he best work environments are the ones where you can be your best self. I’ve been at HashiCorp for four years now, twice as long as any other company in my career. I feel lucky to say that I’ve had the opportunity to be my best self here.
What does it take to be your best self at work? It may be a completely unique set for everyone, and it might change over time as you or your company evolves. For me, the most important factors that led me to being my best self at work included:
- Supportive peers
- The right manager
- Growth opportunities
- Remote work
Supportive peers
Having supportive peers starts by being one.
Some of the best career advice I ever got was: “Focus more on impressing your peers than your manager.” I took the advice immediately, but it didn’t quite hit home until years later.
If I only focussed on impressing my manager, I could easily take shortcuts, overcommit to stretch goals, or overstate my accomplishments. On the other hand, when I focus on impressing my peers, I see incentives to providing realistic timeframes, finding pragmatic solutions that might not sparkle so brightly, and reflecting on what we could’ve done better as a team.
Many folks meet with their manager only once a week, and yet they work with their peers every day all day. Working with collaborative, diligent peers also just makes work (which is a big part of daily life) a more pleasant experience. And when I’m happy, I work and collaborate better.
What’s more, I realized at some point that my promotions weren’t coming directly from my hard work and my manager taking notice. Wouldn’t that be a breeze! My promotions only came after my close peers went out of their way of their own volition to advocate hard for me to my manager. I couldn’t be more grateful for that, and try to pay it forward by reaching out to someone’s manager when I see excellent work or collaboration.
Being a supportive peer and having peers who support me, helps me be my best self at work.
The right manager
Odd choice of words. Why didn’t she say “A Good Manager”?
There are a lot of good managers out there who are not the right manager for you. Some managers are so skilled that they can change their management style for each report, so that they can be the right manager for everyone. But that’s not often the case.
For me, the right managers are the ones that provide a high level of autonomy with course correction if I need it or coaching when I request it. At my level, I admire managers that can share input on how I might have the highest impact on company objectives and who can pave a path for me to grow in my career.
Growth opportunities
To me, growth opportunity means clear expectations with a transparent career matrix, and the opportunity to achieve that growth through well balanced projects.
I’m a sucker for structure. So the lack of a robust career matrix at previous employers probably contributed to feeling lost in terms of professional development. Having a solid, transparent career matrix that covers IC and Manager development now has given me guidance on how to be my best self at work because it sets expectations. It also sets a bar for the next level if and when I’m interested in more responsibility.
But a career matrix is only a piece of the picture. It’s possible to set expectations and then provide an environment where those expectations are impossible to achieve.
Part of that environment for me has been the ability to work on the right balance of “comfort zone” projects and “stretch zone” projects. If I sat in the comfort zone all the time, there would be no challenging avenues for learning. If I was pressured into the stretch zone all the time, I’d fail often or get burnt out before I could really absorb my new development.
Remote work
I’m going to be real with you. I’m a better person remotely. Maybe that makes me an introvert!
It’s not just about the sweat pants; believe it or not, I wore jeans throughout the entire pandemic, including my pregnancy.
Remote work helps me be my best self because I can conserve energy on unimportant things, so that I have the energy to put 100% into the things that mean a lot to me.
For example, I love that I can prepare for difficult conversations in complete privacy, and enter and exit them in a compartmentalized Zoom link. I can leave video off during large team calls without worrying about my facial expressions or posture. I don’t have to rely on my brain-damaged memory (long story) because there’s always Slack, Google Docs, Zoom transcripts, etc. for most of my interactions.
Remote work helps me put my best foot forward.
I’ll also add that remote work also helps everyone annoy each other a little less, and honestly, that goes a long way. A favorite coworker from my in-person office days told me that I chew gum annoyingly (true). He was a compulsive pen clicker (ugh).
What’s not on my list
The above list isn’t super controversial, but it might be missing a few key things that other people care more about.
For example, I don’t feel it’s always necessary to work on a product that I’m passionate about in order for me to be my best self at work. It helps, sure. And I would never work on a product I don’t feel morally aligned with. But I feel that as long as these four things are in place, I could swap out the product and still be happy and thoroughly challenged. That hasn’t always been my perspective and my opinion might change in the future, but for now, this works for me.
Another example is something I hear about from time to time when I interview people for roles here. Sometimes candidates say that they want to work with people who they could “grab a beer with.”
Beer schmeer. I think this is an awkward way of saying that you want to be friends with your coworkers. I agree! But it’s not a requirement. I like working with all sorts of people, including people I don’t have a lot in common with outside of work. I think that diversity of lifestyles makes a workplace great. I’d have a beer with any of my colleagues (although I’m more of a cocktail person myself), but it’s not a deal breaker for me.
