What do you think is better for your career success: working smart or working hard?

I'd have to agree with Dan on this. You want to definitely do both to be successful in your career!

While both answers on this thread are absolutely right, let's pretend for a moment, that in your particular situation, "smarter" and "harder" are mutually exclusive. In such a case, smarter is certainly more important.

Well directed efforts will generally produce better and more effective results than poorly directed but more strenuous efforts.

In short, even the hardest push in the wrong direction will not get you to your destination.

I actually have a pretty strong opinion on this. I believe "working smart" is better for your success. I wrote an article about this on my blog in 2009. I will copy it here in case you find the story helpful.

http://bemycareercoach.com/23/career-advice/career-development/self-promotion...
Growing up Asian, we are told that hard work is always what is needed to achieve success. Like a good Chinese, I followed that advice and worked my butt off at McKinsey, my first job. Fortunately or unfortunately, I learned quickly that hard work is not enough and sometimes does not even help.

I was on my 3rd project at McKinsey just about a year after college. My manager was a junior EM, basically someone who is not officially a manager yet but is up for promotion soon. This project was his proving ground. I was naive and eager and tried my best to do a good job. I worked almost every weekend on this project. I distinctly remember once he asked me to work one weekend to summarize a mountain of research into two slides. I was diligent and I worked about 10 hours each day. I was able to do it and send them to him by Sunday night.

I remember feeling relieved and accomplished that night. Well, long story short, he didn't use those slides for four weeks. When the Senior Manager finally saw the slides four weeks later, they used them in the client presentation. And guess who got the credit for it? Well, it wasn't me. A few months later, when the client was not happy with some part of the project, guess who received the blame? Well, it was not my manager.

How did this happen, you may ask? Well, I was not in many of the senior level meetings as an Analyst, so my manager can say whatever he wanted about my performance, which included blaming me for the clients' dissatisfaction and taking credit for my work. I only received an Average rating for that project, but I learned a lot about politics and what it takes to be successful. Here were my mistakes:

- I spent 150% of my energy on doing good work and almost none on publicizing my good work to anyone but my manager. I could have easily done some subtle PR and copied those slides I sent to my manager also to the senior manager and partner, under the guise of getting feedback or in case they needed to use them. Either way, they would have known that it was I who made them and 4 weeks earlier.
-I didn't take any time to build relationships with the partner, senior manager, or the client and didn't take any time building a support network at the office with other senior folks. I followed my upbringing, kept my head down, and worked hard. So when the manager blamed things on me, no one could question him about it. They don’t have any other reference point.
- I also assumed that my manager would represent me fairly - a bad assumption I try not to make again. He was up for promotion so any blemish on his performance could affect that. He didn’t really believe in developing others, so I was a good scapegoat. Not all managers are like him, but they are definitely out there.

At the end of the day, I learned a lot during my two years at McKinsey. Years later, the Partner on that project met up with me in San Francisco for coffee (I learned and had kept in touch with him). He actually apologized for that manager’s behavior and asked if I was interested in re-joining McKinsey after business school. I wasn’t but it was a nice gesture.

Moral of the story:

- Hard work helps with success only if the right people knows about it and if it delivers results.
- Perception is reality. Whatever others perceive about you is true in their mind. If you don’t spend time shaping their perception of you, then someone else (e.g., like my manager) will for their own benefit.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

Lei, thanks for sharing your experience--it is instructive.

Years ago I was cornered in the hallway by my firm's president who said, "I have to talk to you. Why are you the only engineer who gets letters of recommendation from clients?" He was a little put off that I was so successful at getting so many letters. I said, "When my clients tell me I did a good job I ask them to send you a letter since I know you would be happy to hear from satisfied clients?" He wasn't happy at all because he feared employees asking for raises more than he enjoyed happy clients.

Bob, thanks for sharing your story. I am curious what you decided to do differently since that experience to be known as a top performer? I am always interested in hearing others’ secrets to effective self-promotion.

From my own experience, I found subtle self promotion tends to work better than direct self promotion. By subtle, I mean I allow my manager to reach the conclusion that I am a top performer without telling her so myself. Here are two examples of subtle self-promotion that have worked for me or my coaching clients.
• Proactively update my boss at a regular frequency regarding my progress. In it, I would state what I finished, what I am working on, what issues I am dealing with, and what I would need his/her help on. This reduced the need for my manager to figure out how to manage me, tell her what I accomplished, and pre-warn her of upcoming issues that I may need help with. This is also a trait of a top performer.
• Help others with their boss’ perception of them. I would do this only if I truly believe it. If I work with someone cross-functionally for awhile and she has been a valuable asset, I would take opportunities to tell her boss that, either in passing or actually send a nice email about her great performance. I usually do this without being asked by the person. Good karma usually gets paid back.

I would love to hear other stories if you or anyone have more ways to effectively self-promote. Thanks

Lei, "Bob, thanks for sharing your story."

My pleasure.

"I am curious what you decided to do differently since that experience to be known as a top performer? I am always interested in hearing others’ secrets to effective self-promotion."

I ignored his personality quirks.

"From my own experience, I found subtle self promotion tends to work better than direct self promotion. By subtle, I mean I allow my manager to reach the conclusion that I am a top performer without telling her so myself."

I tried that as well with my old department manager for more than 6 years after my BSCE. I did get promoted and raises but when I did not get promoted to the next position, I was well qualified, I told my new department manager that I was leaving as soon as I could find a new job. My dept. manager asked "what would it take to get you to change my mind?" I replied "promote me and I'll rethink my plans." The newest member of the board of directors, also in my department, said they "could not do that since that would be giving in to a threat." I replied "it wasn't a threat it was an answer to the boss' question." The scrambling began since we were about to get very busy over the summer.

My boss followed up with me a week later and told me there was "nothing they could do." I asked. "did you speak to the board of directors?" No, he replied. "Did you speak with the executive committee?" No, he replied. I then said "who did you speak with?" and he replied "the past president" but he was no longer on the board of directors. I was frustrated and told him he did nothing. More scrambling started.

About a month later I was asked to meet with 6 of the members of the board of directors to discuss my reasons for leaving. I agreed only if they were going to listen.

The meeting lasted for almost three hours and they did listen. They discussed, they questioned and they apologized when I told them the previous department manager said, "I don't get involved in those issues" when asked him "what do I need to do to get promoted." The members were stunned and said, "He is on the executive committee and it is the executive committee that decides who gets promoted."

Two weeks later I was called into the conference room by HR to meet with my department manager, who is also the head of HR, and the president. I knew they were going to let me go since I told them I was leaving. The president told me they were going to promote me but they wanted to know if it was OK with me if they waited until the end of the next month so that they could review all other employees who may have been overlooked. I said that was fine. End of the next month I was the only employee promoted.

The company did increase annual bonuses by a factor of 20 as a result of our meeting which was a good thing for the good employees but no so good for the less than good employees who were wondering why so many employers were happy with their bonuses.

I was expecting my former dept. manager to be concerned with my career--he wasn't concerned at all--but he was a good boss otherwise. Be careful who you trust.

The new department manager told me I could "motivate the employees for good or for evil." He was frustrated. I said, "then why not use me for doing something good?" He said they "did not know how to do that."

Never presume that others have your back. Frequently turn around and make sure they are behind you.

I learned during my Executive MBA program, Class of 1992, that most of my managers had no idea what they were doing with regards to managing employees. It was all by the seat of their pants. Financial acumen was also in short supply.