what to delegate and what to say no to.

Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective—doing less—is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
― Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

Busyness creates an illusion of productivity which keeps you moving without taking you anywhere. To get promoted, focus less on being constantly occupied and more on adding value. Strategic impact and not sheer effort is what gets noticed.

You outshine the team instead of elevating it

If you constantly hog the spotlight, take credit for work and try to be the smartest person in the room, you may achieve individual goals, but fail to work as a team. Making every project about your ideas, your inputs and your goals limits collaboration. It creates an environment where team members feel undervalued for not getting the recognition, hesitate to contribute because you hijack conversations and worry about being overshadowed, especially if anyone but you takes the lead. In your desire to grow, you may leave no space for others to grow around you.

Dominating rather than empowering makes you come across as someone who’s difficult to scale. You’re being doubted not for your competence, but your capacity to lead, inspire and lift others up. Your potential is measured not only by how well you perform, but how effectively you help others perform. If you can’t create space for others to grow, contribute and shine, you can’t be trusted to lead bigger teams or drive more complex initiatives.

Promotions don’t go to people who shine a light on their own brilliance, but those who amplify the collective intelligence of the group. These people not only produce exceptional work themselves, but also lift others up by leaving room to grow. They build trust by sharing credit, highlighting team wins over personal victories and creating space for diverse voices to thrive.

Start by sharing credit generously by framing success as a team win instead of a solo effort. Invite others to contribute by asking for their ideas, listening actively and making space for different voices to be heard. Instead of taking over discussions, coach and mentor—help others think through challenges and build their own confidence. Step back strategically and let others lead when the opportunity arises, even if you could do the job yourself.

When people work with Multipliers, they hold nothing back. They offer the very best of their thinking, creativity, and ideas. They give more than their jobs require and volunteer their discretionary effort, energy, and resourcefulness. They actively search for more valuable ways to contribute. They hold themselves to the highest standards. They give 100 percent of their abilities to the work–and then some.
― Liz Wiseman, Multipliers

Individual growth and team success are not mutually exclusive. You don’t rise by outshining others, but by helping them rise with you. When you elevate those around you, you show not only what you can achieve, but what you can inspire. That’s what sets you apart and positions you for the next level.

You chase false promises

Sometimes it’s not you, but your manager who can get in the way of your success. They may not be invested in you and may use tactics like vague promises or false reassurances to retain you without committing to real growth. They can encourage you to keep going without any timeline or a plan for your advancement. They can delay conversations, shift expectations or keep moving the goalpost, leaving you working hard without clarity on what it takes to move up.

Maybe the next review cycle.

Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll be promoted soon.

It’s not your turn this time…but soon…

Vague reassurances can keep your hope alive. Instead of pausing and identifying what’s holding you back, you double down your effort—taking on more projects, working longer hours and continuing to exceed expectations. You keep performing and keep waiting for a reward that never comes.

People who get promoted don’t settle for false promises or vague timelines. They seek clarity, set boundaries and ask direct questions to take charge of their career path, instead of letting others define or limit it. They get into the specifics—timelines, expectations and metrics for growth—to align on a common understanding of where they’re now and what needs to be done to get to the next level.

What does growth look like?

What milestones matter?

What’s the realistic timeline?

Don’t confuse encouragement with commitment or loyalty with progress. Instead of waiting passively, initiate conversations, document agreement and follow up on outcomes. When growth stalls despite effort and transparency, explore opportunities outside your current role and job where your growth is taken seriously and where progress isn’t just promised, but planned and pursued.

The most common mistake you’ll make is forgetting to keep your own scorecard. Very little at work reinforces your ability to do this, so you will have to be vigilant. When evaluators give you an assessment, they are just guessing at who you are; they certainly are not the ones who know your potential. They can rate you and influence you, but they don’t get to define you. That’s your most honorable assignment: to define, every day through the way you deliver your work, the scope and nature of your inherent abilities.
― Charlotte Beers, I’d Rather Be in Charge

Don’t wait for recognition that’s never clearly offered. Chasing vague promises keeps you stuck in limbo. If your growth feels indefinite, it’s time to stop waiting and start leading by asking clear questions, setting boundaries and owning your next move.

Summary

Doing great work isn’t enough if no one knows about it. If you’re not making your impact visible by sharing results, aligning with stakeholders and building credibility, you risk being overlooked when it’s time for advancement.
Mastery is important, but promotions go to those who show they can stretch, adapt and lead beyond what they already know. Sticking only to familiar tasks limits your perceived potential and readiness for higher roles.
Defensiveness or avoidance in the face of feedback signals that you’re hard to coach. Growth-minded people treat feedback as fuel, not a threat and demonstrate that they can evolve with the demands of the role.
If you avoid tension, never speak up or always say yes to keep the peace, you may be seen as agreeable but not impactful. To be promotable, learn to navigate disagreement, push for better outcomes and challenge the status quo when needed.
Filling your day with tasks and staying swamped doesn’t guarantee strategic contribution. Promotions go to those who prioritize what matters, filter out noise and focus on outcomes—not just activity.
When you make every success about yourself, you may hit individual targets but fail to demonstrate team spirit. To get promoted, lift others, share credit and create space for the team to shine.
Relying on vague encouragement or delayed recognition keeps you stuck. People who advance take control of their path by asking for clarity, measuring real progress and walking away from empty promises when needed.

How to Raise Concerns at Work

Vinita Bansal — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 11:40:39 +0000

When you’re working, how many times do you get distracted by thoughts of unresolved issues or concerns?

