What I learnt at my first job

I think we can somewhat agree that there is no better teacher than the workplace itself. Toss a handful of graduates out into the marketplace and in no time they may be able to share a lesson or two about working life that they could have never received in school.

Fresh out of Singapore Management University, I too was a graduate who joined IBM Singapore as a consultant back in January 2018. And over the last two years I had the opportunity to learn so much about both consulting and technology.

But among the things I have learnt, this is one that I feel strongly about. With competence comes confidence. Confidence is an essential trait for any professional, and in consulting it is even more so.

Why confidence is demanded

Clients bring in consultants because they are unsure on how to reach a specific outcome on their own. So it is extremely important that your client has confidence in your ability to have the best idea of both her problem and the solution to said problem. Leading a team demands confidence as well. Your team depends on you for direction. It would be really hard to follow a leader who is himself unsure about what to do next.

So what does it means to be confident?

When I thought about what it means to be confident, the first things that come to mind are being able to speak confidently, or exuding confidence through your dressing and the like. But no amount of oratory excellence or fashion sense could guarantee your client or your team that you will be able to deliver. My point is that competence is the difference between knowing in lay terms that something could be done and knowing that something can be done because you actually know how to do it and have done it many times before. Most of the clients I have met are senior staff who have been in their roles for a long time. Some of them had worked with other consultants before. It is quite likely that they would be able to tell within minutes of a meeting if you are the real deal or are just trying to sell them another bottle of snake oil. So what does it means to be competent? One of the reasons why IBM is a great place to work at is the sheer amount of talented individuals that the company attracts. And it is through interactions with these individuals that I have managed to get a glimpse of what it means to be competent. There are three common traits I have identified.

#1 They know enough

They know both the theory and the practical aspects of their subject. They are several steps ahead of you (see “thought leadership”).

#2 They have seen enough

They can tell you when something is a bad or good idea because they have seen it gone wrong or right many times before.

#3 They have done enough

They can literally do it with their eyes closed. In one case a senior developer told us that she understood what needs to be done, goes ahead and demonstrates a near complete product with user interface and more within the same week. In another case a DevOps engineer troubleshoots a problem that has plagued us for weeks the moment he came back from his vacation.

So what does this mean for me? Naturally, the conclusion here would be to start working on various consulting/technical competencies expected of my level. But I guess what is really encouraging here is that if I spend time today working on it, then tomorrow I ought to be more competent (and hence more confident) then I was yesterday.