The Best Career Advice Michael Scott Ever Gave Me
The best career advice Michael Scott ever gave me was this:
“Don’t be an idiot.”
In the workplace, environment is everything. A workplace environment is like an ecosystem — each part supporting the function of the other in a symbiotic relationship. And when one organism within that ecosystem is malfunctioning (like an employee with a poor, toxic attitude) it puts an undue strain on the rest of the system thus creating disease.
I’ve seen toxic employees generate a destructive gravitational field which sucked other helpless coworkers into it and polluted the company environment and culture in the process.
On the contrary, I’ve seen and worked with outstanding employees whose alacrity, positivity, and work ethic bolsters and inspires everyone around them.
In other words, when we are an idiot in the workplace, it negatively affects everyone and everything around us.
And when we aren’t, well, it helps — a lot.
Here’s how you can avoid being an idiot in the workplace:
1. An idiot lets small, trivial matters — office gossip, mindless web surfing, flirting with colleagues — distract him from the really important things — productivity, creativity, and ingenuity.
2. An idiot is only concerned with himself or herself, and naturally he or she is only concerned with taking, never giving. This idiot will be quick to blame others and quick to take the credit.
He or she only thinks in terms of what the company offers him or her, never what he or she can bring to the company.
3. An idiot lacks healthy boundaries in the workplace, so he or she is constantly overstepping them and making people uncomfortable by oversharing, saying inappropriate jokes to the wrong people, or inflicting his or her political or religious views on his or her poor colleagues.
4. An idiot assumes that his or her workmates are his or her real mates, so when he or she shares something distasteful about his or her boss with a fellow coworker, he or she is shocked when it comes back on them.
5. Basically, an idiot cannot keep his or her mouth shut.
6. An idiot gets roaring drunk at the office holiday party.
7. An idiot is ultra-competitive to the point of sabotage and non-cooperation. He or she will not help a colleague in need, unless he or she is guaranteed some form of credit. He or she cannot see that synergy and teamwork truly do make the dream work.
8. An idiot lacks empathy. He or she cannot understand that possibly the reason Phil from HR is in a bad mood is because he is having family troubles at home.
9. An idiot always looks outside of him or herself for approval and always needs his or her hand held in some way. Never exercising his or her autonomy, he or she cannot make a decision or move a project forward on his or her own.
10. An idiot does not know how do say “no” so he or she ends up taking on way too much responsibility and burns out and becomes resentful because of it.
11. An idiot does not know how to properly manage an office romance, and therefore lets it affect the quality of his or her work.
12. An idiot does not know how to deal with his or her emotions or conflict in a healthy way and therefore slowly builds up resentment which eats away at him or her from the inside.
13. These idiots will be quick to try to impress you with their flashy credentials — which Ivy league school they went to, how many PhD's they have, or how many VIP’s or Fortunate 500 companies they know or have worked with. This idiot is also the consummate one-upper and story-topper.
14. Idiots tend to hang out with other idiots, and will often try to recruit you into their club of idiots. Therefore, it’s best to avoid the company of idiots altogether.
15. Worst of all, not being able to comprehend the impact of their actions, an idiot slowly poisons his or her workplace with his or her toxic attitude.
Lacking any morsel of self awareness, an idiot is not aware he or she is an idiot. (Another reason why it’s crucial to have empathy.)
Because the truth is, we’ve all acted like an idiot in the workplace before in some way .
We all are, after all, human.
And chances are, you or I will do something idiotic at work again (hopefully benign) before we punch our last clock.
So now as a safeguard, whenever I’m about to do something, I think:
“Would an idiot do that?”
— And if they would, I do not do that thing.
