I get a lot of questions on how to succeed in international development. How to make an internship turn into a job, how to use a bad job to get a good job. I give the same answer, every single time. Be easy. More than anything else – more than being skilled, more than being high performing, more even than brilliant – be easy.
This is a small world. You see the same people over and over again over the course of years. Hierarchies turn sideways and upside down in the space of months – every time a new grant gets awarded. My friend Simon has been my boss, my HQ backstop, my subordinate, and my colleague working at another NGO. If you screw up your relationships with colleagues, you don’t get to leave your job and never think of them again. They’ll pop up in the future – maybe working for the donor that funds you, maybe managing you.
You will work with a limited pool of people. If it’s a good project, you have a big national staff and a small expat staff. Even the largest project is smaller than your average corporation. You need to be able to manage the complexity of the national-expatriate balance. If you can’t manage that, you can’t do your job – no matter what else you have going for you.
That means that when people are hiring, the thought at the front of their minds is, “Will this person be easy to work with?” Because it doesn’t matter how good you are if you’re hard to work with. I remember recommending a colleague for promotion and getting the rapid, muttered response: “We can’t move him up. He doesn’t play well with others.”
I have burned my share of bridges. You can’t be easy all the time. I have ex-colleagues that hate me, I am sure. At least one of them comments on this blog to express his disdain for me. But I do my best to be easy.
Four ways to be easy:
- When given a task to do, don’t complain to your boss about it. Just smiled and go do it, even if it’s awful.
- You can complain to your colleagues a little, but not all the time. You’re aiming for “this sucks but I can handle it” not “this sucks and I’m miserable.”
- This part is kind of awful: you can complain to your expat friends a little, but not all the time. Because very often your friends are the ones who tell you about job openings and float your resume around. They’re not going to do that if they think you’re whiny or bad at your job. (Though, honestly, it occurs to me that if you want to complain all the time you probably need a new job better suited to your skills.)
- It’s inevitable that your personal and work life will get mixed up, because living overseas does that. Keep them as separate as you can anyway.
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Chosen because I was trying to be a little edgy with the word “Easy,” not over the top.
Of course, the examples you give about how one should be ‘easy’ are fine as far as they go. The issue is: should the imperative of being easy stop you from complaining about bad and counter-productive practices in your organisation — and, more importantly, do something about them? You will most likely upset an apple cart here and there if you do, and you will definitely not be seen as ‘easy’; but in my view it is more important to do your job well, including fighting the fights that need to be fought, than to be ‘easy’.
Honestly, early in your career, I would err on the side of not speaking up. It’s very unlikely anyone will listen to you at that point. Mid-career and later, you have a far better sense of the factors involved and you can make informed choices about when to push.
And even if you’re a cranky old fossil like me who is constantly pushing back against things that don’t work, you can still be easy in the other ways – cheerful, willing to take on crappy work, and un-moody.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Michael Keizer, Alanna Shaikh. Alanna Shaikh said: New blood & milk post: Easy http://bloodandmilk.org/?p=1570 […]
“It’s very unlikely anyone will listen to you at that point [early in your career]. Mid-career and later, you have a far better sense of the factors involved and you can make informed choices about when to push.”
There are two basic assumptions here:
– Early in your career, chances are that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
– Early in your career, people will not listen to you.
I definitely disagree with the first assumption. Many ‘new’ people coming in bring a new perspectives as well, that we as ‘cranky old fossils’ have just become too blinkered to see. (Of course, the counterpart must be that, as a new entrant, you will need to have the humility to listen to the arguments and experience of the old-timers — you could very well be even more blinkered than they. But if you have truly listened to and digested what they have to say, and you still think that things are going disastrously wrong, you could just as well be right as they.)
Concerning not being listened to: I think that that depends largely on the organisation (and even the department or unit) you work in. SOme organisations (departments, units, managers) do indeed have a mindset where the arguments of a new entrant are by definition worthless; in those circumstances, I would agree that it is better not to make waves, because that will not help anyway and will only harm you. However, many more modern managers and organisations are more inclined to take arguments on their merits, regardless whether they come from the greenest intern or the hoariest old veteran; and in those cases you have a good chance of being listened to and actually make a difference. (Of course I now caricaturise two extremes, and most organisations and managers are somewhere between those two on the scale.)
In the end, what counts is whether you have done the best you can to move things forward, whether you are easy or not — which in some cases, indeed, could mean just shutting up; but in my experience, in a majority of cases, it is worthwhile to step on the occasional toe.
And yes, of course being cheerful, carrying a bit more than your part of the nasties, and giving that hug to a colleague who is in the dumps, is always a good thing. In that, we totally agree.
