Work one’s way up to the top

8. The question “What do you do for a living?” can annoy people, if it is asked early during a conversation with a new individual. It seems like the person is allegedly trying to size you up or compare their accomplishments to your own.rub sb up the wrong way

(b) Translate into English using the idioms from Ex. 9, p. 13:

1. Он начинал как посыльный (messengerboy) в офисе и продвинулся по служебной лестнице до должности генерального директора. Для этого требуется напористость и желание преуспеть.

2. Как тебе удается держать все дела под контролем, когда у тебя четверо детей? -

3. Я не хочу работать до изнеможения, чтобы заработать себе на жизнь.

4. Его манера разговаривать с начальниками действует мне на нервы.

5. Насколько вы одержимы (идеей) стараться жить не хуже других? В некоторых случаях небольшая доза зависти может действовать как стимул для карьеры.

6. Она обычно витает в облаках, но, когда дело касается бизнеса, у нее есть серьезные цели и стремление их достичь.

7. С его всесторонним образованием, огромным состоянием и его харизмой перед ним открыты все двери.

Focus on Reading, Listening and Discussing

Career Success

*17.(a)Read one more article from Forbes.com by David DiSalvo. What two types of high-achievers does the author of the article distinguish?

The Hallmarks[9]of Highly Respected Achievers

I’ve been working on a research project for a few weeks that involves identifying the characteristics that describe highly ambitious, achievement-oriented people who are also among the most well-respected in any organization. The intersection between ambition and respect is an important one, because we all know people who are ambitious but think nothing of running others over along the way. And, we know examples of people who are respected but stagnant.

What makes respected achievers different?

Respected achievers do not allow hurdles to stop them, at least not for long, chiefly because they have trained their thinking to immediately seek out other ways of reaching a goal. To a determined person, there is never just one way to get there. However, the sort of achiever we are talking about also keeps the well-being of others in mind, and if one of those alternate routes will result in unnecessarily harming someone else, then that route is not an option.

Achievers do not drag out an elaborate vision, get others to buy into it, and then run off to the next big idea because it has sparked their interest more than the first. While maturing multiple visions is fine (assuming they are manageable), the respected achiever will make every reasonable effort to make them happen.

Respected achievers focus on what works. If one approach is not turning out well, they abandon it altogether and adopt a different approach. Their focus is on outcomes. But, implementing a pragmatic approach without being mindful of how changes will affect others does not deserve praise. Respected achievers balance an outcome-focus with a situational awareness of the adjustments required by others. This may build more time into the process, but respected achievers do not value outcomes above peoples’ lives if there is any possibility of creating a mutually beneficial arrangement. In case of failure they feel the pain, recognize that whatever caused it is now part of their experience, and then they resolve to strategically move on.

One less-than-admirable trait of many ambitious people is that they are good at figuring out how to avoid taking responsibility for what went wrong due to a mistake made by the team. But the respected achiever owns responsibility whether or not other team members do the same. Teams are essentially organizations structured to accomplish specific goals, and if those goals aren’t reached, then the team owns the blame, because the team was given the responsibility to succeed. Respected achievers own their role on the team instead of trying to explain why their responsibility should be less than that of the others’. They treat others in the manner they wish to be treated. Their embodiment of the “Golden Rule” is not situational; it’s a consistently applied maxim that guides their behavior.

(b) Tick the qualities and skills a respected achiever possesses (according to the author). Provide evidence from the text.

○ assertiveness

○ determination

○ flexibility

○ perseverance

○ persistence

○ resilience

○ ruthlessness

○ sensitivity to others’ feelings

○ team spirit

○ willingness to compromise

*18.Comment on the following quotations. Do you agree with them? What qualities do they illustrate?