January 22, 2025

In my last column, I discussed three major stages of growth in supporting the success of your teammates as below:
· Stage 1: Understand your role and carry out your responsibilities.
· Stage 2: Teach subordinates who are less experienced than you how to do their jobs.
· Stage 3: Support your supervisor's work beyond your own work.
I believe that this is how staff grow, and once they reach the third stage, they will be able to move on to the next stage of their career path. However, I feel there are surprisingly few organizations that truly foster teamwork as part of their culture.
There are many factors that inhibit teamwork, but I think the biggest factor is political considerations. For example, “Will my boss take the credit instead of me?” “Will my colleagues get promoted before me?” “Will I lose my position if my subordinate becomes more capable than me?” They did come across my mind a number of times. Previously, I worked at a company which top management once sarcastically said “This company is a political association”. That’s how important it was to behave politically.
When I was in my sixth or seventh year at my last job, I was working as a manager comfortably. I was a technical person, so the more difficult the job, the more I preferred to do it. As I improved my technical skills, I became reasonably good at managing projects, and even during the notoriously busy accounting firm season, I would be on my way home by 9PM at the latest.
I was a manager at the time, but there were two senior managers in the organization, about four or five years my senior, who worked until midnight every day during the busy season. While I thought it sounded like a lot of work, I also felt that they deserved it. Both of them were working under piles of papers making a mess on their desks, and it seemed to me that their work itself was not organized in the first place. Also, before the start of the busy season, they should have identified problems from the previous year and discussed improvement plans with customers to nip problems in the bud, but they did not seem to have done that either. As a result, unsolved problems added more work to an already busy period and burdening both the staff on the same team and the customer, who had to deal with the last-minute requests from them.
It is first-rate to take action before a problem occurs; it is third-rate to start emergency response after a problem has occurred. I wondered if they did not understand how to proceed with their work, even though they were more senior to me. I left them alone as I myself worked more than 10 hours a day during the busy season, and I felt that my recognition and prestige within the company would increase if my seniors could do less than me, and I thought I was politically adept.
However, I now realize that my stingy and devious mindset was the biggest reason I did not become a leader in that company.
For the most part, everyone is willing to support others when they think it will benefit them. It is something that almost any boss would do to support a staff who is working on his project, because he can benefit from the smooth completion of the project. It is also not difficult to help your colleagues when you have plenty of time on hand, as you do not feel much pain from it.
The reason I did not support my seniors was because I did not see any personal benefit. In other words, it was completely for my own convenience without sufficient consideration for the seniors, the staff below them, or their customers. I felt guilty in a corner of my mind, but I also made excuses to myself, saying that I had already worked more than 10 hours.
In the end, my small stingy mindset made me “just another guy who can work a little better than others”.
I should have reached out to my seniors before the busy season, when I was planning ahead for my projects. Also, I should have given them an hour or so of support every day when they were working late during the busy season. Just because a young man in his twenties worked late for 3 or 4 months during the busy season, it would not pose health concerns. Instead, an hour of my time could have helped my seniors to go home a little earlier, which could have increased their trust in me.
I was so focused on making my job easier and showing off that I was better at it that I didn't think enough about my seniors and the people around them. I was probably a good employee, but the people around me would have seen through the cold little calculator in my head.
A true leader is not someone who acts solely for his own gain, but someone who has the courage to jump in, even if it is painful, when he sees people around him are in need. I even feel sorry for organizations that are led by those who do not have that kind of courage. The reason I was not a leader in my previous job was because I did not have the determination or courage to do so, and I put my own profit and loss before anything.
A person I respect said to me, “Everyone really has a great charisma. The only difference is whether you use your charisma in a big way or a small way.” I was basically using my charisma the smallest way I could.
20 years later, I now run a small accounting firm with 20 plus full- and part-time employees. Even though we have a small number of employees, they all have great personality and competencies. In order to have these attractive employees feel comfortable working for me, and to lead the company to growth, I must be prepared to be a true leader myself. Leadership is not something that can be demonstrated at one given moment. It is a continuous mindset, and as a leader, you must be prepared to throw yourself into the service of the organization at any time. And I now realize that the job of president, as the head of an organization, is a job in which I must prove with my life that I am the leader of the company.
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