It seems to me that the ‘easy’ part is mostly about the way that you criticize/critique what is going on. Is it constructive or negative? Does it actually help move things forward or is it circular complaining that doesn’t go anywhere?
Often when your complaining becomes extreme, it’s because no one is listening – meaning either you are not being valued for your opinion, the organization is not ever going to change, or your opinions are not as valid as you think they are/you’ve missed something. Once you are so negative that you are spending all your working/non-working hours complaining, it’s time to move on because it’s not healthy (or pleasant) for anyone at that point, regardless of who is at fault. (been there).
The point about not burning bridges is spot on. I’ve been really surprised at people I find surfacing in positions that can affect my life and work, right where I least expect them. This isn’t apparent until that time you go to a meeting or a job interview or send in a grant proposal and discover someone is involved that you never imagined would appear again in your life. And you are thinking to yourself ‘thank god I didn’t do/say xyz the last time I worked with that person’.
Many big organizations are very bad at listening to younger people who come in with fresh ideas. Or less young people with different ways of doing things. Many younger people/newer people can also be unaware of the broad, structural challenges that organizations/bureaucracies face, that are very difficult to overcome. So everyone needs to be open to listening/to dialogue, and that doesn’t always happen.
I’ve seen many amazing and talented people move on from an organization after 2-3 years because of the walls they hit in terms of making change that allows them to do their jobs well. It’s depressing when organizations hire good people and then don’t listen to them.
I don’t think it’s about keeping quiet and letting bad and ineffective things go on. It’s about being constructive about trying to make change, and getting out/moving on if you’ve tried and nothing is changing.
I think I’m more on Michael’s side here. There’s already a lot of people who don’t speak up in this game. For national staff, it can be because there may a large number of extended family members riding on their lottery-win of a fairly secure and stable NGO salary. I honestly don’t begrudge people in those circumstances from feeling unable to rock the boat or question or stand up to a boss, but if you let it run it does create a culture where people won’t speak up about fraud either. There are times when as the in-and-out-expat you can show that internal critique is welcomed and necessary. Both by doing it yourself and being explicitly open to it yourself.
This doesn’t obviate anything in points 1-4 you’ve said though Alanna. To a degree that is just fairly basic professionalism. Don’t bitch too much and don’t bitch behind people’s backs, it will get back to them. If that gives you an ulcer, then like my high school maths teacher said after a bad exam result, go home and kiss the dog. Wisdom for the ages there.
Excellent discussion! Working internationally provides a lot of good ‘life lessons’ on a continuous basis for those of us who are ‘old fossils’, and especially for those early in their careers. “Being easy” (Alanna), “Fighting the fight that needs to be fought” and most importantly deciding which those are (Michael) and ‘being constructive without being unduly negative’ (Linda) is all “wisdom for the ages” (Cuyan) and not skills that come naturally to most of us, They need to be identified and practiced.
I often say that working internationally teaches you how to ‘live with ambiguity’, translating to a flexibility that is indispensible in most work environments. For those new to their careers who are interested in the ‘wisdom of the ages’ from us ‘old fossils’ there could be an interesting ‘manual’ in the making here 🙂 Thanks for raising the discussion, Alanna. Interesting identifying what those important (but often unremarked on) skills are.
Hmm I wonder here if there is some conflict here between getting on personally and doing the right thing for yourself or the organization where you work. I think this is a real dilemma since all organizations, even well run ones are often resistant to change.
I dearly want to agree with Michael on this – but I’m not sure that in practice its always the best way forward – I still try to speak up whenever I can – but I can’t say that that makes me popular or has been the most advantageous for my career (although in most cases the consequences of speaking up are less serious than you might think – I only once got in real trouble – in a previous job – for speaking out against clear nepotism by a senior colleague).
I think you can speak out for change and still be successful if you are
i) polite and constructive
ii) acknowledge the expertise and experience of the people who are responsible for the current system (even if you don’t really believe it)
iii) you are generally likeable and positive
iv) you know what you are talking about and can follow up on your suggestions
This last one is very important – without it you can lose credibility very fast. I wouldn’t say you shouldn’t speak up early in your career – but you might want to take pause to be sure you’ve absorbed enough context before you inadvertantly seem to be pointing out how foolish the current way of doing things is without having thought it through.
One thing that was on my mind as I wrote this – I think in your early career it’s easy to get angry and blame your employer for the flaws of the whole system. Infuriating as those flaws are, your employer can’t fix them.
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“Be easy.”
If you’re an expat woman in Afghanistan, everyone assumes you are.