How To Know If You Are a Dependent

You weren’t hired so that someone could tell you what to do. If you were hired by someone who wants to tell you what to do and how to do it, then you have made an enormous mistake in your choice of employer. If this is what you want, your employer has made an enormous mistake by hiring you.

• You wait for assignments: If you wait for your manager, supervisor, or leader to tell you what you need to do, then you are a dependent. An independent person would proactively recognize what needs to be done and take action. An independent would get things done even if they went weeks or months without ever bumping into their leader. If you wait to be told what to do, you are a dependent.
• You wait for directions: If you are waiting for directions you are a dependent. You don’t need to know how to do everything your job entails. You are allowed to ask for directions. And that’s what’s important here, that you go and ask for directions. If you need an answer, go get the answer and then get busy. Waiting is what a dependent would do.
• You aren’t learning to do your job: Every company should spend more time, money, and energy training their people. But they don’t often have all of the resources they would like to have in order to train everyone on everything they need to know. A dependent waits for training, believing it is someone else’s job to insure their success. Independent people go straight to Google, and with a few keystrokes figure out what they need to do. If you ask for someone else to do something for you more than once, you are a dependent.
• You are not developing yourself for your next job: A dependent believes that time served is enough to deserve the job one level up from theirs, and there was a time when this might have been true. Someone who is independent asks for additional responsibility and notches themselves up to the next level, and the next level, and the one after that. If you aren’t growing into your next role, you are a dependent, waiting for someone else to tap you on the shoulder and gift you more money.
• You do only what is required: A dependent does only what is required. They don’t try to improve any project or assignment they work on. They do the bare minimum, hoping that they can skate by with mediocre outcomes, trying to stay off the radar. A person who is independent always finds a way to add value to whatever they are charged with doing. If you do as little as you can, you are a dependent.

The person responsible for leading you shouldn’t feel that they should be allowed to claim you as a tax deduction. You weren’t hired to be someone’s dependent.