A Corporate Survival Guide: 5 Lessons from 15 Years

I’ve been working in corporate jobs, from being a digital nomad for a fully remote training company based in London, through to working for a large international corporation with headquarters in Paris, the third biggest of its type in the world. I’ve picked up a few lessons along the way, from observing how people get ahead (or don’t) and what you can do, starting today, to take real and noticeable steps forward in your career.

The following five lessons are also covered in Episode 47 of The Solo Coach Podcast, A Corporate Survival Guide.

1. All you really need is one good work friend

Having one genuinely good friend at work can make a huge difference. I don’t necessarily mean someone you’re best mates with outside of work, but someone who you get on with and respect. It’s essential that you have a similar sense of humour, hold mutual trust and want the best for each other. This is the guy or gal who you can confide in when things get tough, and also celebrate your wins with. Someone who you can have a great conversation with, no matter how either of you are feeling.

This relationship is incredibly valuable because work can be a slog at times. With KPIs, performance metrics, key deliverables, escalations and deadlines, it can sometimes weigh heavily. You can spend a whole day entrenched in emails, tickets, meetings and chasers and feel as though you’ve spent eight hours doing very little that actually felt satisfying, enjoyable or human.

Having someone you can grab a coffee with, go for lunch with or simply have a bit of a laugh with during the day brings some of that humanity back into it.

You can have a moan when something ridiculous happens, celebrate when something goes well, or simply share a debrief about your weekend and plans for the next. It doesn’t have to be anything formal. In fact, it shouldn’t be. It’s just about having somebody there who makes work feel a little bit less like work.

Looking back at the roles I’ve enjoyed most, without exception, they’ve involved having at least one person like this. Some of those relationships have lasted for years after we stopped working together and are still going strong. I would describe this element of my working life as the “icing on the cake”.

So, if you start a new job and something doesn’t quite feel right, before immediately assuming that you’ve made the wrong decision, it might simply be that you haven’t found your person yet. And a great way to find that person is to…

2. Be the most interesting person in the room by being the most interested

The second thing I’ve learned is around relationships and how we connect with people. I often think that the person who seems most interesting in the room is not necessarily the one with the most stories or the biggest personality. Quite often, it’s the person who is genuinely interested in everybody else.

Take some time to actually get to know people. Find out what they enjoy about their work, what they find frustrating, what they’re looking forward to, what they’re passionate about and what’s going on in their life outside of work. Maybe they’re renovating an old French farmhouse, taking an old Mazda MX-5 on track days, planning a wild solo travel adventure around the world or training for an Ironman. People are often more interesting than they first appear, and getting curious about their interests can completely elevate the quality of your relationships with them.

The important bit is actually listening. I don’t mean waiting patiently for someone to stop talking so you can have your turn. I mean listening properly and asking a decent follow-up question (ideally repeating, or asking for more details about, something they’ve just said) because you’re genuinely curious. Most of us love talking about the things we care about, and we generally enjoy being around people who take a genuine interest in us.

Of course, it can’t just be one-way. You need to share something about yourself too, otherwise you’ll end up conducting a series of workplace interviews rather than building relationships. I often think of a phrase from The Ed Mylett Show: “If you want to impress someone, tell him your strengths. If you want to connect with him, tell him your weaknesses.” Sharing a sliver of vulnerability can build trust and rapport very quickly. But I would always start with curiosity. Get interested in people, get to know them and, ironically, you may find that they become much more interested in getting to know you as well.

It builds trust, it builds rapport and it makes work feel much more human. And it’s a key skill of great leaders, one of which you can start to be right now…

3. You can be a leader without the title

This is something I feel quite strongly about because I think we sometimes confuse management with leadership. They overlap, obviously, but they’re not the same thing.

“When a manager walks into a room, they let you know ‘here I am’. But when a leader walks into a room, they let you know ‘there you are’.” - Ed Mylett.

For me, management is the practical side of running a team. It’s setting priorities, deciding who is doing what, making decisions, reporting upwards and making sure things are moving in the right direction. Those things matter, but leadership goes much deeper.

Leadership is about whether people trust you and have faith in you. It’s about whether people want to follow you, whether they feel supported by you and whether you understand what they need to be successful. It’s about recognising people’s strengths, helping them play to those strengths, removing blockers when something is getting in their way, and developing people by healthily challenging them and holding them to high standards.

And you absolutely do not need the word “Manager” on your name badge to do any of that.

You can notice that someone is struggling and offer to help. You can recognise that someone has a particular strength and make sure they get opportunities to use it. You can bring people together, improve morale, help create a positive company culture and take an interest in what people are actually experiencing at work. You can also model integrity, openness and honesty, and work to high standards. You can do all of those things without having a team reporting directly to you.

I’ve always believed that if you consistently behave like a leader, eventually people will start to see you as one. That doesn’t mean sacrificing your boundaries or taking responsibility for things that aren’t yours. It simply means looking beyond your own task list and recognising that you can have a positive influence on the people and environment around you.

