Becoming Someone People Want to Work With

Some of the hardest days I have had at work were hard because of the people involved. The job itself might have been something we all knew how to do.

People in South Korea sometimes talk about ties of school, hometown and family. Those connections can open a conversation. I have also found that the trust people build while working together has a value of its own.

The people who have to work beside you

Wanting to spend time with someone matters outside work as well. At work, the people who rely on you may have had little choice about being in the same room.

Kim Hyeong-jun’s book asks what makes them want to ask you back the next time. I read it as a question about what other people experience while you are doing your job.

Four things to work on

Kim argues that being good to work with makes it easier for a colleague to trust you and for a manager to give you more responsibility.

He organizes the advice around four short instructions.

1. Stay in the game.
2. Keep developing.
3. Make the work succeed.
4. Learn how your manager works.

I thought of football. A tournament keeps asking a team to play another match before anyone knows how far it will go. Staying in it can be the condition that lets the team improve.

Kim names enthusiasm, optimism, humor, awareness of what can go wrong, a willingness to help and an ability to learn.

The interest that keeps you at the work

In books about people who have built something, I often find an account of what kept them interested after the easy part was over. Kim puts particular weight on that kind of persistence.

Creativity after the first attempt

He describes creativity as the willingness to keep trying after an idea has failed. The definition stayed with me because it makes room for the unglamorous part of coming up with something.

Kim points to the numbers in names such as Salvarsan 606 and Yeomyeong 808. His interest is in what a number like that can suggest about the attempts that preceded a result.

Jang Young-hee’s bag of stones

The essayist and English literature scholar Jang Young-hee had an image for the experience of a run of bad luck.

• Imagine a bag with equal numbers of black and white stones. If you keep drawing the black ones out, there will be fewer of them left for the next draw.

I took the bag as a way to imagine getting through a discouraging spell. It gave me a picture of why I might reach in again.

Three habits for an uncertain time

Kim also invokes the I Ching in a discussion of what a person can do in the face of fortune. I took three habits from that section.

1. Be kind.
2. Read.
3. Reflect on what you have done.

I started reading more after the book. The simplest change was to pick up a book at some of the times I would usually have watched a video or reached for my phone.

That did not settle what would happen next. It gave me a small way to use an unsettled time.

A school motto about service

Paichai High School’s motto, 欲爲大子 當爲人役, asks a person who wants to be great to begin by serving others.

I found myself thinking about what that looks like during an ordinary shift. There is usually some work you can do that makes the next person’s job easier.

A setback can make me feel I should stop or show me something I need to practice. The way I read it changes what I do the next time someone has to work with me.

Book details

Become Someone People Want to Work With

Author

Kim Hyeong-jun

Published

August 17, 2012

ISBN-13

9788965180661

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