Today I present to you the first post in a series I call “Driving and HR”. One can learn a lot by looking at situations on the road and how they can translate and correlate into dealing with situations in HR and your career.
Left turn lanes have always amazed me in terms of how people don’t seem to understand how to use them properly. I notice how often people make left turns either pull over to the right to make a left turn, or wait until the car coming towards them in the other direction has completely passed.
Let’s look at situation 1 – cars that pull over to the right to turn to the left to prevent others from passing them on the right. Left turns can be challenging, and so can crossing over to the other side of the table when in a discussion about something new. The worst thing one can do is to block others from intervening (or in the case of driving, blocking others from passing). In order to truly reach over to the other side in the debate at work, all parties need to be involved to make the discussion clear and make all issues come out on the table.
Situation 2 – when people wait until the other car has completely passed, they delay the cars behind them and create a wait for themselves when they could easily continue moving. Similarly, in the workplace, sometimes people wait until they have left a job before pursuing a new one, or wait until an adversary leaves before making changes that need to take place. Both situations in HR create difficulty; in the former, people don’t discover new opportunities that may exist at their current work location, and in the latter, people miss out on opportunities to learn from those who are going to be leaving soon.
So next time you are out driving, think about these two situations, and how you can both drive better and learn from them to give your new perspective on HR and Careers.
