Thursday, 1 April 2021

What does the Greek god Proteus got to do with my career

Adaptability is a prerequisite to sustain on todays’ labor market. 

It is unclear how economy will develop in the coming months ahead. The pandemic is not over just yet. It is likely that there will be changing effects onto the labor market with an increasing brickled jobsecurity to even job-loss. Adaptability is certainly a key factor to sustain the current situation. Employability is usually the term used to express an individuals’ capability to seize professional opportunites. A prerequisite ist o be technically and professionally up to date to and to have a clear idea about your further competencies and personal characteristics.

Proteus is giving a good example

Douglas T. Hall, Professor for Management at the University Boston, is suggesting to keep it a bit like Proteus, to sustain on the labor market. Hall is referring to Proteus a god known Greek mythology who was sometimes called the son of Poseidon. Unlike other gods like Zeus who could just transform completely into anything or anyone else, Proteus was capable of taking different shapes and forms according to any given situation while remaining himself. People who take it like Proteus are capable to swiftly find their way professionally in a fast-paced environment. They have the necessary traits to pursue a satisfying career. 

This way they take responsibility for themselves and make professional decisions in line with their values, while freedom, growth and purpose of their actions remain highly important. They consider tangible and intangible factors when measuring their own success, but the criteria are rather subjective, meaning that it’s about personal psychological success and lesser about things such as a higher salary.


People with a Proteus’ like demeanour primarily identify with their profession and engagement and secondly with the company they work for. They are psychologically and physically flexible, rather extrovert and good in networking. They are open for new experiences, ready to continuously learn and develop. They have good self-awareness and know their values, goals and decision lines. All of this gives the frame to stay themselves by all flexibility. 


So, it appears that it make sense to nurture these mindsets und characteristics for a successful career journey but also because they enhance your resources. Gnosti se auton knowing oneself at the core to build upon. 

Limits of a Proteus’ like career

According to Hall the «Proteic Career» also raises questions around self-reliant career management. Positive outcomes seem to rather be correlated with highly qualified and motivated empolyees in terms of a satisfactory career journey. Self-managing ones carrer can be overwhelming for some other employees. Social responsibilty and solidarity seem to be required for this population keeping their place within the labour market. This might be a discussion to be held at another place.


One further problematic aspect of the Proteic Typus is that he/she primarily identifies with his/her occupation but not so much with his/her company. This gives another perspective onto the generational discussion of the preferences of Millenials given that Proteus is a figure of antique greeek mythology. After all, it is a bit unfair to say that younger generations have to deal with professional uncertainty at the beginning of their career and then expect them to feel comfortable with the situation. As an employer you want to know that your people are engaged, loyal and actively shape your company culture. Values that are worth to nurish. In other words, we are well advised to support Eigenverantwortung des Individuums. The challenge here is to balance solidarity, ingroup – outgroup tendencies and the concept of loyalty. Responsibility is distributed on both the individuals’ and the employers.

 

Our career yourney map framework incorporates some of these ideas and is based on an intrapreneurship model that can serve to people and corporate development.

Lifehacks for your Employer Branding

 A few tips for a pragmatic take on your employer brand 

Strategy is important. In life, business, in team sports you name it. Still, some say that their gut feel and heart are their best and most reliable advisors. While team members working in finance and having to deliver to KPI goals are not likely to say they fully agree.

So, there are areas where we clearly do and others where we do not necessarily have strategies. Sometimes, there is no strategy because nobody has developed KPIs in a field. Let’s say for your employer brand or employee experience. Because yes, it would be advisable to develop a strategy in those fields but there might be a lack of resources such as time, competency or budget. Well, then you have the following possibilities: 

Let it happen

Continue doing «nothing». Doing nothing strategically doesn’t necessarily end up in desaster. But this requires you being intuitively on the right track already. Take your people or customer focus for example, you probably have documented it somewhere in your corporate values, right? Transfer it onto your candidates.

Take people seriously

Easier said than done. Probably one of the statements on your career site says, that your employees are your most important asset. Well, make this visible. 

Select and empower leadership

Most companies have development programs, and programs in coaching, mentoring etc., to develop people in leadership positions. Still, many employees quit because of their team leads or superiors. So, somethings not right. You might want to revisit the programs and see if there is a need to further develop your training in social competencies and empathy or select future leaders according to a new set of criteria. 