Tech debt that needs attention.

Degrading code quality.

Cross-team collaboration effort that’s getting on your nerves.

When you put aside issues that matter and don’t put in the effort to get them resolved, they keep consuming your mental bandwidth and energy that should be spent in doing actual work.

Keeping these concerns to yourself is not only bad for your productivity, it also takes away the opportunity to introduce better processes, more efficient planning or any other improvement that can positively impact the entire team and the organization.

Maybe you raised concerns in the past, but they didn’t get addressed which now discourages you from even trying. When no one cares, why bother even trying?

Maybe you created a big deal out of something in the past that wasn’t even a problem, making you feel like a fool for raising issues that don’t deserve attention. What if you’re repeating the same mistake this time?

Past experiences, biases and other such fears can prevent you from bringing up issues at the right time and suffer in silence instead of voicing concerns and putting them to rest.

If you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out… Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

Instead of whining, complaining and sobbing about your problems, use that time and energy to achieve your goals. Speak up, share your concerns using these 4 practices.

Get into the right frame of mind

When you’re agitated, irritated or overwhelmed with issues, all those negative emotions not only show up in your words, but also your body language.

Negative body language includes hand gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice that reflects anger, dissatisfaction and a closed-off attitude that makes it hard for others to listen or pay attention to your words.

Crossed arms shows defensiveness.

Pointing fingers can come off as blaming.

Raised voice feels confrontational.

Frowning projects disapproval.

Rolling eyes signals disrespect.

Irrespective of how pressing your concern is or how important you deem it in your mind, coming across too strongly can have quite the opposite effect—instead of getting others’ attention, it can turn people off, shut them down or diminish the impact of your words regardless of your intent.

Since non-verbal signals have five times the impact of verbal signals, paying attention to the image you are projecting is crucial to your first impressions.
― Susan C. Young, The Art of Body Language

When raising a concern, maintain a calm and neutral tone. Be assertive, not aggressive. Use respectful body language that does not feel intimidating to the other person. Sharing the issue without panicking, getting hyper or coming across as too pushy can break the first barrier to get your message across and make it count.

Take Charge of Your Anger

Empower yourself to respond, not react — and create a calmer, more confident you.

Learn More

Act as an owner

When raising issues at work, many people take pleasure in pointing out problems thinking it’s their job to raise concerns and someone else should fix it. Such people are despised, ignored and dismissed because no one likes a person who keeps bringing up problems without taking ownership.

Our code quality sucks!

We can’t build a resilient system. There’s just too much tech debt!

I can’t meet this deadline because other teams won’t cooperate!

Such statements—irrespective of how relevant they are—go unnoticed because they state the issue that’s probably known to many others without a solution to fix it. Problem-focused talking creates noise, wastes time and distracts you by keeping you stuck in an upsetting situation with no progress in sight.

Shifting gear from problem to problem solving gets attention—it invites others to think, contribute and work towards a resolution. Solution-oriented talking reduces the friction to act by laying out possible solutions and unburdening others from the expectation to figure everything out on their own. It promotes ownership, responsibility and builds a sense of agency where people feel empowered to act, not just observe.

Our code quality isn’t up to standard. Here’s what I suggest we should do…

All our accumulated tech debt is making it hard to build resilient systems. I suggest we do [x, y, z] to ensure our systems are future-ready.

Lack of clear deadlines with dependencies makes it extremely difficult to integrate with other teams and release on time. Can we sit together with all the cross-functional teams and chart out a plan for a smooth on-time delivery?

We must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it. We cannot solve a problem by saying ‘It’s not my problem’. We cannot solve a problem by hoping that someone else will solve it for us. I can solve a problem only when I say ‘This is my problem and it’s up to me to solve it’.
— M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

When sharing a concern, don’t just state the problem and then leave it to others to resolve it. Suggest solutions and invite inputs, turning challenges into collaborative opportunities for progress.

Talk about impact

Many concerns don’t get acknowledged because they aren’t backed up by data or don’t properly call out the impact. Statements that don’t get into the details or highlight the consequences of leaving the problem unaddressed are as good as staying silent.

Our issue backlog needs to be updated. It appears many of them have the wrong priority assigned.

I am worried that our systems aren’t ready to handle next month’s expected load.

I am working very hard, but still lagging behind. There’s just too much to do.

These issues may be valid, but without calling out the impact, they are meaningless—they don’t register in the minds or make it to the priority list of the people who have the power and authority to do something about them.

When you talk about impact, your concern brings to the forefront the outcome of ignoring the problem or not giving it the attention it deserves. This makes it harder to ignore or dismiss it entirely.

There are 10 P0 issues in the backlog that haven’t been prioritized in the last sprint. If we don’t assign the right priorities, we may miss out on critical issues that need immediate attention. Here’s a criteria I suggest we can use before marking issue priority and categorizing them into critical vs non-critical…

Our systems are currently able to handle 1M users / day. However, based on business projections, we may see a spike in users up to 1.5M / day next month. There are many events planned around this target and business will suffer a huge revenue loss if our systems aren’t prepared to handle this load. I suggest we run a load performance test to measure the supported scale and then decide the next course of action.

I have three major assignments that are due in the next 2 weeks. With the amount of work left, I do not believe that I’ll be able to meet those commitments. We must re-prioritize and reset expectations with our stakeholders so that they can work on an alternative plan instead of relying completely on all the deliverables that were originally committed. Informing them at the last minute will damage our trust and reputation.