You don’t need permission to start leading. Just start by looking out for people, get curious about how things are done and whether they could be done better, in order to…

4. Add the most value you possibly can

Another thing I’ve learned over the years is that, in the organisations I’ve worked in, getting ahead has generally had much less to do with being the first person clocking in and the last person clocking out and much more to do with the value you actually create.

Whenever I start a new job, one of the first things I naturally start thinking about is how things could be improved. Why are we doing this manually? Could this be simplified? Could it be automated? Is there a process here that is creating loads of work without actually adding much value? Is there something everyone finds frustrating that nobody has challenged because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”?

I’m quite happy to admit that there’s probably an element of laziness in this. If I can find a way to achieve the same outcome without having to repeat a tedious task 47 times, I’m probably going to have a go at it. But I think there’s something much more valuable behind that instinct, which is wanting to make things better for everyone, not just for myself.

I’d much rather remove myself as a bottleneck than make myself indispensable. Trying to become indispensable by ensuring everything has to go through you might make you feel secure, but it doesn’t necessarily add much value to the organisation. In fact, it detracts from it. Helping other people make progress, improving processes and finding better ways of doing things benefits us all.

Sometimes that also means having the courage to say something that other people might not want to hear. I’ve been in situations where I’ve given fairly brutal feedback, although always with the intention of being respectful and constructive, because I felt that somebody needed to say it. If there’s a major inefficiency, a blind spot or something that simply isn’t working, pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t going to make it go away. It actually empowers it and enables it to continue, rather than ‘nipping it in the bud’ or tackling it at its roots if it’s been going on for far too long. Try not to name names unless you absolutely have to, and exercise caution when you do.

I think that having a possibility mindset is one of the most useful things you can bring into any role. You don’t have to change everything. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But having your continuous improvement spectacles on and asking, “Could we make this better?” can really help you to get ahead.

For me, an ideal working day is one where I can look back at the end of it and know that something I’ve said or something I’ve done has made a tangible difference. And even better if there’s a laborious manual task that no longer needs doing! That’s what I call a win-win.

But if you’re starting to feel like work is a lose-lose…

5. Have the courage to move on when it isn’t working anymore

The final lesson is probably the most important, because it’s the one I’ve learned through personal experience.

Sometimes a new job is difficult because you’re learning. Sometimes it’s tiring because you’re being stretched. Sometimes you’re going through a particularly busy period and you simply need to get through it. But sometimes, if you’re honest with yourself, you know that something just isn’t working anymore.

You’re bored. You’ve stopped learning. You’re no longer excited about what you’re doing. You find yourself becoming increasingly cynical and critical, and every conversation about work turns into another moan. You go home frustrated, you rant about work to your friends and family, and before long the job is affecting virtually every part of your life.

I know what that feels like because I’ve been there. I’ve reached the point where I’ve been invested in something for so long that, years later, I’m still there despite the fact that my passion has disappeared and my enthusiasm has fizzled out, along with any interest that I once had. You start asking yourself, “Why am I still here?” or “Why do I bother?” or even “What’s the point?”

And it’s easy to spiral into a pit of negativity at this point. However, the answer doesn’t necessarily need to be “quit right now”. Maybe you need a new project. Maybe you need a different challenge. Maybe you need to have an honest conversation with your manager. Maybe your role can change. But sometimes the answer genuinely is that you need to move on.

The worst thing you can do is suffer silently and hope that something will magically change. Talk to somebody who can help. Talk to a friend, your manager, a coach, a therapist, a family member or someone else you trust. Sometimes simply saying out loud, “This isn’t working for me anymore,” is the beginning of figuring out what needs to change.

Because staying somewhere that no longer serves you comes at a cost. It affects your energy, your enthusiasm, your relationships and ultimately the person you become while you’re still there. Pluck up the courage to go and try something new. Who knows, you might end up saying, “I wish I’d done this years ago!”

Final thoughts…

Fifteen years in, I certainly don’t have all the answers. I’m still figuring things out, making mistakes, changing direction and learning from the people around me.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that your career is about far more than your job title, salary or position on the org chart. It’s about the people you meet, the relationships you build along the way, the ways in which you grow and, ultimately, whether the work you’re doing still feels right for you.

You don’t have to wait for a promotion to start leading. You can start right now. You don’t have to work ridiculous hours to prove your worth. Just add value. You don’t need to be the loudest person in the room, on the contrary! Be the best listener. And you definitely don’t need to be everyone’s friend. Just one or two really good workplace friends will do.

And finally, you certainly don’t have to stay somewhere that is making you miserable simply because you’ve already invested a lot of time there. Your career and your life are your own. You get to decide what you want from them, what matters to you most and, when the time comes, whether it’s right to stay put or move on.

If you’re currently wondering whether you’re on the right path, perhaps a good place to start is to look around at your peers and your leaders and ask yourself: “Am I still motivated and excited to get to the destination we’re aiming for?”

That question has helped me decide when it’s time to jump ship and when it’s time to hunker down and ride out the storm. Ultimately, it comes down to whether my belief and faith in the direction we’re heading is still strong enough to keep me on board.

Yours,

David Garwood
The Solo Coach