Are you known for being hard charging professionally? Are you sure you know what that phrase potentially looks like in today’s and tomorrow’s workplaces?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “hard-charging” as being aggressive, determined, and ambitious. These are solid professional attributes to bring to the workplace each day. However, consider how you manifest being aggressive, determined, and ambitious each day. Internal and external customers may dread, rather than anticipate, the daily experiences you create.
Who are the individuals you know (including yourself), whom you describe as being hard charging?
Do they target professional excellence at the cost of being overbearing and insensitive to the cues colleagues and clients send out each day? (And did I mention that these folks tend to be non-stop loud and noisy in their delivery of themselves to others?) Consequently, are they unprepared to meet people where they are at? The professional equation, to them, is aggressively, doggedly, and ambitiously one-sided: all about them. Instead of a dialogue, their career becomes a monologue.
Alternatively, some individuals choose to be exquisitely dedicated to professional excellence. They pursue achieving increased levels of professional expertise: theirs and in others. However, their hard charging professionalism includes creating memorable, positive, and enduring experiences for clients and colleagues. As a result, everyone gets to where they really need to go, one millimeter at a time, together.
Who are the professionals in your network who are known for manifesting hard charging professional excellence while creating an emotionally and professionally equitable environment?
It can be exhausting to function within a professional environment which favors hard charging individuals, especially the ones who create monologues rather than dialogues. Although you attempt to charge hard along with them, you can feel like an imposter. Being sustainably hard charging within this environment is like turning on a fire hose and keeping it on, no matter what. There is no amount of caffeine or energy drinks you can consume to be full-on. Plus, a room full of people who speak in monologues is a recipe for going nowhere, professionally.
On the other hand, do you seek professional environments in which colleagues and clients continuously bring out the best in one another? Then you desire an atmosphere where you can hear yourself think while you can listen to what everyone seated around the table has to say. As a result, you will find hard charging professionals who have learned how to moderate the pace, cadence, and volume of their professional intensity. Will they challenge each other and sometimes butt heads? Heck yeah. However, the strategically agile outcomes you create together, as you serve each other and your clients, have far greater professional benefits than targeting outmoded and unsustainable professional stereotypes.
Your thoughts?
Meet people where they are. Get to where you really need to go. Together. | One Millimeter Mindset | Professional Innovation | Cross Functional Leadership | Speaker, Consultant, Mentor |
How do you become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant, and strategically valuable to people who solve problems differently than you do? Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset ™ speaking, consulting, and mentoring programs catalyze people to collaborate more innovatively by moving one purpose-driven one millimeter beyond the mindset holding you back from moving forward. Create and implement more strategically agile, enduring, and rewarding outcomes. Babette’s 3 Core Questions, 4 Change Agreements, and 5 Professional Whys catalyze everyone to ask the questions that get everyone to where they really need to go, together. Babette is a business-oriented STEM professional, qualitative Voice of the Customer facilitator, PMI-certified Wicked (Complex) Problem Solver, Duke Corporate Education licensed Strategic Agility practitioner, and Six Sigma Green Belt (Quality). She is a member of SHRM, PMI, and the National Speakers Association (NSA). All programs delivered virtually and/or in-person. Her playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available in digital format on Amazon.com.
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