What Get You Here Won’t Get You There

One of my friend asked me to call her, she was crying, she said she didn’t want I to hear from someone else, but she just had performance review with her manager, and she was given performance improvement plan(PIP) notice. I was shocked, as in the company, usually when they give you the notice, it means that problem has been going on for a long time and this is just a last warning!

I am close to this friend, but to be honest, I don’t really know how she does at work, she seldom shared me these type of info, but in some occasions, she did complain a lot about the team she’s been working with, and couple cases where her manager wasn’t very eager to support.

I introduced her to this company, I had good work relationship with her manager. So when he wanted someone to fill the open vacancy, I thought about my friend immediately. But I also told her manager that I didn’t know a lot about her work experience as other than few years working in the same prior company, she left for the West Coast and since then, I remain friend with her, but didn’t really know how she performed at work, he would have to interview her and make the decision by himself. Obviously my friend passed the interview and was hired couple years ago. I am happy that she’s back to the East Coast and we are much closer than before.

As a professional woman, sometimes, we feel stuck, and hard to find the way to continue to climb the career ladders. But we do need to know that what get us here won’t get us there… Some of our previous habits may are actually working against us now.

We need to proactively let our manager know the contribution we’ve been adding to the organization. Use the opportunity to present yourself and your team, keep your managers informed of what you’ve been doing. Don’t expect your contribution will be automatically noticed by someone else. This just doesn’t work at work.

Don’t try to overly please someone else, we need to have priorities. If volunteering something won’t to your best benefits, you need to let people know, as otherwise, they will always take advantage of you. I am not saying that we should be selfish, we should always work as a team and support the team, but there is a boundary between overly trying to please others or do as what others expect you to do when you have other priorities.

There are couple options in front of my friend, one is to confront it and approach her manager and ask him how she can improve and show him. The other one is to start to look for another job. I couldn’t make the decision for my friend, but I will tell her and do wish that she isn’t beaten by this and can embrace the challenge bravely. Try to understand where the problem was, and see how she’s able to correct it, giving up is always the most easiest thing, but is also the worst thing to do. You will encounter similar problems anywhere, you can’t change what you can’t control, but at least you can change your own behavior…