6 signs of a truly effective employee

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you’re the last to leave the office and continue to do work at home, don’t think of yourself as a super efficient worker. Quite the opposite is true.

Do you work very hard and hard? Staying late often? Taking a job for the weekend? Recently, heroically completed some of the work of another department? You constantly have to do everything yourself, because it is difficult to find someone who will better cope with your tasks?

Congratulations, you are ineffective.

I constantly see posts in the feed about processing, exclusivity and irreplaceability, lack of vacation for three years, heroism in the spirit: "I drank 8 cups of coffee, ate a couple of tranquilizers and still completed the project - oh, what a fine fellow I am!"

The authors of these posts are usually united by the unshakable belief that they are incredibly effective and awesome. And everyone around is worthless lazy people and middle peasants: they finish their working day only half an hour later, sometimes they leave work altogether on time, and most tasks are passed on to others!

At first glance, everything seems fine: the employee does more than others, is sick of his work, does not give up in the face of difficulties. Miracle.

But this is not a miracle, and here's why.

1. Units can maintain this pace for extended periods of time. 99% burn out. Usually, after a few months, breakdowns begin: the employee is disappointed in his position / boss / field of activity. The tragic dismissals begin, the search for oneself, "I flew away to do yoga and open the chakras in Goa." In addition, often such people begin to roll a barrel at a company that "used and underestimated" them.

2. Such a person (especially if he is in a top position) plunges everyone around him into the abyss of false effectiveness: subordinates, contractors, agencies, secretaries, pets, a cat. Everyone around begins to process, rush from one to another, trying to do everything in time. Take on more than you should. Do someone else's work. After all, the environment (and especially the subordinates) also want to correspond to the "super effective boss". As a result, unregulated chaos, a lot of turnover, quarrels and generally an unhealthy atmosphere hangs in the company.

3. The leader of such people is also not easy. When one of the employees goes beyond the rules (albeit in a positive way), it is more difficult for the boss to control him, he often has to come up with special conditions for him, show a special attitude. For example, to forgive faults, because he "did not leave work at all before 22:00 during the whole last week." All this also leads to chaos.

In the medium and long term, a different type of employee is effective. Those who can:

• organize your working time and processes in such a way as to fulfill your tasks within the working time (I personally believe that this is 4-5 hours of net working time per day);
• allocate time to calmly think whether his work processes and company processes are properly organized, optimize them, give birth and implement new ideas, read / see something useful for himself and the company, but not directly related to current activities;
• structure your files, documents, processes, tasks and responsibilities so that they can be easily understood and, for example, passed on to others;
• find someone to whom you can delegate tasks, and delegate them correctly;
• observe a normal work-life balance, have a hobby, personal life, other values besides work;
• refuse and say "no" to new tasks, responsibilities and everything that may interfere with the fulfillment of the first five points.

If you are the employer or manager of such a person, stop being overly happy about his success and overwork. Try to temper his ardor and, in a good way, drive him into a normal working framework. You may benefit from its super efficiency now, but most likely you will lose in the future: there will be decline, tantrums, threats, chaos among the rest of the employees.

If you are such a “super effective” employee, first of all, stop bragging or complaining on Facebook. Secondly, come home early today, pet your wife, hug the cat and re-read and adopt the 6 points of a truly effective employee.