What kind of coworker would you prefer?

Have you ever asked yourself what type of coworker you would prefer to deal with?

A typical office situation is when you need something at work and approach a colleague:

I need following ...

Can you help me with this?

Have you ever considered what answer you would like to hear?

There are some very, very typical answers to this question you may became in your everyday office life. Here's a breakdown:

Possible Career Levels	Common Answer	Hypothesis	Hypothesis Check
0	I don't know exactly what my responsibilities are yet...	intern	Are you an intern?
1	I don't know my way around yet...	on probation	Are you still in your probationary period?
2	That's not my job	in training	Are you still in the training phase?
3	I'm not responsible for that	junior	Do you have some overview of colleagues and other teams and projects jet?
4	That's not possible (currently)	team mate	Do you know what colleagues and other teams and projects can do for us?
5	That's too time-consuming / too complicated	expert	You know what needs to be taken into account, right?
6	It's better if that person does it	senior	You can correctly assess the task and its impact, right?
7	Implementation is possible this way, these people need to be involved in the decision-making process	professional	Sounds like a professional, how can we deepen our collaboration?
8	To implement this by the specified deadline, I need the following resources	boss	Are you the project manager or the boss?

If you draw the typical career stages numbered in the table above as a staircase, you get the following:

🟠I don't know how you usually deal with this, but personally, depending on the situation, I prefer to either deal with professionals or approach the responsible boss directly... and the expert or senior person can help me to get there, if necessary 😉

🔴The workload of professionals and bosses must be taken into account and, due to resource constraints, you are often required to collaborate with others. For my part, I generally take an inclusive approach and I am happy to "take" my colleagues along on their respective way to become a professional or - sometimes - a boss. If the environment is well and non-toxic, you might end up with more professionals around you (the hope dies last😉).