We must speak truth to power and confront ignorance with facts.
― DaShanne Stokes

Do the homework if you expect others to take you seriously. Substantiate your claims with data and make them relevant with impact. Others can’t ignore you when you base your concerns in facts, not in feelings, assumptions or vague generalities.

Ask for advice

People like to feel in control and have a say. They not only have a high regard for their own ideas and solutions, but also appreciate those who seek them. When sharing your concerns, instead of ending with your thoughts, invite others to contribute by seeking their opinion.

Asking for advice shifts their frame of mind from problem to solution. When put on the spot to answer a difficult question or make a difficult decision, they are more likely to be rational, less biased and may even agree with your opinion.

You don’t have to please them in order to be liked or to get something from them. Be genuine when asking for advice because they can make out when you’re authentic and when you’re manipulating them to have it your way.

Frame your concerns or questions in a way that invites them to share their ideas and shows respect for their opinion:

What’s your perspective on…?

How would you deal with…?

What would you do in this situation…?

What’s your suggestion?

Asking for advice is a great way to redirect their thoughts in the direction you want. Even thinking momentarily about your question makes it more likely for them to lean towards your suggestions or the outcomes you want.

People who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool—even ideas that at first glance appear controversial, wrong, or at odds with their own beliefs.
— Kerry Patterson, Crucial Conversations

Others can’t ignore your concern when you make them part of the problem and feel inclusive. They can’t refuse to help out. It’s the smartest strategy to get their buy-in and move forward with your goals.

Summary

Staying silent instead of raising your concern feels safe—you don’t have to convince anyone to see things your way. But leaving issues unresolved consumes your mental bandwidth and energy which prevents you from being productive and performant at work.
How you say things matter as much as what you say. Body language that shouts strong opinions, judgments or comes across too strongly turns people off. It triggers a negative psychological reaction that makes them dismiss your concerns instead of showing openness and curiosity. When bringing up issues, stay calm and composed. You can communicate your worries without getting aggressive.
When all you do is bring up issues without a plan to fix them, it comes across as whining. Without showing willingness to act, your attitude towards problems comes across as defeatist, unconstructive and demotivating. It’s a voice of constant pessimism that saps enthusiasm and drains energy. To get others to take you seriously, act as an owner. Shift from problem mindset to solution based thinking.
When so many things vie for people’s attention, how can you get them to focus on the things that you’re trying to communicate? Instead of simply stating the problem, talk about the impact of leaving it unaddressed. Knowing the consequences can get their attention and support to get it fixed.
Everyone has a point of view that they consider is the best. When raising a concern, not including these inputs not only prevents you from getting all the data points to make the best decision, it also makes others reluctant to commit. One of the best ways to get a buy-in from others is to seek their perspective and ask for advice. When others feel inclusive and valued, they’re more likely to engage fully, support the direction and commit to making it succeed.

10 Skills That Matter Most at Work

Vinita Bansal — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 08:26:28 +0000

Your skills at work matter—not only the core skills that justify your designation, but also the ones that help you connect, collaborate, navigate challenges, solve complex problems and most importantly enable you to do impactful work.

While the more skills you have, the better placed you’re to get more responsibilities, more autonomy and more trust from others, not all skills are equally valued and trying to excel in everything will prevent you from being good at skills that actually matter.

These skills can’t be assigned to you as tasks by your manager or improved by simply reading books. You need to practice them, gather feedback, adapt and keep applying them until they turn into a habit.

Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.
― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

Once you have these skills as tools in your toolkit, you’ll not only stand out, be recognized and appreciated at work, but bigger responsibilities, better opportunities and more challenging work will land your way. You’ll gain confidence, trust and respect from higher-ups to build better products and lead initiatives that can have a huge impact on the entire organization.

Here are the 10 things that matter most at work:

High agency

Many things can go wrong at work—conflicting priorities, unknown problems, uncertainty of decisions, misalignment of expectations, communication gaps, unrealistic deadlines and so on.

Adopting a victim mentality in such cases prevents you from thinking clearly, finding solutions and moving forward. Assuming others are the source of your problem prevents you from taking responsibility and feeling in control of your outcomes.

Difficult situations come with many unknowns and challenges. Navigating them requires becoming a high agency person.

High agency is about finding a way to get what you want, without waiting for the conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances. High agency people either push through in the face of adversity or they manage to reverse it to achieve their goals. They either find a way, or they make a way.

It is a sense of control over your own behaviors, decisions and actions in shaping up your life as opposed to relying on external circumstances, conditions and environment to decide what you can and cannot do.

Instead of considering other people’s limits as their own limits and fitting inside a box based on what others deem possible, high agency people expand their boundaries of influence, push themselves to navigate the uncharted territory and do the work that’s necessary to succeed.

High agency isn’t about dismissing negative emotions by saying things like:

Be positive!

Get over it and move on!

Look on the bright side.

It isn’t about hiding uncomfortable feelings or providing false reassurances. High agency is the optimism needed to navigate difficult circumstances. It’s the courage to act despite feeling those feelings; staying optimistic while staying real.

To become a high agency person, you don’t need special talents or knowledge. All you need is:

Relentless drive to look for solutions instead of complaining about the problem.
When you fail or make mistakes while navigating a difficult situation, feel disappointed much like everyone else, but don’t let that disappointment get in the way of taking action or making progress.
Put your network to good use. Brainstorm ideas, seek advice. Ask for help when you need it.

