
When Judging Coworkers: People Are a Package Deal - gerbilly
I&#x27;ve seen this pattern come up so often in the work world that I thought I&#x27;d mention it here.<p>Co-workers[1] will say they love one thing about you, X,  but then ask whether you could also be better at another thing, Y; and often this happens when being good at X implies being bad at Y.<p>Take an introverted programmer.  Many introverts self select for careers like programming.  Some could argue that introversion makes you better at programming, that&#x27;s your X.<p>But the first thing a company will want from such a programmer is to be more social, to do more presentations, to work all day in an open plan office, in other words to be an extravert[2], the Y, which is incompatible with being an introvert.<p>I&#x27;ve noticed that many qualities in a person come in clusters.  It&#x27;s rare to find a person that has a random combination of qualities from all over the spectrum.  People are a package deal, and their qualities cluster.<p>Especially when you are really really good at something, in other words when you have an outlier quality, that outlier  often pushes aside many other incompatible &#x27;normal&#x27; qualities.[3]<p>If you like one skill in an employee or co-worker, but wonder why they can&#x27;t just be better at another skill, consider that it might just not be in their nature.<p>[1] Managers mostly.<p>[2] Or at least to act like an extravert.<p>[3] This is my theory for why really smart people are often &#x27;eccentric.&#x27;
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kognate
I would encourage you to consider that we are the makers of ourselves. I hope
very much that we are not simply what our nature provides.

Feedback and coaching are not simply stating opinions about people. Good
managers will not simply say 'Hey, I wish you could be something you are not'.
Good managers help you become a better version of you within the organization.
Sometimes that better version of you has a different mix of skills. No
qualities of people are incompatible (for better or worse). We are all large,
and contain multitudes.

