Career advice from an author

What’s the best advice you ever received? What tips did you wish you knew earlier? How did this help you on your career journey?

We’ve spoken to members of the Apolitical community to share their top three pieces of career advice with us. In this article, Michael Eastman explains why it’s important to listen to your elders in their role as an author.

Your first piece of advice:

“Do your research, but remember your first instincts.” Kate O’Regan, then a judge on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, gave this advice to me in my first year of being a lawyer. Decision-making, particularly on matters of high consequence, is a source of great anxiety for young professionals. If you are remotely conscientious, you want to be sure to get it right. That often leads to panic and copious amounts of reading to try to calm that panic. Remember, though, that you have studied and trained successfully for years to get to the position that you are in, and so your instinctive feel for the right answer will often be correct. So, go and do your research, but be confident in your own ability to solve a problem and make the right decision.

Your second piece of advice:

“I’m up here. They’re down there. And there’s no reason it should be that way.” Pius Langa, then Chief Justice of South Africa, and for whom I was a law clerk, told me this. Despite his high status, Pius remained aloof from power, a humble and gentle man who had time for everyone. When litigants came before the court, whether they were large multinational corporations or impoverished and marginalised communities, Pius would hear them out fairly and equally. As we gain power in our careers, it can become easy to cloister ourselves into particular social strata, admiring those ‘above’ us and dismissing those ‘below’ us. That robs us of the ability to listen to others and use what we hear to make good judgments.

Your third piece of advice:

“What do you think?” Stanley McChrystal, a retired four-star general in the United States Army, asked me my thoughts on designing a curriculum on modern conflict when I was a student at Yale University. Stan is superb at asking junior — often very junior — staff their views on a matter. Sometimes it produces terrific insights. Mostly, however, a leader asking a question of their junior, and genuinely listening to their junior, gives that junior person a tremendous boost of confidence and unleashes them to be a better part of a team. Never forget to ask questions of those below you on the organisational hierarchy. It isn’t a sign of weakness, and it always produces some benefit.

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