Issue #23: The learning-credibility tension, good medicine tastes bitter, the 3-setback rule

1 Actionable Concept, 2 Best Tweets and 3 Things I Want You to Read

Career Geek 🤓 | Soft Skills

Feb 16, 2025

1-2-3:

🎯 1 Actionable Concept

🗂️ 2 Best Tweets

🚨3 Things I Want You to Read

Hello and welcome back! ☺️

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Let's get started with this week's curated dose of professional wisdom.

🎯 1 Actionable Concept

Learning-Credibility Tension

Ever wondered how consultants can jump onto a case on Day 1 and appear to know it all?

It’s not just consultants.

If you are a high performing employee, it might sound like a very familiar situation.

You will often be given assignments that no one has answers to.

Your boss has no clue. You are expected you to figure it out because you are the sharpest tool in his shed.

How then do you show competence? Even when you are still figuring things out.

In other words:

How do you manage the “learning-credibility tension”?

Managing the learning-credibility tension is about delivering the maximum impact in the minimum time by leveraging all the bits of knowledge that are available.

You don’t have to know it all.

You need to know just enough to be taken seriously and appear competent while they seek more information.

Be objective-driven in your learning.

Have a mental map of what you need to know at a minimum.

Your information might come from talking to other experts, from documentation from previous similar assignments, from information in the public domain.

Use this minimum yet relevant knowledge to gain trust and buy time as you learn.

No one expects you to have all the answers when you are fresh on the case.

But people will appreciate that you have done your homework.

Managing learning-credibility tension is something much deeper than “optics” or “personal PR”.

Managing it well will set you up for success.

Your stakeholders will be more willing to engage, share new insights and support you.

Without belief and acceptance from those around you, you will not accomplish things.

🗂️ 2 Best Tweets

Tweet 1

As the Chinese saying goes, “Good medicine always taste bitter. What’s good for us isn’t always pleasant.”

When I was younger, I was an athlete.

Our coach used to make us run up and down the hills.

I hated every minute of it.

I would always be cursing him under my breath for putting us through those torturous runs.

It was not pleasant. But our coach did it to make us better athletes.

The same concept can be applied to our careers.

In our careers, we will encounter unpleasant scenarios.

But that unpleasant thing could be a sign of potential growth.

Tweet 2 - The “3-Setback” Rule

Do you give up at the first hurdle you face? Or do you push through the hurdles?

Recently, I had a younger colleague come up to me. She felt very frustrated and hopeless.

She was complaining, “We can’t do X anymore. Feature Y is not ready.”

It got me thinking.

Worthy accomplishments are never straightforward and easy to achieve.

We are bound to face a lot of rejections and detours during the process.

Hence, it’s important to normalize setbacks.

I have a rule – the “3-setback” rule.

The journey to achieving anything worthy is bound to face at least 3 setbacks.

For instance, your goal is to increase X for Project Y, you came up with a very solid action plan.

When you start executing, you realize product feature Z is full of bugs and hampers progress. To add to your problems, one cross functional team A is not collaborative.

And even if you finally had everything in place, you realized that X did not increase as planned. And you would have to come up with another action plan and execute it all over again.

Sounds frustrating?

That’s the “3-setback” rule.

The journey to accomplishing anything worthy is bound to face at least 3 setbacks.