Rosamund Urwin: Don’t overlook the plodders in the workplace

There's a breed of colleague that often infuriates. A friend of mine calls them “swaggerers”.

They are the self-promotion supremos, who somehow get their pick of projects or assignments. They apply for — and win — awards you’d never heard of before. And they actually use LinkedIn, rather than seeing its incessant emailing as evidence that humanity doesn’t deserve to be the dominant species any more, and that we should just hand over to the dolphins.

I sometimes envy the swaggerers. Because I’m the opposite: a “plodder” in that same friend’s vernacular. We plodders work hard yet cringe at the idea of shouting about it — misguidedly expecting someone to notice our diligence and achievements. We are Boxer the cart-horse to the swaggerer’s Squealer; Hillary to their Bill or Barack.

Both sexes can fall into either camp. But my experiences suggest a majority of swaggerers are men. And women are more likely to be the most put-upon plodders: the office doormats, incapable of saying “no” yet still overlooked. This chimes with the way many of us were socialised too: girls to be bashful; their brothers allowed to boast.

Is this still an obstacle for women in the workplace, then? I fear so. A recent survey of US women for the careers site Fairygodboss found the biggest issue for them was being passed over for promotion. There will be many factors at play there, including conscious and unconscious bias from bosses. But it’s plausible too that many organisations’ systems of promotion favour showier staff. Sometimes it is hard not to buy what the swaggerers are selling.

Is the solution, then, that we ape this behaviour? That we all learn to “market” ourselves more? Certainly, we’re often told that both women and girls need more confidence. I’ve lost track of the number of times — during interviews, dinners, debates and panels — that I’ve heard a female business leader hail the magic “c” as a panacea. Studies have shown that men tend to over-estimate their abilities and women under-estimate theirs when applying for jobs.

I don’t disagree. It’s just that I feel there’s a yin to the yang here. Sure, many of the XX-chromosomed could benefit from having more faith in themselves, just as some Y-chromosome owners could. But there are also those who could do with a little less confidence. Some swaggerers possess a surfeit of self-belief that’s wholly unjustified. Like the intern who — two days after arriving at this paper — told me how to do a job I’d done for four years. Or the BBC’s John Inverdale.

The swaggerer is rarely a good colleague either. When one I know was asked to do a job he considered beneath him, he would employ the children’s chore trick: do it so badly that no one asks again. They can breed resentment in other staff, especially if they freeload. A doctor friend once worked on a ward with the ultimate swaggerer medic. The latter was always off lecturing and making a name for himself, and thus never there. My friend had to fill in to ensure patient care didn’t suffer.

Some self-doubt can also be a motivator. It means you check everything. And I’d rather be treated by a surgeon who asks for help than one who soldiers on unsure. In my industry, many of the best writers — male and female — are painfully insecure (it keeps you improving) while the worst are usually the over-confident.

Addressing this, then, really lies with employers who should scrutinise the way they hire and promote staff. They should check that the industrious plodder isn’t being over-shadowed by the swaggerer’s inflated ego. But then, as a plodder myself, I would say that.

The words seem so carefully chosen, so expensive-lawyerly. “There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm,” the joint statement from Johnny Depp and Amber Heard read yesterday. Not, then, that there was no harm, but that whatever happened was accidental, unwitting. A whiff of the gaslighter there.

When Heard first accused Depp of domestic violence many inexplicably cast her as the villain. She must be lying! A gold-digger! Captain Jack Sparrow is a hero! It’s telling that some always want to make a defendant of a female plaintiff and assume a woman must just be after a rich man’s money.

We’ve since seen evidence of abuse: photos, text messages, a leaked video. Despite this, Heard has dropped the abuse claims. One might guess why. Depp’s career will survive — Hollywood has form at forgiving men accused of violence — but her future was always more vulnerable. It’s unfair. Cruel.