Balance Your Portfolio: A Case Against Softening Your Rough Edges

One of the most common challenges I hear about navigating a corporate career is the “not too much” challenge. You’ve probably heard it too, and I’ll bet have definitely felt it yourself:

• “I want to push back when I’m not sure of the team’s direction, but not too much - I don’t want to be considered the difficult one”
• “I want to be helpful to my teammates as they struggle with a task; but not too much - I don’t want them to think I’m a pushover”
• And this one I hear even more so from the women on my team - navigating the very real unique challenges of being a female business leader: “I want to be ambitious; but not too much - I don’t want to be considered the b*tch around the office”

Sometimes navigating a corporate career can feel like trying to please Goldilocks, you have too little until you have too much of the infinite characteristics that are meant to define an effective business leader. 

And even for the few who feel they are able to decipher exactly what someone else considers “just right”, there’s the incessant whiplash as you realize no one else agrees with them. As soon as you get it right for one boss - the next one has a different calibration and you’re right back to square one. The race only gets more byzantine the more senior you get; stakeholders multiply and with them, the number of people whose opinion of you will have an impact on your career progression.

So what’s one to do?

I’ll give the advice I give my team: just be too much; share too much, help too much, be way too ambitious. Be too much.

Hold on. Before you roll your eyes and move on, I’m not advocating the “screw them and charge forward” approach. After all, I know that the people who find you “too much” will have deciding votes in your career. Ignoring their opinions is a pretty foolhardy strategy. So how on earth does being too much address anything?

I’ll adjust. Be too much - but don’t stop there.

Figure out what else you can be “too much” of, to balance your portfolio.

Are you known as the push-back who has opposing ideas about everything? Make sure you’re also known as the listens-to-it-all who goes above and beyond to truly understand what others’ opinions are and incorporates them into her recommendations. Are you known as the person always willing to offer a helping hand when peers are stuck? Also be known as the person who explicitly calls out potential development areas to help his peers close their gaps. Are you known as the ambitious up-and-commer with her sights on the C-suite? Also be known as the valiant Sponsor always willing to offer advice and bring others along on her rocketship!

This has been a very real challenge for me this year. I tend to be the continuous improvement guy - to the extreme; my first orientation is to see what changes can be made to make things better versus how amazing something happens to be today. You can imagine that this doesn't always leave the best feeling among peers when after a review work that is 1) by any stretch of the imagination amazing and 2) the product of deep investment, my response is "This is awesome! But I wonder whether..." I could try to not be the continuous improvement guy and just shut up after the exclamation point (I have, to limited success!), but instead this year I've tried to be too much of something else - a strong advocate for the awesome work my peers are doing across the organization. I hope people get sick (and I believe a few have), of how often I praise the work of others publicly. My hope is that this balances my "pokey" ideas for improvement because others know deep down, I'm just committed to making sure they and their work shine as much as possible. I don't always get it right; but I've relished the freedom to race my strength (I make things better!) as well as build a new one (I am a Champion for my peers!) instead of trying to navigate the "just right" amount of constructive criticism.

Simply put, it’s much easier to balance your portfolio, than soften any one characteristic. And here’s the kicker - you don’t really want to “soften” your differentiators - not in the long term. What start off as sharp edges early in your career, often turn into the differentiating points of mastery, that will come to define your unique value add: While the contradictory idea-guy can get tiring to listen to, when we need to refine our product strategy to anticipate competitive threat, I want him in the driver’s seat. While the helpful guy might carry more than his weight on the team, the person who can identify what gaps need to be filled when is the man I eventually want running that team. While the too ambitious person can be painfully intimidating to sit through meetings with, I want her at the head of the bargaining table when negotiating a new M&A.

The same skills you will spend years trying to soften could very well be the differentiators to come to represent your unique value add to any organization.

So don’t soften them. Balance.

What characteristics do you worry you have too much of? What else could you aim to be stellar at, to balance that "rough edge"?