The Hired Help: It’s Their Baby, Not Yours
You may work in a role that you love in a corporation. Even if you don’t love it, you might still be protective over the quality of your work or the direction your team or the company is taking. If this describes you, it sounds like you genuinely care, which is great. Maybe you worry that if you don’t do what you think is best, the work will go badly, and you will be blamed. Or perhaps you fear the company won’t keep you employed if the work fails. If these are your concerns, it’s understandable to feel scared and stressed.
Please consider the following perspective. When you are hired, you are brought on to help the company perform a set of tasks, which will eventually contribute to producing a product or service for customers. You might find joy in knowing that your work helps people, and that’s a wonderful mindset. However, remember that you were hired specifically to assist the company. While the company’s goal may be to provide an excellent product or service, it’s important to focus on the fact that it’s not your company. Your primary role is to help the company achieve its stated goals.
Companies also hire managers at multiple levels. You might be one of those managers, or you might be someone who works under a manager. Regardless of your position, you were hired to follow instructions and perform tasks assigned to you. Sometimes you may have a lot of autonomy, and other times very little. This range of autonomy can be challenging, especially when you are asked to pursue goals or complete tasks that seem unreasonable to you. Whether you agree with the goals or not, it’s important to recognize that your role is to assist in achieving them as best you can.
The key perspective is this: Your job involves helping achieve the company’s goals, not necessarily determining what those goals should be. The projects are the company’s babies, not your own. You are just helping them raise these project babies. If they decide to pursue actions that may harm or even ruin them, that is their decision. It can be frustrating to see something you’ve worked hard on for a long time get ruined or deleted. It’s important to remember that you are hired and paid for your time and effort in helping the company pursue what it believes will lead to success, regardless of the outcome.
Adopting the perspective that you are the hired help and a company’s project is not your baby can be incredibly freeing. It allows you to assist the company and its leaders without as much frustration. What is happening might not always make sense to you, and that’s okay. You are there to help them.
DISCLAIMERS
- This does not mean helping them do illegal things.
- This does not mean helping them do things you believe are morally or ethically wrong.
- This does not mean staying in a toxic work environment.
- This does not mean you should stay at a company that makes you feel awful. If that is the case, please find a different job. Just understand that there will always be aspects of any job that don’t align perfectly with how you would do things. Know your level of frustration tolerance. Don’t just quit without having another job lined up, as that can make life very difficult.