CANDID
Every month, Grant Greeff shares his professional learnings, experiences, and ideas about business, leadership & culture through a South African lens.
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CANDID
8. The three outcomes we can achieve in any professional situation
In our professional lives, there are three expected outcomes we should be conscious of fulfilling in any professional situation we're involved in. In episode 8 of CANDID, we explore the three outcomes, which are:
- Learning,
- Earning, and
- Returning
In any professional situation that we find ourselves in, there are one of three outcomes that we can look to achieve, no matter what. And in this episode eight of Candid, we're going to work through these three outcomes. So the three outcomes we can look to achieve in any situation professionally, is learning, earning, or returning. And just before we go into exploring each of these outcomes, I think I just want to share that a lot of literature out there speaks of these three elements as being stages or phases of our lives, even privately in terms of our private lives. But for me, that makes it as if it's a linear progression, i. e. I saw one article around an entrepreneur and, yeah. Uh, going through each of these stages as they are going through their business, which doesn't make sense because you don't learn, then earn and then return. You actually can do many of these outcomes together within any situation. So I just wanted to note that before we carry on. Jumping to the first outcome that is around learning and how I like to split learning is into two categories, the one being skills and the other being experience. Within the skills side of things, we can look to either learn new skills or refine existing skills. And so for example, learning a new skill is the likes of chat GPT and understanding exactly how to create prompts for that. Or it can be in terms of learning a new CRM or customer relationship management software around really making sure that you know how to add deals and move the deals through sales pipelines. That would be a new skill, but refining an existing skill could be again carrying on from the same two examples. Uh, for chat GPT, you can look at integrations now and you can look at creating automations that, you know, deliver specific outputs in a very repetitive way. Uh, in the CRM side, you can look at also integrating that CRM to a calling solution so that calls are now tracked and recorded. Um, and so that would really make your workflow far more efficient and thus you would now refine that skill and it would develop further. On the experience side, for me, experience has two factors to it, or components. The one being time, and the other being repetition. So, ultimately for us to solidify our learning through experience, we need to make sure that those combinations of time and repetition take place. Again, using the example here, it's just about us over a period of time, repeating tasks or specific transactions in order to gain a far better understanding and ultimately a far more refined learning from that specific, uh, skill set. Now moving into the second outcome, which is earning. So self explanatory here in terms of earning, there is the quantitative or financial side of this. And that is, of course, us earning a salary or earning a bonus or commission from a particular sale. So in the earning side of things, ultimately in any situation, um, and the situation, like I say, is not necessarily a moment in time. But it can also be a, a, over a period of time. Using an example whereby if I am a young professional and I would like to move up into say a senior role, there's a specific chapter that I may be in that I really want to focus overall within that chapter on, um, the aspect of learning. Um, and then when I'm moving to that senior position, I really want to then, um, look at captivating the opportunity of, earning from having far more responsibility within a specific sphere in that organization. So it's not necessarily an outcome at a specific moment in time, but overall it can be a chapter in your life. It can be a period of time within that as well. So going back now to the earning side. The quantitative is self explanatory being financial in nature, but there's also a qualitative aspect as well to earning and that is your reputation. And I think as you grow within any professional environment, you start to realize how impactful and how compounding, a positive influence on your reputation can be, to the progress of your career. I found this to be, um, the case for mine. So I think not only can we earn from, you know, any situation, through a financial means, but we can also do it through the reputational and more, um, say, intangible aspects of the benefits from that situation. And now on to the final outcome that we'd like to achieve in any situation, which is returning. Some people also call this. I don't think it's contributing, but for me, I think it's inherent in understanding returning and what it ultimately means. So, practically speaking, The one way that we can return is through again, the quantitative side of things, we can invest in an initiative that helps younger professionals or a specific segment of professionals like previously disadvantaged professionals so that they can gain access to specific opportunities to grow within their career. So that's one way that we can return another way that we can also return from this experience that we've gained in whatever matter or topic is we can look to mentor. And this is for me the most energizing experience ever is being able to, uh, gift your time to others, not in a way where you are, you know, higher than them or because you've, you know, had more experience, therefore they should expect a one way type of relationship. It's more so that you can give up the opportunity to share your perspective, even give advice and for them to then just refine their perspective of a specific decision that they're looking to make or a specific career path that they're wanting to move toward. And I think the more people that That, that embrace this outcome of, of returning, I think the better overall for any profession in that nature. And even if we look at the returning aspect when it comes to mentorship, a lot of the times people wait until they're at the end of their career because then they've, you know, been able to demonstrate that they have something to say. But no matter what stage you're in right now, I'd highly recommend that you, um, look to mentor others, even in an informal manner, which is actually, I would say, the most organic and the most impactful. So even if you're 20 years old or 35 years old, you've, you've got something to share and more likely than not to mentor another person, even if it's for, say, you know, one, one meeting or a couple of meetings, doesn't matter. Ultimately. you can embrace at one outcome of returning. Don't hesitate when you have an opportunity and remember that I personally can learn a lot from someone in their 20s because they've got a completely different perspective to me, perhaps within a specific topic, uh, especially within say new technological advances. And it would be completely naive of me to try and block that. And so I think just. Take note of the fact that everyone has got something to return when it comes to, um, a situation no matter their age, um, or how much experience they have within a specific area of expertise as well. So to recap, there are three outcomes that we can achieve in any situation, that being learning, earning, and returning. But our lives are not linear in nature, therefore you don't have to do Learning first, then earning, then returning. It's, it's not that, um, simplified. You can do in any situation, you would be able then to tick off maybe learning and earning. Or, uh, earning and returning. So don't look at it in isolation. Look at it as a combination. And any experience that you have. Consider or reflect afterwards, even around what you gain from that as an outcome between these three specific outcomes. And lastly, the more aware we are of the outcomes, um, after the fact, the more focused we can be in intentional in future in planning, how we're allocating our time and how we're prioritizing the activities, uh, to ultimately move the needle. I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers. Sigh