Be a role-model

Again, easier said than done. So, no exaggerations, it’s just that people are seeking orientation every now and then and like to be inspired. Simple values such as treating others the way you want to be treated might already do the trick to start with. Regardless of your position, walk the talk and statue an example. If you are in a leading role, there is a clear obligation.

These are examples of how to go about it without a strategy but an inner demeanour. Your mindset and attitude make many things possible. It can give people the right direction, drive and create excitement. Taking a stance shapes culture. This will form your employer brand more deeply than any expensive marketing activity. Work on it.  

Good virtual team culture

People used to be skeptical about home-office working model and its implications on a good team culture. Although maybe the implementation of a safe IT system along with the right cybersecurity was considered the main reason that kept companies from realizing a more remote-kind of workforce. For a longer period of time people in many companies were hesitant to introduce the model. As things have changed beginning of this year, it was made possible and actually works quite well. Now, as the holidays’ approaching, people are getting tired of social distancing and discuss the effects on team culture. But looking at all the virtual after-work cocktail or Christmas parties and virtual fireside talks posted on social media, virtual team culture seems to work pretty well after all.

 

Overall, many companies with almost fulltime remote working with a large number of employees working from home are successful, innovative and have a great team culture. These teams don’t just adopt the corporate office-based work procedures to their home-office scenario but consciously adapt their procedures to their situation. It seems we just need to tackle a few things really consciously. 

 

This is mainly about knowledge work here hence you have noticed the term office appears many times. This is an area that requires some soft skills in communication, empathy, and persuasion. But it is a different type of work than the people business of gastronomy, or care-taking for that matter where physical presence or contact is rather vital. 

 

This gives rise to the question: “how important are physical meetings for a good team culture and continuous team building processes for striving performance in professions that do not require physical contact?” Obviously, as mentioned earlier, teams working virtually do not hinder success, innovation or team work, but improve it for the benefit of regional entities. Some companies that were new to this type of work, really got excited about the freedom they gained. People have understood that virtual teams in many ways do work similarly as physical ones. And they can be rather effective. There is a project based feel to virtual meetings, everything is systematically documented, meetings are clearly structured, what may appear extensive in the beginnig. But all of this actually makes virtual teams more on point of their game. They share information more deliberately during meetings and in virtual folders for members who will join the conversation later and like to bring themselves up to date. And as people can turn their cameras on and off during a meeting as they feel, anyones’ quick frown will hardly be noticed or easily smiled off. It’s mostly just an enjoyable experience with a clear target and positive outcomes.

 

Let me place just a quick word on culture here. Everyone has a personality just as every team and organization has a culture. Sometimes it’s not obvious and people cannot name exactly what it is, but they can say why they like to work with their team mates and their company. Those are the effects of team culture and that’s what matters in the end. 


How you interact as people, how you exchange information, what you do with that information. People get to know each other with their specific advantages and flaws and tune-in to each other. That’s sometimes easier done when you meet in person on a regular basis. But is meeting in person vital for an outstanding team culture and performance?

 

It can be of vital importance. To make my point, think of UN meetings. Most of the diplomats who were interviewed on the new virtual meeting scenarios said they are missing physical meetings because one could further discuss a topic with a peer by a cup of tea in between sessions. This can be highly important because this way people can continue their cognitive solution finding process and come up with suggestions more easily than just all by themselves and then they can bring those suggestions into a next session. Also, there is an aspect of interpersonal information flowing during personal conversations on the level of body language and intuition that cannot be addressed in the same way during a virtual call without the risk of someone feeling exposed.

 

I just remember the first meetings after lockdown, we had this impulse to go towards each other with the intent to shake hands and be social. Then stopped each other by saying that we still have to keep distance and verbalised how we felt about the situation and this need of being friendly and how happy we were to be able to meet in person again. It’s an interesting thing as it seems this impulse starts to fade over a longer period of time, as shaking hands is part of our culture, while the need for positive and enjoyable or even profitable social interaction remains. Verbalizing shaking hands during our greeting actually made us process and experience the sensations we missed on a cognitive level. Clearly, we can access all potential and create a good virtual team culture by being vary of essential needs and giving the opportunity and safe space to participants to express them even in virtual meetings.

What does the Greek god Proteus got to do with my career

Adaptability is a prerequisite to sustain on todays’ labor market.  It is unclear how economy will develop in the coming months ahead. The p...