We Love You but Can I trust you?

This is what employers are asking when they get you on probation.

After many tedious, boring, sometimes fun interviews, the employer has settled on you and it is time to get you on board. You have got your salary request and the employer loves you. It’s time to test this new relationship.

SME owners and senior managers are looking to hire people who can go an extra mile without being asked to do so, people who are not afraid or reluctant to walk in new paths, employees who they can leave in charge of the activities Click To Tweet

Unlike a marriage where everyone’s contribution is 100% and both parties are equally obligated to each other, employment is not an equal-obligation relationship.

The employer will sometimes demand for more than he suggested your role entails and as long it is legal, humane and reasonable, you will be staining your reputation by saying no. For example, if you have been hired as a marketer, your role has nothing to do with hosting a delegation of venture capitalists in a cocktail party. Then you are asked to be at the registration desk to assist the PR agency that is working to make sure the event is successful.

Abandoning your employer at this point because this was not in your job description will be accepted but it will stick out like a sore thumb in your records as, “does not willingly go the extra mile on other areas of the business”, or something like that.

With such high competitiveness in the employment circles, SME owners and senior managers are looking to hire people who can go an extra mile without being asked to do so, people who are not afraid or reluctant to walk in new paths, employees who they can leave in charge of the activities.

Business owners and managers network through golf sessions and extensive travel. They have breakfast and lunch sessions with all manner of people to get the business ahead and afloat. So they are looking to hire people who own the business with their actions. People who will not wait for the ‘boss’ to walk out and they also walk out to run errands for their own hustles. People who will not wait for the boss to be away so that they can do side projects for their private clients using the employer’s resources (time, technology,office space etc).

Your employer loves you when they can see that you own their business like it is yours. The loudly untold secret is that this is how the many who go up the ladder do it. Haters call it kissing up but it is actually serving up.

It means that you respect the other human being’s (the owner of the business) efforts in making the world a better place, in making life more bearable for those employed by the business and by extension, their dependents.

It is indeed a fact that the company will never be yours on paper. You can however, make it yours by making sure that you do your part to keep the bank account healthy and processes working to your benefit, financially and professionally.

Professionally managed businesses are not kept so by the owners, it is by the trusted employees; and in the tough times, it is the trusted employees who survive the storm. They can be trusted to build the ship again, if need be.

In business, love will cause them to say, “We can work with you.” You, on the other hand, need to work to get them to say, “We can TRUST you.”

Haters call it kissing up but it is actually serving up Click To Tweet

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