Choreographing Your Career / Monthy Mentor - October 2009
Choreographing Your Career / Monthy Mentor - October 2009
Choreographing Your Career
by JB Hunt
You've held the same job longer than you’d care to admit or due to the economy you find yourself in between success. Now you’re itching for new challenges and a chance to build on your work experience.
What’s the next step? You must decide.
Today, organizations provide the framework for managing careers, but they ask you to take responsibility for your own career plans. That’s not good news for people who want constant direction, but most people welcome being more in control of their career goals and destiny.
If your career is to succeed, you must respond to four demands.
1.) There is no substitute for an honest assessment of who you are and what skills you possess.
Such an understanding empowers you to communicate clearly about where you want to go. You understand the demands of the position, and you are confident in the match between you
and the job.
2.) Any progress toward a new position comes from your work and drive.
Career advancement comes to those who consciously assess their direction and then set out to achieve specific objectives. They work hard to maintain networks, seek information, and create relationships to achieve career priorities.
3.) Career development efforts must reflect current strategic challenges.
Today’s theme is improving quality and customer service. By understanding business principles and applying them in your work, you communicate your readiness to advance.
4.) Value is translated as impact on the bottom line.
Bottom-line thinking is more than a fad. To develop your career means to show what you can do to boost the bottom line.
Six Recommendations
How do you choreograph your career? Here are six ideas.
1. Link your career goals to the organization’s business strategy.
With leaner jobs and fewer business opportunities available, you have to make yourself more marketable. This means aligning your goals with those of the company.
2. Be realistic about your boss’s career management skills.
Your relationship with your boss should allow you to talk about career goals without appearing unhappy with your present position. But don’t be disappointed if your boss isn’t skillful in helping you plan your future.
3. Build an individual action plan.
Today, there’s no such thing as a packaged career track. A typical career path may call for running a division or even building international exposure with a stint overseas.
4. Use the available resources with-in your organization.
You may be sitting on a wealth of training opportunities and not realize it. For example, if
you want to move into sales, see if you can get into a company sales course.
5. Make sure your expectations are realistic.
For example, if you want to be a researcher, you may need to get your doctorate. Address the part of the equation that you can change—namely, yourself.
6. Make choices that are in the best interests of the organization.
Showing that what you want to do benefits the company will give you a better chance of creating opportunities for yourself. Remember: You must now choreograph your own career.
Take Charge of Your Career
Set a standard of excellence early in your career, and take the chances to break out of the pack when you have them. Here are five strategies for progressing in your career.
First, get profit-centered responsibility as soon as possible.
Find an area of functional responsibility in line management or operations—where you can prove yourself as both a specialist with particular expertise and a generalist who can exercise leadership. Also get experience in the company’s core business and understand how information, labor, and capital can be used to create value or add value to a product or service.
Second, know how and when to take risks.
Leaders seem to have a special mental compass that allows them to look around blind corners. You must be in the vanguard and take calculated risks. Bidding for a precarious assignment, such as a division turn-around, can propel you to the top.
Third, broaden your base of knowledge with an international assignment.
In such assignments, you can often achieve dramatic gains and impressive results more quickly and spectacularly. Of course, the risks may be greater. Regardless, the risks are worth it. Directing the dynamics of technology and trade in the global marketplace will increasingly become a key feature in the top jobs.
Fourth, learn to communicate effectively.
Assuming a leadership role means being able to articulate goals and policies, not only with colleagues and customers but also with peers and competitors, various governmental and regulatory bodies, the public at large, and the media.
Fifth, use mobility selectively.
Work in two or three different places to ensure a breadth of experience and flexibility. But remember that too much job-hopping will ultimately be detrimental. Success is still based on a solid record of sustained achievement. When you move, make sure you know where you’re going and what you’re getting into. Never jump ship in a panic just to get away from a situation. Aggressive, honest, and ethical self-leadership will be the key to success. Of course, in any career, luck is a factor. But, as Louis Pasteur noted, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Successful people work hard to “get lucky.”
Personal Development
Topic of the Month
BEING POSITIVE
Five Powerfulstrategies will enable you to keep a positive attitude.
1. Start your day on a positive note.Awaken to pleasing chimes or soft music, giving your-self extra time so that your day can evolve at an unhurried pace. Focus your mental energies on the positive things you expect to achieve as you eat breakfast, the most important meal of the day. While driving to work, don’t let traffic and other drivers control your mood and behavior; invest in yourself by listening to educational audiotapes.
2. Use positive greetings.How do you respond to the greeting “How are you?” Do you answer on autopilot with, “Fine”? Or, worse, tell people all about your aches and pains? Make it a habit to answer in a positive fashion with, “Great,” “Fantastic,” “Excellent!” With this habit, you send a positive affirmation to your subconscious, which will reinforce the positive programming you started in the morning.
3. Expect the best.Just because things are tough today does not mean that they will be that way tomorrow. Always expect the best. We generally get what we expect from life. If you expect that your body is an extremely well-integrated system that possesses the ability to stay in excellent health, then you will likely stay healthy and not suffer the myriad illnesses that others complain about.
4. Get off your case.Learn to forgive yourself. Sending yourself positive messages has an extremely positive effect on your moods, behavior, interactions, and performance. Negative messages can be extremely counter-productive. So when you make a mistake, note what you learn, so that you can avoid the mistake in the future. Then make peace with yourself, and get on with your life.
5. Quit being a perfectionist.Conducting yourself as if you live in a perfect world will set you up for major disappointments, stress, and even illness. Accept imperfection as the normal order of things. Prepare for the worst, but expect the best; in the long run you will get what you expect. Relentlessly apply these principles and you will maintain a positive attitude and make yours a winning life!
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