Building Corporate Currency
Whether you know it or not each day you’re making deposits and withdrawals form a bank account that trades completely on invisible currency. The currency is built up (or drawn against) each day by your performance, mood, the time you show up, the time you leave, the things you say, and about everything in between. This currency is Corporate Currency and it’s the commodity of choice among your co-workers and supervisors in a professional setting.
When you start a job you start essentially at zero. Perhaps you'll start with something small from networking with staff members or having a great interview. To build the account after time-of-hire it's essential to have positive interactions with your teammates; proving that you’re truly the right fit for the job; performing at and above what is expected; coming early; staying late. These daily deposits help build a cushion for a number of things, but the most important is when you need to make a withdrawal from your Corporate Currency Account.
Withdrawals happen as a result of coming in late one day to work; having a disagreement with a coworker; messing up a task that has been assigned to you; or other actions that are frowned upon in the workplace.
The CCA is a voucher for who you are as a person in a work setting and who you are as an employee. Clearly, the goal is to keep the CCA balance above zero. Misstepping once, with a high enough balance, will still leave you in the black, people chalk it up to a bad day, and people move on. Continue to make mistakes and act unprofessionally, and the balance will drop significantly. People will begin to stop chalking it up to a bad day, and instead chalk it up to a bad employee--you. The balance is your credibility, your word, and your values and it's important to have positives in all of these areas. Get too low, and like a bank account, you'll have to move and open a new one somewhere else.
Each day you show up to work, make a decision to deposit some currency and work to keep withdrawals to a minimum. This will serve you well when applying for a promotion, a raise, or perhaps most beneficial of all:
asking forgiveness.
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