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Lee E. Meadows, PhD.
Professor of Management –
Authored: Silent Conspiracy &
Silent Suspicion
Over time, “Social Capital’ pays off on job
At a recent 'future leaders' conference, I had the good
fortune of meeting one of my former students whose immediate accomplishments
included finishing a baccalaureate degree and completing a year of full time
employment for a local supermarket chain. During the course of our meeting, she
confided that for as much as she enjoyed her job, she was frustrated by, what
she perceived to be a lack of respect for her opinion. "No one wants to
take advantage of what I know," she lamented.
"I share my ideas about what should be done and all I
get in return is grief." After listening to more details about the issue,
I suggested that much of her frustration might lie in the fact that, at age
twenty-three, she hadn't accumulated enough Social
Capital where she works in order to be taken seriously. I took the
deer-in-the-headlight stare to mean that she didn't understand what I meant. I
explained that Social Capital is the
link between what we know and what we've experienced. Colleges and Universities
do a very good job of filling youthful minds with a lot of facts so that what
we know far exceeds what we've experienced. The eagerness that comes with
putting knowledge into action is both heartwarming and dangerous. The working
world does a very good job of shaping work behavior through direct experience
so that what we've done far exceeds what we know. Though experience is a good
teacher, it is rarely an adequate learner.
Organizations survive and grow because of its need to temper
experience with the application of ongoing knowledge. The balance is Social Capital and the reality of how it
is applied can be a tremendous career builder. I offered her some insights for
building one's Social Capital:
- Listen and observer more than
you talk and critique: At the beginning of any career there are ample
opportunities to make a hundred and one mistakes that are easily avoided
if you shut up long enough to listen to what's being said to you. Youthful
knowledge, though welcomed, has to endure the test of credibility. The
trick is not to focus on finding a hundred ideas that work, but one or
two, that when successful, are the direct result of your patient
contribution.
- Seek more counsel than you
provide: Many of the barriers to implementing ideas that work,
in actuality, lie with the people sitting in key organizational spots.
Comfort brings its own form of risk-aversive behavior. There's no ignoring
that the number of years they've spent in that spot has provided them with
a wisdom that can save you a lot of grief if you know how to ask for it in
such a way that respects their integrity. Quite frankly, there's value in
even the most outrageous of opinions. People don't mind sharing what they
know, but they object to being discounted.
- Build from the bottom up, not
from the top down: Use the success of your growing experience to
gain access to other opportunities and other people so that your
reputation opens more doors by the sheer force of your accomplishments.
You will find that, in time, the foundation of what you've done will
continue to rise as other hands extend downward to give you more resources.
- Repeat the good lessons and
remember the bad ones: When you receive
acknowledgement that something has worked, look for ways to use it again.
There's a reason why successful coaches manage to consistently win despite
the frequent change in human dynamics. They have found elements of a
formula that works for them and they use it with minor adjustments here
and there. Every unexpected negative occurrence is just a reminder that
something threw off the formula and to avoid it in the future. The
consistency of your successes goes a long way toward deepening the
reservoir of your social capital.
- All the answers don't lie
with you, but are available to you: Letting go of the need
to have the answers and embracing the skill of accessing the answers
forces you to look beyond your immediate experiences or your immediate
knowledge. These new areas will sharpen your insights while shaping your
organizational muscle. The accumulation of knowledge and the growth of
experience are interconnecting threads in an emerging tapestry. The
picture becomes clearer when you are less intrigued by what you know and
more interested in what others can teach you.
Social
Capital sits at the top of the career triangle and is supported on
one end by respect, which isn't
easily earned and on the other end by credibility,
which is readily sought. It rarely comes with a four-year degree and one year
of work experience.