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Positive Work Ethic: Have "It"? Show It
By Sylvia Henderson
CEO
Springboard Training
 Observe an awards ceremony of any kind, whether related to sports, entertainment, discovery, politics, or otherwise. Award winners typically thank three entities in their lives in varying order when they accept their awards: the people who gave birth to or raised them, their faith, and their colleagues who contributed to their achieving the recognition that they are receiving. When they thank the people who raised them, they say in one way or another, "I thank you, [fill in person's name] for encouraging me when I was growing up and for teaching me the value of hard work." The value of hard work represents a work ethic.
Your work ethic is not simply your job description, career goals, school assignment, or the tasks you perform. Your work ethic is part of your belief system and reflects in your attitude and behavior. Your work ethic is how you feel deep down inside that you should behave and respond when it comes to deciding whether to work hard or not. The old cliché about succeeding in life is that you have to work hard to succeed and that you will not succeed at something if you do not work at it. While this may be true conceptually, the cliché seems like motivational fluff that is nice to hear but difficult to implement.
Let me break it down to some specific guidance and everyday practices that are not nearly as eloquent and visionary, but are the behavioral steps you take towards demonstrating that you have a positive work ethic.
Pay attention to what you should be doing.
Discourage personal phone calls at work, whether at a full-time job, internship, seasonal or on-campus job, or volunteering. "At work" implies any of these. Remove headphones and turn off distracting programming if you have a radio or digital player at your work station. Use cell phones for emergency calls only and set them to "stun" (vibrate). Your focus is to be on the tasks and responsibilities at hand rather than on whom you will meet later in the day for dinner. Workplace tasks usually require focus to ensure they are accomplished correctly. You may think you are good at multitasking, yet research indicates that for every distraction in which you engage there is a part of your mind that is occupied by that distraction. Why do you think cell phones and texting are such safety issues for drivers?
Scenario 1. I encountered, more times than I would like, employees in my company who spoke into telephone headsets while typing on a computer keyboard with one hand, and maneuvering other things with the other hand. I did an informal experiment over the course of a week because I was curious as to how many errors occurred during those multi-tasking episodes. The most-common two activities occurring at the same time were talking on the phone and typing. Every day at some point during the day, I asked for a printout of a document I observed being typed while a selected person was simultaneously doing something else. I also asked the targeted person to recall details of the phone conversation within 15 minutes after the call. I requested the same things of the same person when they were focused on just the task at hand-either solely on writing or solely on a telephone conversation-throughout the same week. The results? Of the 9 documents I read from multitasking times, 8 of them had one or more glaring editorial errors (mis-spellings, incorrect or no punctuation, improper word choices, formatting errors, and more). Of the 8 documents I read from focus times, 2 of them had one or more glaring errors. Of the telephone conversation-recalls after multitasking times, details of 6 out of 10 could not be remembered within 15 minutes of the calls. Of the recalls after focus times, details of 9 out of 9 were remembered.
I targeted two other employees during two other weeks with the same experiment and got similar results. Did I not have "better things to do" during those weeks of experimentation? Of course I did. Yet, I needed to satisfy my gut feeling that work was getting done less efficiently and effectively when people multitasked than when they did not. By the way, these were people who told me time and again that they could multitask "just fine" when I admonished them in past encounters to focus on one thing at a time. With results such as those I observed in just one-week periods, imagine how productivity suffered over the long-term. To add fuel to the fire, other managers made unsolicited comments to me at times about the apparent poor work ethic of these individuals because of what they perceived when they saw these people in action, or by what they received in work product from these employees.
Deliver a quality work product.
"Work product" is what you deliver to your customer or client. In school, your work product is the end-result of your homework assignment or team project. In college, it may be an end-of-term research report or your graduate thesis. In a service-oriented job it will be the completed service you perform. In a manufacturing job it is the product that you make. The quality of the product or service you deliver speaks directly to the work ethic you value.
Architects and seamstresses have a mantra: measure, mark, mock-up, and measure again. The mantra is a reminder to them that though they carefully measure and note dimensions for the products they create, they need to double-check those measurements before they build (or sew) their final products. They often create mock-ups-a test product, miniature model, or sample garment-after recording their initial measurements in order to better visualize the final products and see where corrections need to be made. Once their products are finished they cannot be undone or corrected without a great deal of effort, money, and damaged reputation.
Translate this mantra to your school or business work products: draft, review, revise, produce, and protect. Let's take a paper-based work product as an example. You have a report that you are assigned to produce. While you may create an electronic file to be file-transferred to your professor, you may also be required to deliver a paper-based version of the report. Which of the following two work products represents your work ethic?
Scenario 2A. Your report has the required number of pages. The page margins are as wide as they can be to still "look acceptable" (even though they are a fraction of an inch wider than the assignment specifies). The type font size is one size larger than the assignment specifies (but you figure no-one can tell the difference between a 12-point and a 13-point font when they look at it). Everything is spelled correctly, yet some of the words are incorrect within their context ("weather" instead of "whether"). Bulleted lists within the report begin with dots in some sections and dashes in others. The pages are numbered sequentially and the entire report is stapled at the upper left corner, yet 7 pages inside are upside-down. The back page has a slight coffee-cup stain that was blotted-out but is still visible. You submit the report as it is because you just grabbed it from the business services office that stapled the document while enroute to your delivery location by way of the local coffee shop.
