1 So much of trust and credibility among coworkers comes from three things: accountable delivery, teamwork, and good professional judgment. If you get these three right, you are unstoppable. 🎉
2 Accountable delivery is usually within your control. Sometimes things happen that get in your way, things that could not have been predicted. In these situations, the accountable person alerts coworkers as early as possible so plans can be updated.
3 People with accountable delivery do what they say they will do, or they lead the definition of a new plan. If something slips, they take ownership for addressing it. When you say you will deliver something, deliver it. If you can’t deliver it, communicate about it openly.
4 Deliverables include: projects, code, stuff you need to write down, meeting agendas, responses to open questions, project plans, and just about anything else that you commit to in a given day/week/month/quarter.
5 Your teamwork is also usually within your control. How you collaborate, how you show up, and how you lead are mostly just decisions that you make. Sometimes you have to deal with challenging coworkers, but people with great teamwork skills usually find a way to navigate.
6 Good professional judgment is a little stickier. If the instincts are there, good judgment is often developed as a result of experience - and that means during your first few experiences with something new, your judgment may not be developed yet.
7 In hiring or promoting someone to a new role, be clear on how much time you can allocate to them developing the judgment they need to do the role. Promote people when you have the time for them to learn to succeed. Otherwise they will fail and you will be disappointed.
8 On the flip side, if you find someone with fantastic professional judgment (and accountable delivery and teamwork too), give them BIG responsibilities - these instincts are gold, and difficult to teach.
9 I wish I knew how to teach professional judgment more quickly. Most successful people either start out with strong instincts, or take a lot of lumps learning. For most successful people, I think it’s both.
10 I don’t think there’s much substitute for having the right instincts to start with, but even talented people end up taking their lumps to really develop them.
11 The coworkers I have cherished most over the years shine in all three areas: accountable delivery, teamwork, and strong professional judgment. Three out of three is 💯
