Seeing Helpful, Not Impressive
The easiest way to talk about being helpful, not impressive, is to reflect on how we act in our own lives – modifying our behavior to adopt a posture of sharing, compassion, communication, and rolling up your sleeves to do the work. But the other side of the coin is being able to recognize others who are quietly doing what needs to be done, beyond the flashier status-seeking of impressive.
We pair “helpful” and “impressive” because they’re two radically different things. Impressive is intertwined with intimidation – if you're trying to be impressive, you're trying to put yourself in a position of superiority, to ensure that your idea is the one that’s chosen, and to be sure that everyone else in the room knows it was your idea. It’s the opposite of helpful. In contrast, helpful presents as, “I don't care if I emerge from this conversation as the one who was right or who had the best idea. In fact if all of my ideas get shot down in favor of an even better idea, I'm still leaving the conversation satisfied.”
One way to be helpful, not impressive, is to be constantly on the lookout for simple structural elements that may be making it difficult for someone (perhaps someone who is helpful without putting themselves forward) to succeed in an organization even when those elements are making it possible for you to succeed.
For example, when I ran a public markets investment team earlier in my career, we once looked at our investment portfolio and realized that ~80% of the positions were originated by extroverts – despite extroverts making up less than 40% of the team. Were extroverts better analysts? When we analyzed the returns from each group, the data didn’t bear that out. So what gave?
We audited our process and saw that the last step was an oral presentation and Q&A session at an idea meeting with the key decision makers (a process that had been designed by extroverts). As you might guess, extroverts were better at this step than introverts and were therefore overrepresented in our work product simply because they had a better spiel. The problem wasn’t with our analysts – it was a process that had been designed when the team was smaller, but had not changed as the team grew.
The implications are twofold: A helpful, not impressive, person tries to see this, point it out, and help fix it even when it might have benefited them individually not to. And, helpful, not impressive as a driving foundation requires setting the table in a way that brings less flashy voices into the mix, setting the table so that merit can carry the day and the best idea can win. Taking the helpful road, rather than the impressive one, can be hard enough. Recognizing when someone else is doing can be even more difficult.
– by Tim Hanson
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