About Lawrese, The Strategist Behind the Shift
When I was in grade school, my father told me “baby you have book smarts, but no street smarts.” I don’t remember exactly what happened, but his description of my thinking, even at that young age foreshadowed where I would struggle at work.
I believed what my parents told me about what would make me successful in life, especially as a professional on the job. Work hard. Keep your head down. Let your work speak for itself.
And when it came to people, I followed my mothers advice. Be the bigger person. Leave people better than you’ve found them. If you can help someone, do that. And I did.
My personality - a mixture of my father’s emphasis on work-ethic and my mother’s emphasis on helpfulness and conflict avoidance - meant that I was a ‘good person.’ And being a ’good person’ from my understanding was about never causing someone inconvenience.
Deadlines. Always met them.
Colleague Needs help. Always gave it.
Extra tasks. Take it on.
Group work. Didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to let someone elses standards lower my own. If it needed to be done, I was going to do it.
Expectations. Exceeded.
Who gon check me boo? Not you, cause you don’t work as hard as me. And in my mind that’s what success is made of.
I was safe cause neither my work, nor my attitude could be critiqued.
THEN I HAD A WAKE UP CALL.
When I was twenty five years old, I was let go from a non-profit organization, that was understaffed for reasons that had nothing to do with my performance, and everything to do with politics.
My father’s words took on a new meeting. Street smarts are about the politics of how people make decisions at organizations.
These decisions, which center on who is favored and who is forced out, aren’t made based on ‘book smarts’. These decisions don’t consider your competence, your work ethic, the nights you stayed late, the countless favors you did for your colleagues, or your qualifications.
Politics is about optics. Its about a deep understanding that other people have their own motives, or desires that can be entirely opposite to yours.
It can look like - working hard, and your manager taking the credit for the work you did, or work they didn’t do, simply because they know that VISIBILITY is how credibility is built.
AKA nobody knows what you’re doing unless you tell them. And who tells them, matters.
It can look like - agreeing to lead the taskforce or project so that you can help your colleagues finally solve a problem they’ve been complaining about all year, only to ask others to join the taskforce, and they’re not interested.
AKA you realize you have an empathy for others so you’re looking out for them, but when its time to return the favor, they’re not looking out for you.
It can look like - you proving to your team that you are trustworthy and reliable, so that you can be advanced to a leadership position, only to receive the promotion in title with no extra pay.
AKA we know you’re not the type to pushback if we don’t give you what you want. You avoid conflict cause you feel bad or you just assume that others are going to do right by you, if you do right by them. Well - we aren’t the type to play fair but we know you’re just going to keep doing the work anyway, even though its not fair to you.
If you are like me, then you DESERVE to be successful. From my perspective, we are the best leaders, because we value the details, we are fair in our contribution, we respect others contributions and we center our decisions on what’s best for the team. But we can’t rise from “good worker” to “great leader” if we don’t accept that our work ethic will never be the single most important factor in being respected, appreciated, favored and more fearless at work.