World Musings

A valuable employee at a corporation is the all-star player within his or her department that knows everything, works on the top funded projects, and has many years of experience. However, there is another dimension that can be added to this, and it might be a dimension that you can keep in the back of your mind, especially if you are going to be walked out the door for it. It could be used as your last words to prevent you from being fired.

The dimension is, can making a mistake, or screwing up at work, make you a more valuable employee? Think about this. A lot of us think that if we screwed up royally at the corporation we work for, then that might be the end of things for us. But this isn’t always the case. How so? The thing is, you’ll find that if you screw up something, that even though you will be punished, you won’t be let go. The reason being is now that you’ve made a mistake, you’ve had first hand experience at what to do and what not to do in the future. Now that you know that, it might actually give your managers more confidence that you won’t repeat the same mistake again. Meaning, if they go and hire another new employee, he or she might make your same mistake. So why take the risk? At least you’ve already learned from it. This same thing happens in sports all the time. Someone could be a good player, but yet makes a horrible mistake out on the basketball court in a very crucial situation with 5 seconds left on the clock. And that mistake ends up causing the team to lose. So does that coach kick the player off the team, or sit them out from now on? Well of course not. I’ve seen this time and time again when I played sports as a youth and in college. Now that the player has made a mistake in a crucial situation, he has first hand experience with it, and is likely not to do it again. This actually gives the coach more confidence. Therefore, even though that same player might get chewed out and hollared at for his punishment, the coach will still keep playing him.

The key is, if you make a mistake at work or really screw up, you can still become a valuable employee. All you need to do is ensure or give your superiors confidence that you are a competent person and you have the ability to do your job well. It’s one thing to make a big mistake as a competent employee, but it’s another to make a mistake when everyone already thinks you are an idiot anyways. In that case, then you will be walked out the door with your cardboard box full of belongings. So if you want to be a valuable employee, do these three things: Learn everything you can at work, gain some sort of exposure to your superiors pointing to the idea that you are intelligent and competent, and learn from your mistakes. It’s just like sports Poor unskillful athletes that also make mistakes, will get kicked off of the team. Skillful athletes that make mistakes and learn from them, won’t get kicked off the team. They actually become more valuable players.

[tags]valuable employee[/tags]