Do you prefer being the more experienced, intelligent person in the room, or are you comfortable being surrounded by people who are just as talented and driven as you, if not, more so?

There is no doubt that being the most experienced person in a team or a workplace can be extremely fulfilling. You are likely valued highly by your employer, peers and the clients you work for, your job is secure and you’re likely to be first in line to receive the next big promotion. Although this experience in and of itself can allow for growth and professional development, it also has the potential to stunt your development if you are not willing to share this development with your colleagues.

I believe that one of the biggest factors inhibiting personal growth comes from the fear that your peers will outperform you and thus “climb the ladder” faster than you, whatever that may mean. This fear is arguably built into us from a young age, whether it was intentional or not, by means of creating fierce competition in the academic sense as well as in sport, music and other endeavours. Particularly in the latter years of high school, where your results and performance in VCE/HSC etc. were directly dependant on how well your peers went, we were encouraged to protect any skills, sources or additional support we had acquired as we wanted to give ourselves the best possible chance of scoring the best, relative to our peers. 

Whether this typically continues on in University or not I can’t say for sure, as it wasn’t what I experienced. I was fortunate enough to have a close group that encouraged each other to perform well, share various information, hold each other accountable and always wished the best upon one another. I believe the most important attribute we developed, particularly in the later years of our studies, was the ability to openly discuss our strengths and weaknesses, especially our weaknesses/failures, which enabled us to provide insightful advice to the other person so that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes that we did. We ended up developing this skill to the point where, when we were working on the same assignment, we would delegate certain aspects of the assignment to match our different attributes. Personally, I was never particularly good at fine detail work nor am I still, so we would either delegate this type of work to someone else, or if I had to do it, we would ensure that someone would check over my work, which allowed us to produce better content and also enabled me to develop my skills as I was explained where I had made errors or missed something. 

This same group I studied with for over 5 years was also fortunate enough to work with each other for the last 3 years of our degrees. Because this company had only recently started hiring engineers, with me being the first and although still an undergrad, I found myself having to hire and train new undergrads, so why not bring in the people I had studied with and became friends with at Uni? As I had started with the company first, although I had a lot of support initially, I also had to teach a lot of things myself, was constantly thrown into the deep end and ultimately made a tonne of mistakes. However, as each new employee started with the company, I improved at training and helping each one as I quickly learned which aspects of the job were easy to pick up and which elements were more difficult. As this continued and as the people I was studying with soon became my peers at work, we quickly became better at both our jobs and as students and quickly developed at a faster rate than I think any of us expected. People who originally weren’t as good at communicating with clients soon became excellent, I developed my skills to become more detail-oriented when required and we all just seemed to bounce off each other in a seamless yet efficient way.  

By adopting a similar framework and mentality at our workplace that we had utilised at Uni and allowing it to continuously develop, we had created an environment that encouraged both accountability and growth within our workplace. We openly and honestly shared mistakes that we made in various aspects of our role. By doing this, we were exposing each other to learn and develop from each other in a healthy and non-judgemental way. In the words of Ray Dalio;

“Do not feel bad about your mistakes or those of others. Love them! Remember that one: they are to be expected; two: they’re the first and most essential part of the learning process; and three: feeling bad about them will prevent you from getting better.”

Not only is it vital to share your mistakes, but it is also just as important to share your successes, experience and knowledge with your team. I believe that our natural reaction can be to try and protect our knowledge/expertise as we can feel threatened if others around us are excelling in all of the areas we wish to excel in. However, if we can create an environment where we are constantly sharing and teaching amongst our peers, everyone who is participating will be far better off than the individual who is attempting to learn and grow on their own. 

Therefore, I encourage everyone to openly and aggressively surround themselves with people who consistently challenge them, hold them accountable and invigorate growth. Go out of your way to make sure you are surrounding yourself with people that are more talented, driven, educated and open-minded than you. Ask questions, share ideas, share mistakes and don’t be afraid to fail.

Above all, focus on making other people better, as opposed to yourself, and you will find you will create an environment that fosters growth and development for all members.

Please leave your comments and thoughts below! Thanks for your time, much love.