Hi everyone and thank you for checking out this space again. let us agree not to talk about how long it’s been since I last wrote here, let’s just ignore it 😂

I have a number of half written pieces that have been inspired by my new work environment. I initially thought converting them to a podcast was a good idea because I couldn’t find the time and will to complete them but that is a different story. Anyways, the plan is to release them as a series so here’s me sharing my workplace lessons, I hope you learn a thing or two

Straight after my undergraduate studies, I did 1 year each of internship and youth service in Nigeria and almost immediately started postgraduate studies. In my line of work, you are supposed to work and learn, so you’re sort of a student who is expected to offer services and get paid at the same time. That means technically, I’ve been working since I left Uni over a decade ago but if you ask me, I only entered the real work jungle about 5 years ago and the mature jungle was just 3 years ago😂😂

Now some of the things I’m going to point out as workplace lessons may surprise you because they appear basic to be honest but I’ve come to realise that a lot of people don’t know them. One thing that has shaped the way I learn though is the ability to reflect which I seem to be perfecting as the years go by. So every negative and even positive event is an opportunity to learn something new if you just take a step back and think them through.

A little background, I grew up in a large household courtesy both my parents being firstborns and having lots of siblings. One of the memories I have is the utter terror of being labelled a lazy ass with toothpick for arms or worse still being tagged a tell tale. In those days, you earned your badge of loyalty by not complaining about errands and never telling on your aunts and uncles especially if you’ve been counted worthy to share in goodies your parents must not know of.

I think this kind of childhood shaped my work ethic, I’ve always thought that hard work and loyalty were the main and most important performance indicators. So anytime I started at a new job, after initial orientation, like most new employees I usually want to impress my employers and guess what my usual strategy is – work very hard and stay loyal.

For me, that meant at the end of each work day, every thing that was tagged ‘to do’ was done, no excuses! in the Nigerian system, that was usually enough to get you liked and kept. People love people who work hard even if they die doing that. I don’t usually pay attention to much else after this.

So I started working in the UK. The day I resumed work, I was mighty intimidated! it looked like the buildings and all the complex systems was going to swallow me alive but one thing I was very confident of was the fact that nobody will outwork me in my department. So while I was intimidated by coming face to face with things I’d only read about in books, my strategy was to make up for every real and perceived deficiency with very hard work. Jobs to be done? I will always be available. Sharing daily tasks tasks? I will take more than what’s my fair share. Staying late to complete jobs? Count me in! Taking work home to finish in my private time, double count me in!. This was my fool proof strategy and within a matter of weeks it looked like it had paid off. Some of my colleagues started to compliment my work ethic, I was like that employee that nothing else mattered to apart from the job. People would tell me how they preferred to work with me and how I was very fast and efficient!

Pheeeeew! Huge sigh of relief, mission accomplished. Or not.

I would go for performance reviews and I will get glowing feedbacks but I still kind of felt stuck. At least back home, the only thing I had to add to hardwork was passing exams but here I was getting a bit frustrated.

I was on the same level. No progress

People, who in my opinion were not working as hard as I was, were moving ahead to bigger things and I was just the hardworking girl who was probably a great asset to the department in times of fixing stuff but nothing more.

When I realised this , my initial response was to blame it on workplace hostilities- maybe some people don’t like me, somebody has been talking about me behind my back blah, blah, blah- Well nobody hated me, at least not that I’m aware of, my strategy to win and thrive was just very poor. No it was mediocre.

It may have worked in Nigeria but it’s not working 100% here. That was a big bummer

So what did I find out? Apparently hard work is not a good strategy when used alone. That guy had me fooled for years, you wouldn’t believe it. Instead of just working hard alone, I needed to add strategy to my hard work. As basic as this sounds I’ve just started to make sense of it now.

To break it down, when you get a job , no matter if it’s your dream job or the job you have on the way to your dream job, one of the first things to ask yourself is what do I want to achieve at this job? and the answers can range from, I want to save £5000 at the end of 1 year or I want to leverage connections in this job to help secure a job elsewhere or I want to acquire a skill and so on. So once you’ve established what you want to achieve with that job, I’ll advise you develop a strategy to achieve that goal. The person who is taking the job for mere survival’s strategy may include working extra shifts, while someone looking to acquire a skill may go with a strategy that looks for networks. This will all be determined by what you want to achieve and goal posts at a job is permitted to shift. Let’s say you joined initially to be able to feed yourself, after a while when feeding is taken care of, your goal may now be to move up in the job and this would require a tweaking or abandoning of your previous strategy. This means you should regularly reflect on your own progress not just how well the company is doing.

One more thing, jobs are not just opportunities for you to prove your worth they are also places for you to better yourself and add to yourself. So don’t feel bad if your strategy includes developing yourself with the opportunities and resources your work affords, that’s how its supposed to work. I think the reason why I found this strange for a long time was that somewhere in my head I felt I was asking too much if I asked that my job adds to me. I had been moulded to only give at my job and never take and even the salary I get paid , I sometimes feel undeserving of, imagine!. Maybe its a perfectionist mindset where you never feel you’ve given enough or a low self image/esteem, I can’t tell but imagine!

Some of us may also require a mind clean; something like a renewal; start from knowing that you are a valuable individual, target met or not, work done at the end of the day or not. Believe that in yourself, you have so much worth that is not limited to or accurately measured by your output or performances

Your life is a journey and even your 9-5 is part of that journey and not all of it. It is your responsibility to make the journey as rich and enjoyable as possible. While this may be the coolest stop so far in this journey, there are even cooler stuff up the road so make sure you arrive at your next stop in the best shape possible by making the most of this stop. While you’re delivering value, stock up on confidence, skills, network, net worth and don’t kill or lose yourself in the name of delivering value.

To my fellow japa comrades, I’ll say, have a strategy to win in the abroad. What do you want?- to win? to thrive?- what does winning at this job mean to you? Hard work will never be good enough alone, add strategy to it, how do you want to win and thrive. Do the ‘hard work’ of developing a strategy to excel in the abroad don’t just go through the motions. You may have landed here as an immigrant with survival being the most important thing to you but in a few years, you would have survived, will you be thriving too?