Titles and entitlement

Titles mean nothing to me and never have.

I was promoted up the ladder in a multi million dollar business , went from manager to director to Vice President to Senior Vice President- pretty good right ?
Who really cares ?

What matters more is - did I make difference in someone’s life ?
I hope I did - my reward was and still is when someone I worked with or worked for me tells me that I helped them or say I made a difference in how they work.

Funny story- I was VP of Operations for this 100 million dollar company and the head of HR called me in to her office and said that they wanted to promote me to Senior Vice President and at first I said no I am ok thanks, she told me no, you want this title , for one the company was about to distribute stock for the first time ever and being a Senior VP would mean being offered stock, so I accepted.
But I truly felt that titles should not speak to who I am or what I do or how much worth I am to the company.

The big problem in today’s business world is people no longer even work their way up the ladder, those in “power” think to be better and smarter you need to have the “sheepskin” A degree- if you have that you can by pass the workers actually doing the work and gain a title and then you stand on the mountain top and bark out your orders.
The issue here is respect and knowledge in that particular business, how can you obtain the knowledge needed to lead if you never actually worked your way up and how can those people you are supposed to lead respect you if they know you do not even have that knowledge.

Just because you have a title it does command respect- that you have to earn.
Unfortunately some people think the title will make people listen and most obtain an office with their title which is even worse because they will never truly listen to their employees thus will never be able to train or help give them the tools they need to succeed. They go to their, shut the door and think how smart they are and look at the pictures they put up on their wall.

Titles seem to give people entitlement, no matter what you do or what your title is we all enter this world the same way and will some day exit it , life is short. What you do with that like is what is important.