The word “hero” carries a lot of weight. It implies bravery, stopping at nothing to improve the circumstances, putting someone else before yourself. These are qualities worthy of admiration because they’re outside the norm.
It came as a surprise to many of the medical professionals and volunteers featured in this issue that they were nominated as a Health Care Hero. Some responded, “I don’t really consider myself a hero” or “Isn’t there someone more deserving?”
It’s probably a good thing we don’t ask people to nominate themselves to be a Health Care Hero, or we would have a pretty empty feature. Regardless of whether or not they consider themselves heroes, these nominees can be truly honored by the fact that someone else did. The nominators recognized and appreciated their work ethic, their diligence and their focus in improving patients’ lives, their staff’s work environment and resources and education in the community on health-related matters.
The fact is, people who are really making a difference are dedicating their every working hour to doing their job well. They’re not spending time thinking about how to craft their image or make themselves look important.
Conversely, there are people in any field who, while they may not go as far as calling themselves heroes, they don’t hesitate to sing their own praises and are always looking for opportunities to put in a good word about themselves or something impressive they were a part of.
There’s a business lesson here. A company’s success depends on diligent, high productivity workers to research, create and build the company’s product, so it’s important that employers take the extra effort to look past the talkers and scope out the doers and to recognize those doing the heavy lifting and truly making the difference. The people doing the most and best work don’t have time to self-promote. Or as the saying goes, “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.”
Guam Business Magazine has the pleasure of notifying many doers in the community that their hard work has been noticed. We do so through various programs and features including Executive of the Year, Businesswoman of the Year, 40 Under Forty, Most Generous Companies and the A List. And we often get the same humble replies about not thinking they’re as deserving of the nomination as someone else.
As we continue with these programs, we look forward to honoring many more people who never sing their own praises yet are undoubtedly worthy of the honor. Should you find us contacting you in the future, know that acceptance of your nomination is not a message of vanity or pride because your nomination came from someone else — someone who notices and appreciates what you do.
