There are a lot of things people think they need to do to get ahead in their career. They think they need to be the smartest person in the room, have the best ideas, be the loudest voice, have the biggest title, or somehow prove to everyone around them that they are indispensable. All of that can help, but there is another trait that I think gets wildly overlooked.
Be easy to work with.
I don't mean be a pushover. I don't mean agree with everything your boss says, smile through bad decisions, or become the person who says yes to every single request that comes your way. Being easy to work with doesn't mean having no backbone. It means being dependable, responsive, prepared, low-drama, and generally someone who doesn't make every situation more complicated than it needs to be.
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I've worked with incredibly talented people who were absolutely exhausting. Every conversation became a debate. Every request turned into a negotiation. Every piece of feedback became a personal attack. You'd send them a simple message and somehow end up in a forty-five-minute conversation trying to explain why you sent it. Eventually, you stop involving those people unless you absolutely have to.
Then there are the people who make your life easier. You ask them for something and they get back to you. They show up prepared. They tell you when something is going sideways instead of hiding it until the last possible second. They don't create unnecessary drama. They don't need to be chased around for updates. When they disagree with you, they tell you clearly, professionally, and then help figure out what to do next.
Those people are incredibly valuable.
The older I've gotten in my career, the more I appreciate this. Talent matters. Intelligence matters. Experience matters. But if two people are roughly equal in all of those areas and one of them is consistently easier to work with, I know who I'm picking for the project. I know who I want in the meeting. I know who I'm calling when something important needs to get done.
This matters even more as you move up in your career because your job becomes increasingly dependent on other people wanting to work with you. You need peers to support your ideas. You need other departments to prioritize your requests. You need executives to trust your judgment. You need your team to feel comfortable bringing you problems. None of that works very well if every interaction with you feels like walking into a fucking minefield.
You don't have to become someone you're not. You don't have to avoid conflict or stop challenging bad ideas. In fact, some of the easiest people I've ever worked with were also some of the most direct. The difference was that you always knew where you stood with them; they didn't make things personal, and they were focused on solving the problem instead of proving they were right.
Being easy to work with doesn't mean having no backbone. It means being dependable, responsive, prepared, and low-drama.
Your reputation at work is built through hundreds of tiny interactions that most people never think twice about. Did you respond? Did you show up prepared? Did you do what you said you were going to do? Did you make the problem smaller or bigger? People remember that stuff. Being easy to work with might not be the sexiest career advice in the world, but over twenty years I've watched it quietly become one of the biggest career superpowers someone can have.