Golden rule for your career

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I'm sure everyone has heard of the Golden Rule.  It teaches us how to happily coexist with people around us.  Treat others with respect, and it comes right back at you from them.

It is the basis for building trust with anyone.  Offering generosity and good will are the best ways to build trust, and based on that trust other wonderful things happen.  Communication, collaboration and execution all become easier once you have the trusting relationship with the person.

In a professional relationship, treating each other respectfully is a good start, but the focus is little different from non-professional relationship.  From a professional standpoint, everyone has one goal in mind.  We all want to be successful at what we do.  We want to get better at what we are doing.


No one gets a job and think that they would be happy with doing a mediocre job.  Everyone starts a new position hoping that they do a good job at their new role.  No one is unhappier than the person himself when he realizes that he is not performing at his peak capacity.  No one likes to be constantly reminded from his team members that he's falling behind.

If you truly believe that we all want to be successful at what we do, and we all truly yearn to get better at what we do, then the Golden Rule can be written as following:

Make others successful as you would want others make you successful.

If you think about this for a moment, it is especially true for any manager.  As a manager, you are there to make others successful.  In turn, you become successful because you have a successful team working with you.

From individual contributor's perspective, it is also true.  Your true success is measured by your manager.  Unless your manager shines, you are not going to get the recognition that you deserve.  By increasing your manager's influence in the organization, you are multiplying the value of the high marks from him.

So the question is this.

Who are you helping be successful in your organization?  Who are you helping get better?