What should you expect from your employer if you want to be a first-class player and a winner?

Foremost, you should expect to be provided with an environment of opportunity in which hard work and achievement are rewarded. This means you will be encouraged to grow as fast as you can, broadening your capabilities and building your experience every step of the way. You will be allowed to assume all the responsibilities you can handle.

This environment of opportunity should allow you to take common sense risks with the assurance that you will be rewarded if you are right and not punished if you turn out to be wrong.

You should expect your employer to provide you with the assets you need to get your assignments done on time and in a manner that produces profits. You have little chance of being a winner unless you are employed by an organization that satisfies this expectation.

You should expect your employer to maintain a highly visible connection between efforts, achievements and rewards. You will not have a nurturing soil in which you can grow to be a winner in the absence of a reward system that distinguishes between doing and "gonna do." There is little incentive to make your best effort where the annual compensation review almost always results in across-the-board, cost-of-living raises for one and all alike, loafers as well as producers; where winners are never singled out for a pat on the back.

Over time, the absence of opportunity, the lack of resources and the failure to reward good work will kill the fire in even the most ambitious of us. These failures will also cripple organizations.

Those who are driven to be winners will be smart enough to either change such a destructive environment or leave it.

Ramon Greenwood is a former Senior Vice President of American Express. To subscriber to his f*ee semi-monthly newsletter please go to http://www.CommonSenseAtWork.com/GetItNow.

• Too Many Maybes


• Is Real Estate The Right Career For You


• Five Lethal Job-Hunting Mistakes


• Accounting Job Interview


• Banking Interview Questions


• Funny Interview Questions


• Preparing For A Job Interview: Techniques You May Not Have Thought Of


• The Best Way to Resign


• When the Boss is a Bully


• Commoditizing Recruitment