Perspective - and why the 'obvious' often isn't.

What does a hotel buffet have to do with career progression? Read on and I shall tell you.

I've just come back from a LOVELY holiday with another family to Lanzarote. Every night we dined in the resort buffet restaurant and it illustrated a very important lesson about perspective.

Our group was 4 adults and 3 children (age 8-11). We've been going to the same resort together since 2018. The kids know it very well. They love the restaurant and the food and love being able to choose their own meals, go for seconds etc.

This year the girls had a revelation.

It came to light as I was visiting the dessert area (one of many visits!) with 2 of the girls. One of them wondered out loud what a particular dessert was and I commented that the label said it had pineapple in it.

"The label? What label?"

Both girls were so surprised.

The food has labels on it telling you what it is? So you can choose based on knowing what it is, not just guessing and hoping?

I showed it to them.... about shoulder or chin height to me... so above eye height for them. And MUCH higher than eye height for most of the years we have been going there.

Oops.

Now I see why they never noticed it before... and felt very bad for not realising before. But none of the other 3 adults did either, so it's not all my fault!

'The Obvious' is very often far from obvious

What was obvious to us was not to them. From their perspective, of course it wasn't. And from ours... well, of course it was.

But we adults not only had the height to be able to see the labels more easily, but we also have the context and learned experience that 'buffets are labelled so you know what you are eating'.

They don't have that context, so why would they actively look for labels?

It's the same in the workplace.

What is obvious to you may very well not be to other people.

When that senior leader says in yet another panel event 'I was tapped on the shoulder for XYZ role', you may realise that means they worked their butt off, networked madly and made it very clear through their sponsor what roles they were interested in so they would be on the list.

But someone in your team probably doesn't know that.

And why would they? When leaders just make out it was all so easy in the way they describe their career progression.

And how that person reacts to hearing someone say progression is about a tap on the shoulder is either to think 'well if I'm not approached, I'm not good enough' or 'how do you make that happen? Why doesn't that happen to me?'.

Or maybe you are the person who doesn't know that 'tapped on the shoulder' is a code for 'worked very hard for this, networked like crazy, called in favours, had people dropping my name and achievements in front of the people who make the decisions about roles I would like'.

It's all about perspective.

So, if you are someone who didn't know that code, what will you do now to be active in being noticed so you get the tap on the shoulder? How will you ask for what you deserve?

If you are the person managing someone, how will you help them learn? Modelling it to them? Inviting the whole team to share achievements every week?

And if you are a senior leader, invited to speak on panels, please stop making your career sound easy! That helps no one! Break it down into steps and show people how they too can progress.