Isn’t it lovely when accolades come our way? It’s so rewarding when our work is publicly acknowledged and praised.
But what happens when you don’t deserve all the applause? When that “I” you used is really a “we?”
Five of us had worked for almost a year on a project to improve morale, increase performance, and reduce turnover in one of our company’s locations. This assignment had been layered on top of already full task lists; however the work was a labor of love for many of the project team members. We were drawn by the lure of having the freedom to create whatever was needed to achieve our goals.
Then came the company leadership meeting. The day when “I” slammed into “we.”
In his opening remarks, the president showered rave reviews on a woman from the project team, highlighting all her great efforts in turning around a troubled facility. He read the email she had sent to him. The email was full of “I” phrases: I discovered, I researched, I thought, I did, I, I, I. There was no mention of her other four team members. She beamed; the rest of us were crushed.
Could this be you? Have you tooted your horn yet forgotten the orchestra that accompanied you?
4 Rules to follow when taking credit
Take solo credit under these circumstances:
- You single-handedly completed all the work to successful results with zero assistance from anyone else.
- The good work you did was all your idea.
- You executed your idea, and the outcome crashed and burned…big time.
- You’re a boss, your team executed an assignment at your bidding, and the end result was awful.
How your bad deeds catch with you
1) Today, there’s a mere four-and-a-half degrees of separation between us in an ever-connected world. You just never know when a new boss was one of those poor slobs whose work you took credit for years earlier.
2) Be prepared to always work alone. No one wants to partner up with or help a glory-grabber because there’s no point in signing on to be invisible.
3) Your reputation is toast. It doesn’t get any more powerful than word-of-mouth praise—or condemnation. You’re in the driver’s seat as to which story people will tell about you.
4) The chickens come home to roost. Someday when you least expect it, your boss or some other big shot will ask you – in a very public venue – for details of “your” terrific work. That’s when your credibility and career path hit a dead-end.
Taking and sharing credit: it’s your choice, your story, and your character.
And…you’re in control.
Quotes about taking credit
Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
Hard work is rewarding. Taking credit for other people’s hard work is rewarding and faster. ~Scott Adams
If you blame others for your failures, do you credit them with your success? ~Unknown
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. ~Peter F. Drucker
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it. ~Andrew Carnegie
Image credit before quote: Pixabay
