Sital Ruparelia

I had a laugh and a joke this morning about cobbler’s children with Craig Ringland of Digby Morgan, the international HR recruiters.

You’ve probably heard the expression ‘The Cobbler’s Children Have No Shoes’.  The phrase describes the phenomenon where certain ‘professionals’ in any given area are so busy with work for their clients and their teams that they neglect using their professional skills to help themselves or those closest to them.

It’s the decorator whose own house never get’s painted, the accountant who is always late in submitting his own tax return or, on a more topical point, the global banks that suffer from liquity problems!

Craig specialises in providing recruiting services to HR professionals across a range of sectors and was talking about how bad HR professionals were at managing their own careers, despite the fact that they did it on a day to day basis for others.

We discussed how this very same thing applies not just to HR professionals, but to most senior leaders, recruiters, head hunters and career experts. All these people specialise in either leading, recruiting, developing or advancing the careers of people around them – yet typically they fail to do this for themselves.

We’re all guilty of it – I often find myself re-reading some of my own articles and advice and think “hey do I follow that advice myself.?!”

We all laugh it off as Craig and I did this morning with the cobbler’s shoes story and then carry on as normal.

However, the thing with nice little stories and cliches is that we often run that tape so many times in our head that we start to believe it as fact – and before long it becomes a convenient excuse for not looking after your own interests. 

But it need not be. 

Ask yourself – what’s the one thing that you currently do for your clients or your team, that if you started doing for yourself – would make the biggest impact on you professionally and personally? 

Take the first step and start creating your own story instead of some old cobblers…!