Jim Dethmer calls this “taking radical responsibility.”

When we place blame, we locate the cause and control of our lives outside ourselves. When we take responsibility, we locate the cause and control of our lives inside ourselves.
— Jim Dethmer, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

In a difficult situation, good solutions start to emerge when you take responsibility instead of blaming someone or something else for your situation.

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Influence

To do well at work, you need people on your side. People who trust you, listen to your ideas, value your experience and those who want to help you succeed.

Anyone can come up with a great idea, a better solution or different choices to make an optimal decision. The hard part isn’t doing the work, it’s getting buy-in from others.

If you can’t sway people in your direction, if you can’t persuade them to see it your way, all the time and effort you have put into something can go to waste. Not getting the alignment you seek can also leave you feeling frustrated, angry and annoyed because once your mind is stuck on a certain possibility, it’s hard to erase it and let it go.

Why don’t they get me?

Why won’t they listen to me?

Why would they choose an inferior option?

The ability to influence others is an essential skill to practice and master because the impact you create at work is directly tied to it. Influence not only increases your impact by enabling you to get more done, getting others to support your initiatives and adopt your ideas can build the confidence to try unconventional methods, explore unique possibilities and challenge the status quo.

Persuasion skills exert a far greater influence over others’ behaviors than formal power structure do.
— Robert B. Cialdini

Build your own path to influence using these 5 practices:

A positive intent to work together and collaborate can encourage others to seek your opinion while a negative intent can lead to a pushback or just ignore you. Always start with intent. Clearly lay it out in a way that aligns with a common goal.
Adapt your tone, content and conversational style to match others expectations. Make it easy for them to connect and value your perspective.
Don’t hide your talent. Lead from the front, share learnings and help others build valuable skills.
Gather feedback, seek inputs and tweak your message to make it easy for others to listen and reach a common conclusion.
Finally, becoming influential is like running a marathon, it’s not a sprint. Don’t rush through it. Pause and connect with people along the way.

Influence at work plays a big role in making contributions, doing work that matters and being impactful in your role. Convincing others to your ideas, swaying their thinking to see things your way or aligning them on mutually agreeable goals is a superpower that everyone must work to build.

Grit

We look at talent and choose to be amazed by its presence —

Wow, she’s a natural!

He must be really talented!

She’s gifted!

He’s a genius!

It’s easy to attribute performance to talent without factoring in the labor that goes into excellence behind the scenes. Feeling thrilled by the outcome while ignoring the input that went into generating that outcome.

When we fall for the mystery of talent and fail to realize that talent, effort, and achievement go together, it makes giving up so easy.

I can never be that!

I am not talented enough!

We can fool ourselves into believing we don’t have what it takes and quit the attitude to even try.

Building ability requires curiosity to push ahead, ability to focus, determination, and hard work while seeking challenges and consistently practicing to get better at your game.

You may have all the talent in the world, but without determination, effort, and persistence you won’t get very far.

Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t. Talent— how fast we improve in skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.
— Angela Duckworth, Grit

Stop marveling at the talent and start showing grit. It’s not your talent, but rather your perseverance and effort that will decide where you end up.

Creative thinking

Remember all that curiosity you had as a child that annoyed your teachers and parents when you asked too many questions:

Why do I have to go to school?

Why do I have to sleep early when you can be awake till late?

Why can’t I play video games?

Why do I have to finish my homework?

Curiosity and the ability to express that curiosity constructively is a great skill to have even when you’re an adult. It allows you to look at things differently and come up with new solutions to problems. Without curiosity, you accept the status quo and assume things only work a certain way. You can’t be creative if you keep your curiosity hidden and fail to unleash it.

To build creative thinking skills, wake up your curious mind and put it to use:

Challenge and question assumptions.
Expand your circle of competence by gaining knowledge from outside your current scope of work. It will enable you to combine various types of information in your head in new and novel ways. For example: meet with other functions within your organization to understand how they operate, what their challenges are and how they make decisions.
Create mental space for new ideas to kick in. Incorporate thinking time into your calendar.

Creativity isn’t a switch that’s flicked on or off; it’s a way of seeing, engaging and responding to the world around you.
― Rod Judkins, The Art of Creative Thinking

Curiosity didn’t kill the cat. If you want to be creative, get curious.

Mental agility

When you do things you have always done or the ones that make you comfortable, you give limited opportunities to your brain to grow.

Your brain learns to associate certainty with safety and anything uncertain as a threat. Sitting within the bounds of your comfort zone makes mental agility impossible—how can you think quickly in an unpredictable situation when your mind is engulfed with fear, anxiety and worry?

Pushing yourself to do new things or the ones that make you uncomfortable tunes your brain to accept discomfort as a part of life—you stop seeing change as a threat, become more open to diverse ideas and learn to navigate complexity instead of avoiding it. When your brain is not overwhelmed by strong emotions, it can think clearly. You can move quickly between different ideas and respond to events in a flexible way.

To step outside your comfort zone:

Challenge yourself to solve hard problems. Seek opportunities that require you to solve problems that you have never solved before.
Learn something new. It doesn’t even have to be work-related. How about the piano classes, tennis lessons, mastering French or taking cooking classes that you keep putting off?
Set yourself a difficult goal and work on it consistently. For example: push yourself to exercise for 30 days without a break.

Real change is difficult at the beginning, but gorgeous at the end. Change begins the moment you get the courage and step outside your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.
― Roy T. Bennett

Your brain loves a challenge and challenging it frequently will keep it mentally agile.

