Can You Succeed in Your Career without Hurting Others' Chances?

Abba Eban, who was a popular Israeli diplomat, once said, "You can’t achieve anything without getting in someone’s way.” This means that when you climb your career ladder, you may be hurting the chances of some people who may be slow movers or non-movers. Especially, if you are like many other ambitious career climbers who ruthlessly focus only on their own growth without giving a damn about the goals or feelings of others, you may just shrug your shoulders and say that those whose chances you are hurting are slow or non-movers and hence, they deserve to lose the race to you. 

Whenever the fact that you have hurt the chances of a few others haunts you, you may console yourself by thinking that you have not been sadistic and stood in their way just for the sake of achieving the career growth you have been aspiring for. On the contrary, you have succeeded in your efforts in achieving career growth because you have been proving time and again that you are a better leader or accomplisher. Of course, during the course of your journey, you may have used forceful language to make slow-movers among your peers or subordinates work faster. You may have hurt the chances of the growth of some of them as well. But is it possible to be graceful and gentle while handling such slow or non-movers? Let us find out.

How to handle slow movers?

It is impossible to achieve the career success you want without the help of others. These others may include slow movers as well. But you cannot behave like a Nazi for having their help. According to experts, you should be gentle while handling them. You will not derive any benefit by being harsh or by ill-treating these folks. When you confront situations in which their performances are below par, you should ask appropriate questions to know if they have any problems with the tasks. Yelling at them or scolding them will not only not get you the right type of response but will spoil your relationship with them. Only by knowing their problems, you will be able to extract the best out of them. Most importantly, they will cooperate and help you achieve the career growth you are aiming at.

Though DNA science says that certain habits are inveterate, you can easily change your ways by practice. This means that if you have all along been behaving like a ball-buster with your peers or subordinates, you can practice gentleness so that you will be able to handle them smoothly.

You may say, "I am a success-driven person and hence, I can not tolerate slow movers." You should remember that you are not asked to sail slowly as they do. On the other hand, you are advised to effect the following few changes both in your thinking pattern and in your approach.

1. Be aware of the fact that every person is unique. Some people may be ambitious, some of them may be lazy and clumsy, and a few others may be incompetent. But most of these people are like this not with an intention to cause harm to you.

2. Set fair and clear standards and gently keep nudging these people to meet them.

3. If you are gentle but firm, most of them will improve. If some of them do not seem to improve, ask them questions, listen to them attentively, and try to provide them with suggestions. If they still do not improve, do not hesitate to replace them. But even while doing so, you should be gentle and kind and should avoid criticism. 

If you follow these suggestions, the fact that your success has happened only after you have hurt the chances of others will not haunt you at all.