The 2 most important things I know

PLUS: CARM your colleagues

April 01, 2025

For the next 5 minutes, let’s elevate your career.

In today’s email:

  • The 2 most important things I know

  • Walk people to the door

  • Direct our imagination

  • CARM your colleagues

  • Esther Perel’s career wisdom

ON YOUR CAREER

The 2 most important things I know

I was thinking the other day about what I truly know. This is beyond knowing that I’m alive, have to pay taxes, and love my family. Two things stand out to me as the most important in our careers and broader life.

We want to be competent and kind. We want to surround ourselves with colleagues and friends who are competent and kind.

Competence means we get things done and add value. Competence needs to be renewed so we’re future proofed in the job market. Fortunately, the motivation to be competent seems to be inherent to most people. Learning and mastering skills is psychologically rewarding. Surrounding ourselves with other competent people means we can collaborate to create something great.

Kindness means we’re able to form productive relationships faster. When we’re kind, we prompt the release of oxytocin in others. This hormone prompts attachment between people and predisposes us to trust. Kindness and generosity are the glue in high performing teams. We feel supported and safer to take risks when there is kindness. Surrounding ourselves with other kind people means life is sweeter.

Every day we get to choose to be competent and kind.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

— Mark Twain
COMMUNICATION

Walk people to the door

When guests depart our homes we walk them to our front door. Sometimes to the elevator or their car. This is part of being hospitable. A simple, everyday kindness that is part of the glue of life.

Walking our clients, suppliers, and candidates to the door when they leave creates a positive impression. It shows they matter. That time with them is more than a transaction.

True hospitality consists of giving the best of yourself to your guests.

— Eleanor Roosevelt
PRODUCTIVITY

Direct our imagination

Every day we have a choice where we direct our imagination. Sometimes it’s essential for us to plan for negative events. To do pre-mortems. To ask ourselves how would we know if we’re wrong? This is part of helping ourselves and our team be antifragile. We’re directing our imagination to potential risks in a constructive way.

Sometimes our imagination can run wild with negative possibilities. We can over-speculate - catastrophizing about an unknown future. This wastes time and fills us with negative emotions. Instead, we can re-direct our imagination to how we can add more value to colleagues and customers. Directing our imagination to value lowers stress. It also makes us more productive.

The things that terrify you, as if they were about to happen, may never come; certainly they have not come yet. Some things torment us more than they should, some before they should, some when they should not torment us at all.

— Seneca
1 MINUTE TO HAPPINESS

CARM your colleagues

✅ C ompetence: using our skills and abilities

✅ A utonomy: having choice in how tasks are performed

✅ R elatedness: feeling connected to colleagues

✅ M eaning: believing our work adds value

We help our colleagues feel satisfaction and happiness at work when we facilitate CARM.

Is there anything you could do in the next week that could help a colleague experience more competence, autonomy, relatedness, or meaning?

CAREER WISDOM

Esther Perel

Esther Perel (1958 — ) was born in Antwerp, Belgium. She practices psychotherapy in New York City where she specializes in modern relationships. Fluent in 9 languages, she has worked with many intercultural families and refugees. Perel wrote the bestselling books Mating in Captivity (2006) and The State of Affairs (2017). Her TED Talks have been watched more than 40 million times. She hosts 2 popular podcasts, Where Should We Begin? and How’s Work?. Perel consults to Fortune 500 companies on relational intelligence in the workplace. This includes addressing leadership, engagement, and interpersonal dynamics. Some of her career wisdom:

If you’re building your team, surround yourself with people who know what you don’t.

As you develop these relationships, ask: “How do we build trust? How do we repair after a rupture? How do we create a culture of belonging?”

Leadership is about creating a safe space for difficult conversations, where people feel seen, heard, and respected.