Navigating conflicts

Conflicts scare us. They put our amygdala on overdrive leading to a flight-or-fight situation. We either try to avoid the conflict by putting it off for too long or try to fight it by proving we are right and others are wrong.

But conflicts are how we learn about our differences of opinions, faulty assumptions or errors in our judgment. Without conflicts, we will make biased, mediocre and poor decisions.

Learning to face conflicts, even though they’re uncomfortable at first, is a crucial skill to build and master.

Face conflicts head on. Avoidance makes whatever you’re trying to avoid extremely difficult to tackle later on. Attending the conflict at the right time prevents the problem from turning worse.

Approach difficult conversations not with the intent to win, but with the intent to work out an approach that’s acceptable to all the parties. Win-lose mentality shuts down dialogue and leaves one side unhappy and disgruntled. Win-win mentality on the other hand encourages exchange of ideas and keeps everyone aligned and delighted.

To manage conflicts well:

Take control of your emotions: Don’t deny or disengage with your emotions. Recognize them, accept them and then guide them into constructive action instead of engaging in destructive behaviors.
Put things in perspective: Show willingness to change your mind by challenging your thoughts, accepting that you might be wrong and detaching your ideas from your identity.
Focus on what can be controlled: Let go of things you can’t control and put all your time and energy on things within your control.

Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
— William James

All the knowledge and experience in the world is of no use if you can’t navigate conflicts and align people towards a common goal. Learning to do it well not only improves your productivity and performance, but also ensures you get the results without compromising on your mental well-being.

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Productive partnerships

The stronger are your work relationships, the easier it is to connect, collaborate and achieve goals. Relationships―built up over time―is the essential ingredient to be successful at work.

People are more likely to engage with you when they feel a positive connection built using shared values, trust and mutual respect. They are more likely to value your opinions and follow your lead. But doing this takes time. You can’t force or fake your way into it. Manipulating others to like you, respect you or even trust you is short-lived. Others can eventually make out if you were genuine or just faking it.

Build trustworthy and long-lasting relationships without the expectation to get something from others.

Show interest in others thoughts, ideas and beliefs.
Offer support and help when they are struggling.
Address misunderstandings openly and respectfully.
Appreciate and recognize them for their good work.
Be honest and transparent in your interactions.
Build trust by being dependable and taking accountability.
Respect boundaries and differences in work habits and communication styles.

Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.
― Tony Dungy, The Mentor Leader

Building rapport plays a significant role in being successful at work. Invest in it. Play a long game.

Active listening

How do you feel when you’re not being heard—frustrated, annoyed and angry at the other person? Do you feel like they don’t really know you or they don’t really get who you are? This is exactly how others feel when you don’t listen.

Listening poorly limits your understanding of others which deprives you from bonding, building trust, learning, growing and most important of all, evolving as a human being.

There’s a cost to not listening—stress in the workplace, poor relationships, misunderstandings, errors, missed opportunities, arguments, stalled projects, avoidable conflicts, and wasted time.

How you listen and respond to others has a significant impact on the quality of your relationships—be it workplace, family or friends.

Nothing hurts more than the sense that the people we care about aren’t really listening. We never outgrow the need to have our feelings known.
― Michael P. Nichols, The Lost Art of Listening

Use these 5 practices to become a better listener:

Words convey only part of the story. Someone’s true intent or what they believe is often hidden and invisible to us. Dig deeper and go beyond words.
Your body language—tone of voice, gestures and facial expressions speak louder than your words. Ensure your body language is curious, respectful and kind.
Interrupting others is a common habit that leaves others feeling unheard, undervalued and dismissed. You can’t listen well if you aren’t willing to hold off your tongue and give others a chance to complete.
We like to create stories in our mind that fit our preconceived ideas, beliefs and perceptions. Good listening involves putting your opinions and judgments aside to create space for curiosity and thoughtfulness.
When we enter conversations with the intent to make ourselves understood, we lose the opportunity to understand others. Start with understanding others first. Hear them out. They may reciprocate and respond in kind.

Listening well makes it possible to align on shared goals, explore different possibilities and make unbiased decisions. It gives us a perspective that’s otherwise hard to get because of our own thoughts, beliefs, experiences and expectations.

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Bridging communication gaps

Communication problems are the source of a lot of misery at work. They lead to expectation mismatch, misalignment, confusion and even friction between people.

When communication breaks down, project deadlines are missed, stakeholders lose trust and business suffers. Poor communication makes it hard to get things done and achieve success.

Learning to converse with others is one of the most important skills at work—we all need to learn and improve upon it. It requires conscious effort to hash things out, embrace uncomfortable conversations and desire to listen and learn from others.

Make communication less painful and more productive for everyone using these practices:

Seek alignment on priorities and agree on a common measure of success. Success is more likely when everyone works on shared goals.
Expecting others to register key information by saying it once is a big mistake. Unless you repeat it multiple times, it will not get the time and attention it deserves.
Good questions have the power to unlock creative thinking and surface out hidden problems. Use every opportunity to explore your curiosity by asking questions.
Assumptions when not validated can lead to gaps in expectations. Avoid frustration, angst and anxiety by seeking alignment upfront.
Blaming, shaming and complaining does not solve problems. Instead of pointing fingers, identify what caused these communication gaps and how you can avoid them in the future.