Scenario 2B. Your report has the required number of pages. The page margins and type font size are exactly as specified in the assignment. The report is grammatically correct; there is one mis-spelled word deep into the report ("to" instead of "too"). Bulleted lists, quotations, paragraph alignments, and other document formats are consistent throughout the entire document. The pages are numbered sequentially (as assigned) and the entire report is bound by a spiral binding, with a plastic cover-protector on the front and back of the bound document. All pages are positioned accurately; there are no wrinkles or folds; all printing is clear and crisp. You submit the report inside an accurately-labeled file folder a day prior to the delivery deadline.
Need I say more? Which of the scenarios represents your work ethic? Hopefully the second scenario vividly illustrates the difference between work products that represent a weak ("just skating by") work ethic vs. a strong ("best effort possible") work ethic. To consistently produce work products that are "above and beyond" requirements demonstrates that you have a deeply-held value system of hard work and quality service delivery.
Identify areas of concern AND initiate solutions.
There is usually a way to do something more efficiently or a solution to a problem in most situations. The question is, will you be the person who identifies an area of concern or initiates a solution? Someone will at some point. It may be a matter of whose work ethic leads them to be that person.
When you find yourself in a situation where you disagree with how things are done or wonder, "Why is this the way it is?", speak up-politely-and ask questions when you don't understand. Ask for help when you feel overwhelmed. Challenge orders that seem morally or ethically unacceptable to you, or leave as soon as you are able. Avoid gossip, rumors, and lies-telling them and listening to them. When I say to challenge something, I mean to raise a concern respectfully. Identify what is observable and objectively changeable rather than what is subjective or opinionated. Define how the area of concern is an issue for the organization or person; how it hurts or can cause a problem. Then-and this is most important-suggest ways in which the situation can be fixed or improved, and how you can make it happen. Then offer to do it. This is being proactive and taking initiative instead of waiting for something to happen or someone to point out what you should do.
Scenario 3. As a manager of a department of 14 people, I knew that I could not identify or solve the daily issues that arose within each of those 14 employees' areas of responsibility. They had to feel empowered enough to identify, solve, and act on the situations that arose. To establish an environment of empowerment, I told each of them, "All I ask is that you tell me when my phone will ring, and tell me what I need to know to support your decisions." My message was that I expected them to identify concerns and develop solutions, and I expected them to go ahead and take appropriate actions without having to come to me to ask my permission to do so. Should something they took the initiative to do or say to a client anger or cause concern for that client, I knew that client would be on the telephone to me very quickly. I did not want my employees to be afraid of taking action because they would worry that a client would "call them out". I wanted them to know that taking initiative and taking action bears a certain amount of risk and that they were also responsible for mitigating that risk. Mitigating risks meant warning me ahead of time that I would hear repercussions from clients. Repercussions were fine with me as long as I (a.) knew of them ahead of time, (b.) understood the reasoning behind the decisions made and actions taken, and (c.) knew that my employees acted in good faith and appropriately. My job as their manager was to support them and back them up (or correct them, if necessary) and balance clients' viewpoints.
Over time, those employees with solid work ethics proved to me that they could handle taking initiative and solving problems without asking for permission. Those without such work ethics required correction, reduced responsibilities, remedial coaching, and for one or two of them, reassignment to a different business area. Those with a solid work ethic appreciated the freedom they had to take risks, make mistakes, learn from them, and succeed in subsequent endeavors.
While the above is a work-related scenario, similar lessons are learned in school-related situations. Students who demonstrate they have positive work ethics typically earn greater freedom to take risks and learn more from their initiatives. Teachers and professors tell me that they allow a greater threshold for forgiveness of errors or mis-steps with students who have solid work ethics because they know that those students will do everything in their powers to make up for their errors.
Have a strong work ethic-one that compels you every day to work smartly, diligently, and hard. And remember that the only way others will know that you have such a work ethic is by the way you demonstrate that you do...consistently, through your actions and behaviors. This is how "work ethic" becomes real.
Addendum: I found interesting additional reading on the subject of work ethics at Wikipedia. The following references add further insight to the topic.
About the Author: Sylvia Henderson is Founder and Chief Everything Officer (CEO) of Springboard Training. She is an expert in the "people skills" for workplace, professional, and life success. Sylvia facilitates workshops, trains, speaks, writes, and has a television program that all focus on personal development and interpersonal skills. An alumna of Cheyney University (BS-Education; Zeta Phi Beta Sorority) and the University of Pittsburgh (MBA), Sylvia's affiliations also include Toastmasters International (DTM-level speaker), National Speakers Association, Girl Scouts of the USA, and Women On Wheels Motorcycle Association.
Bring Sylvia to work with your organization via SpringboardTraining.com. Experience her monthly learning connections via Subscribe2Succeed.com. Sylvia is based in the Washington DC metro area, yet travels extensively and increasingly offers electronic and web-based resources.
Contact Information:
Springboard Training
P. O. Box 588 Olney, MD 20830-0588
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