9 Cheat Codes That Give You An Unfair Advantage At Work, According To Psychology
How I made my average-ness into my career edge.
Peopleimages.com - YuriArcurs | Canva I’ve been working full-time hours since I was 15. Which was, technically, illegal in the UK — I got around it by working four part-time jobs, two of which were ‘cash in hand’ or ‘off the books.’ And in over two decades in the workforce, I’ve done all kinds of jobs.
I’ve worked as a freelance filmmaker for a radical group making documentaries. I’ve dressed up as the bear mascot for a chain of family restaurants in their kids’ playground. I’ve peeled potatoes for a fish and chip shop, taught English in orphanages on disputed borderlands, coached executive business leaders (after being a successful corporate executive myself), and run a high-class vegetarian restaurant to within a whisker of a Michelin star.
Now I’m in my mid-30s, and I’ve got a successful career (I’m a corporate executive for a major education company in Asia), a successful freelance writing business that brings in a similar income to my day job, and all with a life outside work that I love. It all started with mastering some simple concepts to give me an edge.
Here are 10 cheat codes that will give you an unfair advantage at work, according to psychology:
1. Be a pleasure to work with
Years ago, I got my first writing gig. My editor — a burned-out alcoholic with a taste for plaid — sat me down on my first day to set his expectations. “You probably think you’re hot sh*t. You’re not. You probably think I care about deadlines. I do. But I care about quality over speed. Just don’t be late. Ever.”
I put my hand up to ask for clarification, but he shut me down and said there’d be time for questions at the end.
“Right now, you’re slow," he continued. "And not very good. But you’ll get better. And as you get better, you’ll get quicker. So right now, don’t try to impress me. Don’t try to dazzle me. Just be friendly. Be understanding. Be humble. Listen to my advice, and don’t argue with me. Any questions? No? Good.”
Then he left. While clearly disenfranchised and tired of years of working with people who had dreams of being Hemmingway but the talent of GPT1 writing literature from the prompt ‘write me a gd novel’, his advice changed my life.
Be a pleasure to coach, and more people coach you. Be a pleasure to talk to, and more people talk to you. Be a pleasure to work with, and you’ll get more work. More opportunities. More skills.
So many of us work jobs we don’t love with people we’d never normally hang out with. Be a ray of sunshine in the coal mine and watch as you start to find diamond moments that change your life.
2. Chase little wins
Get some points on the scoreboard as quickly as possible, then stack them throughout the day. This doesn’t mean chasing busy work to feel productive. It’s about identifying the smallest possible chunks of output that move the needle on projects and processes or improve you, the people around you, or the company.
Is there a bottleneck you can fix? A report you can write? A loop you can open (ready to come back to later)? A person you can help? Keep it simple. Not everything that makes a difference will be mighty.
So when you get to the office, classroom, animal park, beach-side cafe (you solopreneur you) — or wherever it is you work — ask yourself this simple question before you do anything else: What are the quickest, lowest-leverage things I can do this morning to have an impact today? Then, do the hell out of them.
3. Stack simple but complementary skills
You don’t need to be in the top 10% of anything. Aim instead to thread together a complementary stack of easily achievable skills in a unique way, then become in the top % of that particular concoction in your orbit.
I used to coach a lady called Babs, who had a great job in a marketing firm despite her lack of experience. Rather than spend each day stressing from impostor syndrome, she made sure to utilize the basic skills she did have to be as useful as possible.
She’d take excellent, well-researched meeting minutes. She’d craft an effective email template. She’d take notes from every meeting she had with colleagues to pick their brains. She’d ask the ‘dumb’ questions everyone else was scared to ask so she could understand better. Anything she was asked to do, she’d get done quickly. And she’d make sure to recognize and compliment other people’s work to help them feel motivated.
On the surface, these seem like pretty basic things. Because, spoiler alert, they are. But they’re also the roots of critical leadership and high-performance skills. In there, you’ve got accuracy, organization, excellence, curiosity, teamwork, initiative, diligence, motivation, and on and on.
Now ask yourself, how many times a day do you see the same person repeatedly doing all of these? I’m going to bet the house (figuratively, of course, as I don’t have a house) that it’s rare. If at all. Take a leaf out of Babs’ book and leverage low-hanging fruit to climb to the top of the tree.
4. Find a mentor (even a poor one)
Sometimes, the best example is a bad one. When I started as a new manager, I didn’t have any available mentors. Everyone around me was either burned out, bored, or barely capable of doing their job.
As a result of being new, I made the usual swathe of errors common in newbies: I micromanaged, I leaned on my title rather than developing my influence, and I tried to shake things up before understanding why we did things a certain way. I probably would have carried this on forever, were it not for my boss at the time.