Words matter. Words shape worldviews. Words provoke action and reaction, which in turn provoke more words. Getting the words right is critically important. Getting the action right is also critically important. And aligning the words and actions is even more important.
― Helio Fred Garcia, The Power of Communication

When we don’t make the effort to communicate well, a lot of time is wasted in resolving issues that creep up due to misalignment, confusion and expectation mismatch. Communication can be less chaotic when everyone commits to resolving differences proactively instead of relying on others.

Thinking Big

What you think is possible can place the boundary on what you can accomplish. While a scarcity mindset can get in the way of your dreams and make you settle for less with the assumption that your desires are unrealistic, an abundant mindset makes everything appear within reach.

Scarcity mindset considers the limitations of a situation by focusing on the negatives, while an abundance mindset considers the opportunities in a situation by focusing on areas of growth and improvement.

Lead with a long-term view. Imagine yourself calm and confident leading exactly the kind of life you want to live. Project your desires into the future:

How do you see yourself a few years from now?
What is that person doing?
What behaviors and characteristics that person must have demonstrated to end up where they are now?
How can you incorporate those behaviors and attitudes into your daily life?

The ability to think big is the first step to break out of your bubble of self-imposed limits, channel your energy to explore a bigger and better future, and map out the path ahead to make it possible. Thinking big sets the direction. To make progress, take tiny steps along the way—re-evaluate your strategies, reconsider your options, adjust and adapt.

The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief.
― David Schwartz , The Magic of Thinking Big

Flexibility in thinking and action can take you far and wide—with more options, more choices, and more resources.

Summary

Staying resilient in the face of adversity, navigating unknowns and uncertainties without being constrained by what other people deem possible is the most admired and sought after skill at work. Become a high agency person—look beyond the artificial boundaries to explore the world of possibilities, find a way that others didn’t know existed.
All your great ideas, experience and knowledge is wasted if others can’t appreciate it and put it to good use. Swaying people in your direction requires earning their trust, respect and confidence. Become influential. Build an army of advocates who are keen to adopt your ideas and support your initiatives.
Talent can get you the right opportunities, but it can’t make you stick around when things end up being difficult or don’t turn out as expected. Grit—a combination of determination, effort and perseverance is the key to long-term success, not talent.
Curious people stand out at work because of their ability to think differently. They’re able to make connections, draw patterns and think creatively. They challenge the status quo, solve problems in unique ways and don’t limit themselves to their current scope of work. Become curious to expand your creative thinking skills—it’s rare and always in demand at work.
When dealing with an unpredictable situation, an unexpected change or uncertainty, what do you need to identify the best way to move forward? Mental agility. To build mental agility, purposefully step outside your comfort zone. It will align your brain to accept discomfort as a part of life instead of avoiding it.
Avoiding conflicts or putting them off for too long may be your default response because conflicts evoke strong feelings of fear, resentment, doubt and other negative emotions. But not handling the conflict at the right time makes whatever you’re trying to avoid unmanageable and worse. Face the conflict head on even if it’s uncomfortable at first.
When you spend all your time doing work and ignore building relationships with people at work, it makes collaborating with them much harder. Personal connections built using shared values, trust and mutual respect goes a long way in setting you up for success. Take time to know others—show genuine interest in their thoughts, ideas and beliefs.
Most of us are poor listeners—we interrupt others, complete their sentences and pay more attention to what we are going to say next instead of paying attention to their words. Not listening actively leads to misunderstandings, expectation mismatch and wasted time. Start with understanding others first, hear them out. It will improve decision making, aligning on shared goals and help you achieve desired results much faster.
We are quick to pass blame when communication issues crop up at work without realizing that we too have a part to play in it. Communication can never be perfect, but an effort can be made to bridge the gap by proactively taking control of how you connect and communicate with others. Take responsibility to make this better for everyone. Communicate more, not less.
How we think places a limit on what we can achieve. Thinking small minimizes our desires and maximizes our concerns while thinking big gives us an open playing field where we are able to utilize our true potential. Lead with an abundance mindset, assume everything is within reach with effort and persistence.

How to Be More Visible at Work

Vinita Bansal — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 04:42:06 +0000

People feel invisible at work when they aren’t recognized and appreciated, passed up for a promotion or don’t get the opportunity they think they deserve. Irrespective of how hard they work, they keep getting sidelined or ignored.

They stay back late in the office, work long hours, take back work home and give their 100% to anything that’s assigned to them. Despite ticking every item off their todo list, they constantly face disappointment and dissatisfaction of being overlooked and neglected.

Working harder than everyone else will never get them the visibility they want because no one ever gets noticed by simply doing great work. Keeping their head down and continuing to contribute will probably help them hit business targets, but they will miss out on areas where their knowledge and experience could have made a tremendous difference.

Making yourself seen at work is important because when your work is visible, not only are you likely to land with better opportunities, you are more likely to get promoted too.

But you can’t rely on your manager to do this for you. Your manager has hundreds of things to do and doing a good job of knowing each team member’s strengths and weaknesses may never make it to their priority list. They are flawed and biased in deciding who gets the opportunity, who has knowledge and skills and who’s ready to succeed at the next level.

Basic economics tells us that if you want something rare and valuable, you need to offer something rare and valuable in return—and in the working world, what you have to offer are your skills.
― Jocelyn K. Glei, Maximize Your Potential

So, how do you get your work noticed, acknowledged and valued not only by your team members but also those in different teams and functions so that you can put your valuable skills to use?

Participate in discussions

Employees spend a large part of their time in meetings and discussions, but most attend these meetings without learning anything or saying a word.

