President Truman once said that ‘it is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit’, and it captures one of the main challenges within any industry – we hesitate to take ownership and go the extra mile, if we feel that others are not stepping up to the plate as well and that we do not get the proper credit for our efforts.

We want to do great and go beyond, but it’s important for us that everyone else does the exactly same thing too. How often do we complain about having too much on our plate, if the person next to us works as dedicated as we do? We usually don’t! We mostly complain that others are doing less than we do, and that this is not fair. Why should we do more than others?

While there must accountability executed by our leaders to make sure that everyone performs as expected within their areas of responsibility, we will not achieve true greatness if we are only concerned how much the person next to us is doing. It’s important that the workload is balanced amongst departments and employees to ensure that your business model is sustainable, but how can you ensure that you and your employees are not focused on not doing more than others and who gets the credit? I am amazed how much we are willing to do, if we see that everyone else is pulling in the same direction with the same effort.

As much as we want to hold our leaders responsible for ensuring a ‘fair’ distribution of work, we need to make a choice for ourselves to do what’s right, and putting in the extra efforts, because it’s who we are and want to be as a person. During your career you’ll work in settings where everyone is doing their best to succeed as a team, and you’ll work in settings where everything seems to end up on your plate. Either way you need to make a decision if you want to be thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow, or if you want to be focused on the workload of others and get frustrated by comparing your efforts to others. You need to ask yourself what really matters?

I believe you can only achieve this by building a culture of WE. A culture that clearly communicates that we either raise or fall together. That we need to support each other to be successful, and that we cannot be concerned about who’s getting the credit.

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