Minding the gap

Why you feel the constant urge to improve

Hi, I’m Tineke, coach for you change making, creative, multi-passionate, hard-working women. I publish my newsletter here every Friday, focusing on ONE topic to do with your career, career change, happiness, women and work, creativity and books (I love books!).

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If you’ve been around me for a little while - we’ve worked together, or you’ve simply read plenty of my newsletters over the years - you hopefully know this about me.

That my career coaching is all about building your career around YOU. Around your strengths, your values, your talents, your interests.

For some this comes as a bit of a revelation. ‘So’, I can almost hear them think, ‘It’s all about choosing or creating the ENVIRONMENT around me, rather than me trying to fit into an (ill-fitting) environment?!’

And my answer to that is yes.

And no.

Confusing?

Let’s get into it.

Minding the gap

Or, why you feel that constant urge to improve yourself.

The thing is, we all feel it.

From a very young age we are taught how to behave, what behaviours are rewarded and which are punished. We are raised to fit into a school system, that fits the many. Taught to do subjects up to a certain standard. Judged on our ability to ‘pass’ or ‘distinguish’ ourselves in our grades. So that later you fit into workplaces and can make an independent living.

That’s not me being anti-establishment, or contrarian, it’s what we as a society have decided to do.

We’re minding the gap. Schools are focusing on the pupils who fall behind. Performance reviews are aimed at bringing you up to the standard. The media, society, are trying to hold you to - sometimes (often? always?) impossible - standards.

It’s inescapable.

So let’s stick to work for the moment.

Why you feel the need to improve at work

Performance

Have you ever worked in an organisation or in a role where there wasn’t a competency framework for your job? Where you didn’t have tightly defined competencies that outlined what you needed to do to perform well?

Yeah, me too. In fact, I’d argue that the vast majority of the jobs I’ve held didn’t have a clear competency framework, a clear idea of what ‘good’ looked like, or what you had to do to get on.

I have a feeling you’ll be telling me the same. That you had to make it up as you went along. That it felt - quite arbitrary and subjective sometimes. Making you work harder and harder still. Setting your own - high - standards, and then working tirelessly to achieve them.

There’s LOTS to think about when it comes to you performing well.

So, it might come a bit as a shock then to learn that your performance only defines 10% of your career success.

Yes, read that again.

Ten percent.

Harvey Coleman’s PIE (Performance, Image, Exposure) in his 1996 book Empowering Yourself, The Organizational Game Revealed.

So, whilst you’re putting every effort into being a great performer, the people around you - yes, take your performance into account, but more like a given (‘of course she’s great at her job!’) - are more interested in the OTHER things.

Image

What counts for 30% of the equation is your image. How you’re being perceived by other people.Your personal brand.

Are you a problem-solver? Or are you always the person that throws up barriers, sees bears on the road, freezes when things don’t go as planned?

Are you a great communicator? Bringing other people along? Always thinking of the impact of decisions on others, and making sure the impact is understood? Or not?

Besides the ‘WHAT’ of the job, this is about the ‘HOW’ of the job. How are you behaving? How are you achieving what you’re achieving?

Your personal brand, your reputation, defines for a large (larger) part how you’re being perceived in the organisation you work for. And this is not a one-way street either. Behavioural expectations are set explicitly - in policies and dress and behavioural codes - and implicitly - in the culture and behaviours of your peers and seniors in the organisation.

Exposure

The most shocking statistics amongst all this though? Possibly is the ‘remaining’ 60%.

Sixty percent of your success at work is defined by exposure, who knows about you and talks well of you.

It raises questions like:

• What does your manager think of you? And their manager?

• What are you known for - and how far into the organisation?

• Are you known OUTSIDE the organisation?

• Who has your back and cares about you?

• Who speaks up for you when you’re not in the room?

• Have you got mentors and sponsors that you can rely on?

Is self-improvement inevitable?

‘What are you saying then, Tineke?’ I can hear you think. ‘All this talk about ‘being authentic’, ‘building on your strengths’ and ‘creating the environment around you’ is all nonsense?’

Of course I’m not saying that.

It’s really (really!) important to get clear on what you WANT. On what you want to DO, on HOW you want to do it, on how to make best use of your strengths.

But, your career success - as we’ve just discussed - is not just dependent on great performance, on you just being you (sorry!).

It depends, for a large part, on other people and on other people’s perceptions.

Even if you’ve created your dream career, in your dream location, working with dream people, doing GREAT work, you STILL have to think about those three things: your performance, your image, your exposure. What you do, how you do it and who knows about it and is willing to champion you.

And those things require action. From you.

• Action to figure out what’s required.

• Action to meet those requirements.

• Action to look ahead to take those actions that will support your future career goals.

Does that mean you’re not good enough, just the way you are?

Of course you are!

Instead it means you get to do and learn new things, step outside of your comfort zone, become the leader of your own career and find out more and more about yourself.

Oh, and if you don’t want to call it ‘self-improvement’, fair enough! Let’s call it ‘continuous learning to walk the path of career success’ - by being clear on where you’d like to go and taking the action required to make that happen. Youcancall it ‘manifesting’ if you really want to.

And that - surely - is a privilege and a joy. Right?

What do you think? What will YOU be doing next?

Tineke X

P.S. Do YOU want to find out what’s next in your career journey? Or want to figure out how to become more successful in the one you’ve already got?

Let’s talk! Book a call below to discuss how I can support you:

🔴🟡🟠

Tineke Tammes is a Career & Creativity Coach and supports professional women in making successful transitions. Besides that she is also a lifelong feminist, part-time portrait artist, never-only-read-one-book-at-any-time reader, and obsessive doodler.

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