Not only do they waste time in attending these meetings, they also lose the opportunity to make their knowledge, experience and skills visible.

Participation isn’t the same as attendance. Participation requires active involvement, curiosity and desire to contribute. Attendance is passive where you show up to kill time while staying invisible.

When you step into a meeting, you’re entering a shared space for collaboration, decision-making, and exchanging ideas. Treasure this space, and it will turn into a source of joy.
― Marie Kondō, Joy at Work

Don’t show up in discussions you don’t intend to participate in. Participation does not necessarily require a thoughtful argument, sharing your opinion or being the person with the best idea in the room. Asking questions that ignites conversations, showing curiosity to understand others or expressing your desire to help them are great ways to connect with others and share your knowledge and skills.

Speak up. Find small ways to contribute to the discussions. Others around you will take notice, which will encourage them to take interest in you and your work. Visibility isn’t built by showing off or trying hard to prove your worth. Participating in discussions with the right intent can open that door for you.

Ask for feedback

We think of feedback as a way to highlight expectation mismatch, point out flaws and tell someone about the gaps in their knowledge and skills. Naturally, it seems counterintuitive to use it as a tool to build visibility around your work.

But feedback can significantly enhance the visibility of your work by creating opportunities for engagement, collaboration, and showcasing your commitment to improvement. Asking for feedback invites others to interact with your work. It gives them a reason to pay attention to what you’re doing―they are forced to take a closer look at your thought process, approach and multiple challenges faced along the way.

Building connections this way can amplify the reach and impact of your work because others are more likely to talk about and share work they feel invested in. Regularly seeking and valuing feedback can also foster strong relationships, expand your network and build trust, making these people become strong advocates for your work, helping to spread the word further than you could ever do alone.

Sharing your work and seeking feedback isn’t just about improvement; it’s about letting others see your progress, engage with your ideas, and amplify your voice.
― Dorie Clark, Stand Out

Feedback is not only a tool for growth. It’s a great way to invite others into your story, inspiring them to take notice and create a ripple effect that draws more people to your work.

Make others feel important

Most of us haven’t been trained to express affection which can make praising or appreciating others feel awkward and inappropriate. Our own ego may also get in the way from holding others in high regard and recognizing them for their work.

But making others feel valued by speaking positively about them, inviting them to share their expertise or making them feel heard and understood by actively listening to them can increase your visibility at work.

When you acknowledge and celebrate others’ contributions, they often feel compelled to return the favor. They may be more inclined to mention your contributions during team meetings, highlight your strengths, or invite you to key projects, discussions, and initiatives. We naturally gravitate towards people who uplift us. So, making others feel valued is a strategic way to strengthen relationships, increase your influence and come across as a supportive colleague.

Elevating others by making them feel important will not jeopardize your own position, make your achievements seem less significant or steal your spotlight. Quite the opposite. The more light you shine on others, the more they are bound to reflect it back to you.

But it’s important that your appreciation comes across as genuine, not forced. Others can easily sense when you are complimenting them to earn a favor or trying to manipulate them to see things your way. Fake interactions like these can leave others feeling used which can make you come across as inauthentic, opportunist or dishonest—someone who can’t be trusted or taken seriously.

Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival—to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated. When you listen with empathy to another person, you give that person psychological air. And after that vital need is met, you can then focus on influencing or problem solving. This need for psychological air impacts communication in every area of life.
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Demonstrate intellectual curiosity. Show interest in others and their work. People are more likely to reciprocate and show interest in you.

Practice storytelling

Most people think that facts about their accomplishments and data to back it up will be sufficient to win people over. But, data and facts can only get others interested in you and your work.

They may temporarily remember the skills, knowledge and experience you bring to the table. But, all your valuable contributions are soon wiped out as their brain tries to fit other eventful information accumulated during the day.

Facts and data may get the attention, but it’s the story that sticks. Stories add emotion and context which makes your journey more compelling and positions you as someone worth remembering.

In trying to make your work more visible, repeating your achievements to others can make you come across as boastful. However, framing your work as a narrative—the challenges you overcame, solutions you implemented and the results you achieved—can make it more noticeable and appealing, increasing the likelihood for others to remember you long enough.

Stories connect with people because it appeals to their emotions. Providing context, stating facts, and sharing data is important. It makes your work credible and is bound to get others’ attention. But it isn’t enough to persuade them to advocate for you. Once you have their intellectual attention, you need to tap into their emotions.

Emotions drive behavior—Every decision is an emotional decision at some level. Whatever your logical reasons are for taking action, you only feel compelled to act on them because of emotion.
— James Clear, Atomic Habits

Connect, inspire and make your work unforgettable by turning it into an emotional experience. Good storytelling requires a little bit of creativity to make it memorable, but it’s a skill that can be mastered with practice and experience.

Find a sponsor

We all seek mentors—people who can guide and coach us—while not paying attention to sponsors—people who can help us get the right opportunities by making our work visible. Sponsors have the real power to shape your career by aligning your aspirations with the opportunities you need and making them possible for you.

Even a great product in the market can’t sell by itself. It needs good marketing to get in front of the right customers. This applies to your work too.

You need:

Someone to vouch for you.

Someone who can help you get the right opportunities by increasing the visibility of your work.

Someone who will support and defend you because they believe in you.

That someone is a sponsor. Good sponsors can take you to the next level in your career by identifying where your work might be valuable and signing you up for it.