He’d had a big influence on me as I stepped up from line worker to manager. So it was normal I was emulating his style. Quickly I saw how annoying those parts of him were. And out of curiosity, I started to wonder if I was making the same mistakes. Turns out I was.
Without a clear idea of what to do, I tried an inversion approach: doing the opposite of what I know isn’t effective. Far from a perfect system, this became its version of training. Even though the opposite wasn’t always the optimal solution, it helped me calibrate what was.
The trick was to engage with ideas critically and put your approach up for review. You can still learn a lot from seeing how not to do something. As long as you keep your mind open to the lessons and aware of your development.
Across areas of research, scholars agree that mentoring can be associated with a wide range of positive outcomes. Mentoring has been discussed as a strategy for positive youth development as a deterrent of risky youth behavior, as a way to improve the academic adjustment, retention, and success of college students, and as a means to facilitate career development among employees.
5. Be available
We’re always looking for an extra pair of hands to help out. Someone to share the burden and lighten the load. But too often, we’re restricted either by our guilt (not wanting to make life busier for someone else) or by a lack of available volunteers.
So, the relief you can provide to someone in need of support by simply being a willing helper is huge. Not only will they be eternally grateful, but you stand to learn, too.
6. Be enthusiastic
Enthusiasm is an amplifier. It elevates whatever you’re doing to greater heights by injecting your actions with energy and oomph. And the best part? It’s contagious.
The minimum we can offer others is our energy. And we can inject more energy into that which we’re enthusiastic about. It can bring vitality. It can rekindle the feeling of play and passion in others. And it can offer an alternative to many people’s mundane approach to work.
We are the product of our environment. So try to project a positive one. But a word to the wise: it can also make you come across as a little fake and naive in the wrong quantity. So make sure, if you feel it, that it’s genuine and not out of proportion.
7. Master the mundane
In one of my first jobs, I was the ‘third’ manager. You had the GM, who called all the shots on all the standard stuff like salary, hours, and strategy. Then there was the Deputy GM, who got to do all the creative stuff, as well as the people management. This left me, the assistant manager, with site management and stock.
But stifle your yawns. I gamified this and turned it into a challenge to be enjoyed. As I worked, I put systems in place that would not only make me better at this job but could also be transposed into other areas of the company (and potentially into other roles). The immediate results were an upgraded site, with these upgrades paid for through savings I made from renegotiating our maintenance and stock contracts, as well as finding new cleaners and cheaper solutions for problems like how to polish the stone floor.
I was promoted to Deputy GM within six months. Then, all my little frameworks came in super handy for me to make a running start in the new role. Start with this question: What boring stuff does everyone else put off that you can turn into your superpower?
8. Aim for consistently good over moments of perfection
You can’t guarantee that you’re going to always be at your best. Some days will be a slog. But if you develop a habit of turning up and trying your best, you’re going to increase the surface area of moments that will inspire and bring the best out of you.
A healthy desire to perform above average is excellent. But if you’re trying to be perfect, you’re setting an often unachievable or unrealistic standard. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment, demotivation, and slow progress.
Get work good enough and move on. You’ll do more, learn more, and move more things forward. Flashes of brilliance might seem impressive. But most of the people who make a difference are those who show up whatever the weather and consistently try their best.
9. Leverage your failures
Some people learn the wrong lessons from failure. They make a bad start as a manager and quit forever. Or they struggle with a difficult conversation and avoid ever having them again.
But if you can treat them as the potential-awakening, talent-enhancing lily pads to success that they are, you’re going to have an edge over everyone who doesn’t. Sure, it takes a bit of grit, resilience, and determination. But think what you get in return: more knowledge, active experience, and tested theories. And most importantly, a working understanding of the problems you’re going to face and what does and doesn’t work to overcome them.
To someone who doesn’t have that, it’s priceless. Use it to your advantage. And psst, do you want the real inside scoop? Managers don’t care about your mistakes. It’s your reaction to the mistakes that define you. Own them, learn from them, and get better as a result.
Existing studies on the outcomes of learning from failures are generally limited to its influence on performance, creativity, and decreased errors. Recent studies found that learning from failures encourages employees to self-develop, which not only has practical meanings but also enhances understanding of the antecedent of self-development and its underlying rationale.
Welcome to your future as your boss’s favorite person. Start folding down corners in the Macy’s catalog because you’re going to be making huge money soon. Probably. I guess. I hope!
Tobias C. Shaw is a writer, leadership coach, and corporate executive. He's had articles featured in Medium and Business Insider, as well as many other sites, and has been working in and around leadership for the best part of two decades.