🔀 Incoherent: Reliability

If there’s one trait that is going to help you the most in your professional journey, it is reliability. How much others can trust you to get something done independently once you take ownership.

Don’t confuse reliability with “always” getting things to closure within the promised time without failure. Failures are inevitable, and at times you will fail to either get something done entirely or will simply be late for a few days.

Reliability is where someone else doesn’t have to check in with you regularly to ensure you are on track. It is the relief that if this person is getting late or struggling, they will reach out before it is too late, or they will simply get it done within the mentioned time.

Understanding the importance of reliability shouldn’t be that difficult and should never be an afterthought. We expect reliability from everything and everyone we pay for (their services). If you hire a plumber who either doesn’t show up at all on the mentioned day (forget time), or does a half-hearted job at fixing something, will you ever hire them again? If you will, you can skip the rest of it.

Professionals, whether working on a payroll or on contract, have to adhere to this baseline expectation regardless of the field they are working in or the collar they wear. Somehow this is a common understanding when paying but not the same case when you are the one being paid.

Now, is reliability only for professional life?

Reliability is perhaps one of the most difficult traits to master. Which means you cannot fake it. Or switch it on or off at will. If you aren’t reasonably reliable in personal life, it is further difficult to practice it in professional life. Rarely do people do better professionally, and in those cases, their life is already taking a backseat, meaning they don’t practice their life itself enough. Or in other words, not living enough.