Q&A – Am I Toxic For Caring? – Short #216

Bryan answers a listener-submitted question: “Am I toxic for caring?” He gives advice on how to maintain professional relationships while still maintaining very high standards of quality for your own work.

Having high standards is great, but it can be frustrating when you perceive coworkers as having lower standards than you. A poor-quality end product is fairly objective, but other ways of judging coworkers' standards are a lot more subjective and may vary by culture, and we end up judging the person rather than the work. While we should care about the objective outcomes of a job, we want to challenge ourselves when we start comparing others' work to our own unfavorably.

Judging others' work isn't inherently bad or “toxic,” but it has to be controlled and done in service of something greater. When we confront others or judge their work, we need to make sure it comes from a place of professional pride (rather than personal pride) and personal humility.

As tradespeople, we don't always do the best work, either. In some mission-critical applications, we need to rely on workarounds to get a quick outcome. In those situations, it's a lot more important to be honest about what we're doing and the value we promise. When we find opportunities for our colleagues to do things better, we can offer advice in service of the job and allow the other person to take it or leave it; we don't get to decide that for others. We also have to acknowledge that people have different natural inclinations, and we'd be wise to respect those differences.

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