Of Form and Substance

When I was serving my National Service, our Officer-in-Command (OC) shared with us about "form" and "substance". Form referred to one's outward appearance to others or simply how others perceive oneself. It includes one's dressing (e.g. if one dresses sloppily or too casual, then others will not treat one seriously) as well as one's behaviour (e.g. if one sulks most of the time, then others will perceive one as a negative person). Substance, on the other hand, refers to one's innate ability including one's skill and knowledge. The way our society seems to generally work or actually how most companies seem to operate is people with high form usually get promoted and rise up the ranks fast. These people usually do not have much substance but due to how the bosses perhaps perceive them. It could possibly be because they are more vocal and visible to management that there is some form of recognition as compared to perhaps a hard but silent worker who toils away in the background without being noticed by the higher-ups. Such is the reality of life that perhaps someone reading this would immediately jump onto the bandwagon of developing form rather than useless substance. And there are so many avenues for that - most of the so-called self-help gurus out there can't wait to get you on their "life-changing" programmes that tell you how to be more confident, how to network and the list goes on. The media promotes such people too and make celebrities of people who are on the fast-track - headlines like the youngest CEO, etc have become so attractive. But wait - is substance really that useless and form is really what gets you through life? The truth is hardly anyone tells you that if one only has form or rise up the ranks mainly through form alone, then the cliche "the higher you climb, the harder you fall" applies. Without the necessary substance to back one up, a person with high form but little or no substance will have to rely on people with the substance - but people with the substance can one day bite back.

If the above is true, then it may be quite a dilemma. Having more than a decade of working experience, whenever young people ask me for career advice, I would share with them this: In life, we need to have a balance of both form and substance. For certain careers like marketing and sales, then perhaps more form is required. However for technical trades, then perhaps more substance is required. The tendency for those pursuing technical trades is that they may become too engrossed in developing substance that sometimes they may neglect the communication with others and for some, even neglecting their outward appearance (by dressing too unprofessional) and even behaviour. Some behave very reclusive but truly it is not beneficial to be too extreme as it will not hurt to every now and then, come out their shells (or cave for that matter) and mingle with colleagues and bosses. Of course some people may outright proclaim it is not in their character to be a social butterfly but the idea is not to be too extreme in this aspect either - don't do something that is totally out of one's character, everyone has an innate ability to make friends, it doesn't have to be fancy, start with a simple "how are you doing?" - a lot of people forget there is a lot of learning too by interacting with others. When one is fresh in their careers, in fact, one should focus more on developing substance especially for those in the technical field - I'll explain more in a bit. Young people these days who under the influence of the media or their peers (or even their educators) have a tendency to want to pursue the fast-track in life. However this kind of thinking is detrimental to the long term career growth. Imagine someone who has probably fast-track into, let's say, a senior engineer position but for example, when a junior engineer asks a lower-level question but because this person has not managed to gain the relevant experience to answer; being in a senior position would be too embarassed to admit not to know the answer but then again too embarassed to ask even someone else to try to learn. I've seen it happen all too often - people who rise fast but didn't have the necessary time to gain the necessary knowledge and exposure (or simply known as experience), have become stuck as there is practically no way for them to go back in time to pick up such skills or knowledge due to their current level and people's expectations of them. A lot of junior people forget that there is an advantage of being junior - one can afford to make mistakes and be forgiven. As such it is pointless to pursue higher level sounding job titles in a hurry and thereby should focus on developing the necessary skills and experience so that when actually in the higher position, one would have already been well-prepared to handle the obligations. While I can't dictate what are their ultimate choices in life, I guess it should be some useful food for thought for the young people - hopefully they can make better informed decisions for their careers.