Create Value, Make Noise
Many years ago I worked with a person that was great at touting his accomplishments and even the accomplishments that were not his. He made it seem like the rest of us didn’t do much and that he and only he was the only one who did the work. In many situations, he’d even solicit solutions from us and pass them off on his own. At the time I remember being annoyed and I use to talk to my other colleagues about his tendency to do this. It irked me that someone could be so blatant about what they did and also what they didn’t do. It made me feel .. inadequate. Subsequently, I moved on to another engagement and forgot he existed until I got a connection request from him on LinkedIn (um thank you LinkedIn? ;)) Let's call him Peter.
Curiously I looked at his profile and in the preceding decade and a half his career took and he become hugely successful. This prompted me to write this article.
I’m not a huge fan of classifying people into buckets since we’re all unique but bucketing does provide us with a useful lens to understand the world. With that caveat, I’d like to dig deeper into how I think people fit into four quadrants with Modest and Boastful on one axis and “Creates value” or “Doesn't create value” on the other axis.
In the workplace, we have all seen examples of such people:
Creates Value & Modest: Someone who does not flaunt that they’ve done the work. I have a lovely colleague from back in the day who was the smartest and nicest guy. Worked the hardest and was always helpful. He was modest and genuine but was taken for granted. Several years later he had a couple of promotions but in my opinion, it was way below what he deserved.
Creates value & Boastful: These are braggers; who, from my experience, have deep-seated insecurity about themselves and bragging is the only way they know how to avoid their insecurity. It's quite possible that people who fit into this bucket are narcissistic and will never be good friends. These are people who are boastful and who’ve genuinely done the work and deserve the promotions and do get them. Peter was mostly in this category; he was smart and knew how to speak. The product, so to speak was decent, the marketing was mind-blowing!
Doesn’t create value & Boastful: Garden variety pathological liars who will lie through their teeth; again I think this stems from deep-seated insecurity. These are people who cannot accomplish anything on their own and always take credit for someone else’s work. People who are boastful and who’ve NOT genuinely done the work and do not deserve the promotions get them.
Doesn’t create value & Modest: If I were to wager, these are people who want to be more boastful but do not have the confidence to do so. They expect someone like a Peter to dole some credit out to them but that seldom happens! They likely have impostor syndrome and are afraid to stick out. These are your “meets expectations” kinda people who are along for the ride but are not interested in being the captain.
As I look back at my career and also at the people I have worked with, the ones that I think have had the most success are the boastful ones that genuinely do the work. There is no substitute for doing the work. This is also a good example of the Pareto Principle. 80% of the value is created by 20% of the people.
I have purposely used the word boastful because that is a word that has a “dirty” connotation though it does not have to have that connotation. We’re taught that it's not good to be boastful. This is especially true of minority communities, immigrants, and women. For example, growing up in India, we’re taught to do the work but not really how to speak about the work we’ve done. It's considered showing off and not classy. Talking about accomplishments appears to be boasting when in fact we should be taking credit for what we truly deserve. I also think that this hits harder for introverts than for extroverts.
As someone who is both an introvert and someone who has never been boastful, and as someone who has created value (keep me honest here people :)) I think it's important to know that it's okay to speak about your accomplishments. This might not come naturally but having this ability is a key driver of success in an organization. This is the best quadrant to be in but if you were a manager how should you think about all these four quadrants?
How to think about this as a manager?
For people who create value and are boastful, tell them you do see their work and they will be rewarded for it.
For people who create value and are not boastful, your job as a manager is to coach and also “boast” on behalf of your team. Definitely NOT to take credit! Additionally, I think managers should take note of people who do not genuinely do the work (likely the loudest voice / constant talker in a meeting) and give other people a chance to talk.
For people who don’t create value and are boastful... I think starting with that feedback is important. Just knowing that they are not getting away with it and that you, as their manager, know might be enough. They might never create as much value as a superstar but then again in my opinion every employee at a company cannot be a superstar.
For people that don’t create value and are not boastful the job of a manager is to first develop the right skills for value creation (training, guidance, limited or smaller scope of work)
Thoughts or comments? I’d love to hear from you!
Acknowledgments
Thank you so much to Chris Wong for feedback on early drafts and for making this more understandable and relatable. I also highly recommend subscribing to his work and/or following him on Twitter. Chris also suggested the term “Create value, make noise” which I believe was originally coined by Louie Bacaj.
