The Importance of Being Selfless at Work - Part One

We’ve all seen the humble brags on LinkedIn.

A manager gave a candidate a chance after they showed up late and disheveled to the interview.  It turned out they were only late because they had to carry their sick grandmother over their shoulder to the hospital ten miles away. They became a great employee and all they needed was a chance. And that manager gave it to them. Aren’t they such a great leader?

Or the parent with the six-year-old child who shares their philosophical insights about cultural relations with the perspective of an 80-year-old and the sentence construction out of a PhD thesis. Isn’t my child’s revelation so helpful to you?

No one believes you and everyone sees what you’re doing.

At work, just as in all aspects of life, it’s easy to only think of yourself. I believe we’re born selfish by default, with some biologic tendencies toward altruism in lesser or greater quantities in individuals. But selflessness must be nurtured, developed, and trained into us by our parents, the community, and our societies culture. Our technology today doesn’t help in this endeavor. While it’s easier to be selfless through donation campaigns and support coordination tools, it’s also easier for our motivations to be impure, as we’re manipulated to pursue more social media views and likes from our friends and the public.

While I believe that to be a well-rounded human it’s necessary to be selfless in every aspect of life, this series will explore three reasons why I think it’s important to be altruistic at work and in your career.

Cover and Move

You’re human. You will need support. Whether it’s support from your team, from your peers, or from your boss, at some point in your time at work you’ll need some help. Whether you’re just taking a vacation, have one too many projects on your list, or you’re struggling to solve a problem on your own, someone is providing cover while you’re moving.

So when your peer takes a vacation, offer to support them by fielding escalations from their team. When your teammate looks to be struggling with their workload, help ease their burden by taking it yourself, shifting their priorities, or finding another teammate willing to pick it up with them. When your boss is pursuing a new initiative, step up to help with the ideation and planning early, instead of waiting to be asked.

The essence of cover and move is teams helping each other accomplish larger goals. They don’t do it for themselves, they do it because helping others is the right thing to do and we achieve bigger things together than individually. It’s important that your motivation for helping not be selfish, or for personal gain. First, because you should WANT to be selfless because you want to be a good human.  And second, it’s human nature to be suspicious of people offering help and their possible ulterior motives. If the people you want to help sense your intentions are dishonest, they won’t accept your help.  Don’t be a slimeball. Help because it’s right.

Here's a real-world example of cover and move that occurred at one of my old employers.

Bill ran the SysAdmin teams, which consisted of the Linux team and the Windows team.  Bill was a giant douche to work with and his boss, Mary, wanted him out. However, she was challenged with how she would get Bill out.  She wanted to get rid of Bill and promote the Linux team lead, Bob, into Bill’s old position. Mary could eliminate Bill’s position, but the lawyers told her she couldn’t recreate the position for Bob to step into for at least six months, which meant the Windows team would need a new place in the org for a while.

While discussing this situation with one of her other directs, Sally, who ran the Storage teams, Sally suggested the Windows team be parked under her for a while. She offered to get rid of the bad apple working on that team and hire a team lead to run it, and when it was time, Mary could promote Bob and he could take the Windows team over. Mary loved this idea but told Sally she had to tell her boss that it was her idea, because otherwise it would seem like Sally was trying to build her own empire. Sally was fine with this since she doing this because she knew it was the right thing to do for the greater team, for her boss, and for Bob. There was no recognition or reward given, and none was expected.

The plan was approved, Bill’s position was eliminated, the Windows team was moved under Sally, Sally cleaned house and hired a new lead just in time for Bob to get his promotion and take the Windows team back. Whether anyone knew that Sally did this to help Mary and Bob is anyone’s guess, but she didn’t do it for any recognition or reward. Sally felt that it was the right thing to do.

Cover and move isn’t transactional. It’s not quid pro quo. There’s no scoreboard for helping others (there is, but we’ll discuss balance in part 3). It’s one component of building relationships with your team that will positively impact everyone over the long term. It builds trust. It improves collaboration. It makes the team faster and more agile.

Note: I stole the term “Cover and Move” from Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s fantastic book Extreme Ownership. If you haven’t read it, buy it and read it. It encapsulates the fundamentals of leadership that I try to follow every day.

The next part in this series discusses the importance of being selfless in building informal organizational networks.