Many people mistake sponsors with mentors—they’re not the same. Mentors give you feedback and advice, share their experience and help you build new skills. Sponsors raise you up by making your experience and skills visible to others and getting you in front of the right opportunities.

A mentor can only show you the right door, it’s the sponsor that can open it for you.

Sponsorship doesn’t happen by chance. You need to actively put effort into seeking the right sponsor.

Look for people who have a track record of advocating for others and have access to power or leadership circles.
Don’t be busy doing work all day long. If you’re running from one task, one project and one problem to the next, you’ll never have the mental space to notice such people.
When you’re part of meetings, discussions or other gatherings where such people are present, don’t shy away from introducing yourself. Approach them, quickly speak about your work and immediately shift the focus to them. Showing interest in their life is a great strategy to get their attention.
Connect with people from other teams and functions, find ways to help others and contribute to initiatives outside your direct scope of work. Get sponsored by adding value.
Take the time to build authentic relationships. No one will sponsor you unless they also know who you’re as a person.

Mentors are valuable for guidance, but sponsors are critical to your career. They put their necks on the line for you, advocate for you in rooms where you aren’t present, and ensure you have the opportunities you deserve.
— Tiffany Dufu, author of Drop the Ball

Don’t limit yourself to one sponsor. Just like multiple mentors are useful to get guidance and advice, multiple sponsors are necessary to utilize your potential by getting in front of the right opportunities. Each sponsor can open a new door for you. Consciously allocate time to find them—you may never get sponsored unless you actively seek one.

Summary

People who are good at producing high quality work may not be the most seeked, most valued or most appreciated. Despite having excellent knowledge and skills, their impact is limited because limited visibility around their work prevents them from getting the right opportunities.
Keeping your mouth shut during discussions keeps you invisible. Others can’t appreciate your thought process if you keep it to yourself without saying a word. When you actively participate—by sharing an idea, asking questions or challenging a decision—others may take notice. Your enthusiasm and curiosity can encourage them to take interest in you and your work.
Seeking feedback may seem counter to your desire to increase visibility at work. But it’s a great tool to give others a peek into everything you have achieved. Feedback invites others to take a closer look at your work—they are forced to pay attention to your knowledge and skills.
Appreciating others’ contributions not only puts you across as a supportive and caring individual, it compels others to reciprocate too. Kindness attracts kindness. But you have to be authentic. Fake appreciation can make others resent you instead of building trust.
Stating your accomplishments as data and facts can’t make it memorable. To stick long enough, it has to appeal to people’s emotions. Creating a story around your work is a great way to increase its appeal, expand its reach and ensure it leaves a lasting impression.
There are people at work who have authority and power to influence key decisions—which projects to take off, who gets the opportunity and who is ready for the next level. These people can increase your visibility by advocating for you in discussions where you aren’t present. But you have to put in the effort to reach out and showcase your value in a way that turns them into a sponsor.

Productivity Archives - TechTello

The Subtle Ways In Which Ego Shows Up at Work

Resisting help to prove you can do it yourself

Taking feedback personally

Struggling to admit mistakes or saying you were wrong

Turning disagreements into personal battles

Refusing to let go of control

Interrupting others to redirect attention towards you

Refusing to revisit decisions

Avoiding people who challenge your thinking

Summary

Recommended Reading

9 Signs You’re Stagnating at Work

You are never in a state of flow

You don’t feel challenged

You’re reluctant to ask questions or share ideas

You’ve stopped taking feedback seriously

You’re driven by external pressure, not personal motivation

You’re surrounded by the same set of people

You constantly complain about growth

You keep bringing up past achievements

You feel threatened by high performing people

Summary

Recommended Reading

How to Handle Lazy Coworkers

Check if it’s a temporary thing

Discuss expectations and hold them accountable

Setup daily or bi-weekly sync up

Give direct feedback when things don’t improve

Keep their manager in the loop

Summary

Recommended Reading

10 Work Habits to Leave Behind This Year

Starting the day with your inbox

Confusing busyness for effectiveness

Overcommitting to prove your value

Reacting when emotions are high

Waiting for permission before taking action

Avoiding difficult conversations to keep the peace

Apologizing too often

Comparing yourself to others

Blaming others instead of taking responsibility

Bringing home work stress

Summary

Recommended Reading

10 Work Habits That Can Make You Unstoppable

Taking accountability instead of playing blame games

Asking questions instead of leading with answers

Speaking up instead of staying silent

Seeking continuous feedback instead of avoiding criticism

Pre-blocking time for deep work instead of being ad hoc

Showing appetite to take risks instead of playing safe

Optimizing for long-term instead of seeking short-term gratification

Staying away from office politics instead of weaponizing it

Strengthening relationships using give and take

Prioritizing self-care instead of giving boundaryless freedom

Summary

Recommended Reading

How You Can Move From Proving to Improving

Ask questions with the intent to learn, don’t show-off intelligence

Sign up for new opportunities, don’t sit inside comfort zone

Seek feedback with focus on criticism, not praise

Acknowledge mistakes to prevent future errors, don’t hide them

Approach others with the intent to collaborate, not compete

Summary

Recommended Reading

7 Reasons You Aren’t Getting Promoted

Your work is invisible

You stay within your expertise

You resist feedback

You prioritize harmony over impact

You confuse busyness with value

You outshine the team instead of elevating it

You chase false promises

Summary

Recommended Reading

How to Raise Concerns at Work

Get into the right frame of mind

Act as an owner

Talk about impact