Actions Speak Louder than Words

There are a lot of sayings out there. A lot of them bullshit, but:

“Actions Speak Louder than Words”

Is the real deal.

I worry sometime that I spend far too much time writing about my goals, than actually doing them.

But honestly, I love writing plans – I am an advocate for SMART objectives, strategic planning, GANTT charts, Visio diagrams, financial spreadsheets.

Some have their use, others are just delaying the task at hand.

New Job

When I started my new job – I wanted a fresh start, no more telling people what I could do, I was going to show them.

From experience, talking about what you can do seems to annoy people – it can come off as bragging and the trouble with talking yourself up, is that people just wait for something to go wrong.

I started my job the same day as someone else. She had done a degree, and took great pleasure in telling me “I won’t be here too long”

I knew I had learnt from my errors, because I saw her making the same mistakes.

On the first day I met her, she undermined the job that I had just started and said that I surely wanted to do more “than that”.

That bothered me, because if she had not spent all the time talking about how great she was and had taken time to ask about myself, she would know that I am seriously ambitious – inside and outside of work!

That made me realise how important it is to ask questions and listen to what others say, rather than dominating a conversation.

I put my head down and got on with my work. This affirmed my decision that I was going to show what I could do.

The Result?

The braggart could not live up to her hype, annoying people with incessant self-promotion and making a number of mistakes.

Because I was quiet – no one knew what to expect. I was lucky my predecessor was terrible, as this lowered all expectations for my role. My opportunity to tell people how good I was, was when I produced good work and delivered on projects.

One can’t help but be slightly big headed and excuse me if it sounds like I am bragging now, but the lesson is:

Actions Speak Louder than Words….