Category: Improving Yourself

Think hard work is all you need for career success?

Jeffrey Pfeffer, at Stanford University Graduate School of Business disagrees. In his latest book, Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t, he argues that what you need to succeed in the workplace is, above all, power.

He was asked in an interview with BNET “What is the biggest mistake people make when it comes to achieving power?”

He answered: “I see a lot of people who voluntarily give up the opportunity to have a lot of power by saying things like, ‘I won’t play the game.’ That won’t get you anywhere.”

Sources of Power

As a coach of talent, part of my job is to help career starters and emerging leaders see that they have power no matter where they stand on the corporate ladder. It’s a matter of recognizing and capitalizing on it. There are two sources of power.

1. Formal or Position Power
This is based on your title – manager, supervisor, senior vice-president, etc. With it comes the ability and responsibility to reward (provide someone with a raise or plum assignment) and punish (discipline someone or limit access to resources). However, there’s another.

2. Informal or Personal Power
This is based not on your position, but on you. You have the ability to develop expert power (based on highly valued knowledge and skills) and associate power (based upon who you know and who knows you).

Which is easier to obtain?
In most cases its personal power. Here are five ways to increase your informal power and not feel you just playing the game. Take a look at these past posts.

1. Know What’s Going On: Information is power so be on constant alert.
2. Have Skills Will Travel: This is what you bring to the employment table.
3. Develop a Strong Brand: It conveys your distinctiveness as a professional or leader.
4. Enhance Your Reputation: Toot your horn occasionally and have others do it as well.
5. Build Good Working Relationships: They are the bread of career life so eat often and hearty.

Career Success Tip

True power, to get things done, does not come from a title or position. Rather it comes from the value ( your expert power) you produce for your internal and external customers. Figure out ways to make a positive impact (your associate power) on the key people in your career world. That’s how you build power careers.

On a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (high) how much personal power do you have right now to achieve your career goals? What can you do to get it to a 10?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

A reader asked for career advice on this situation.

“A new position, which will be a promotion, has just opened up in the company. It sounds very exciting even though I haven’t had much experience in that kind of responsibility. But I have a good track record and friends are urging me to go for it. I think I’m bright enough to take it on, even with my lack of background. Is it too big a risk?”

The Peter Principle

It states that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” In other words, the cream rises until it sours. So if you don’t have the appropriate background, you’re obviously going to have to be able to get up to speed fast. Here are some things you need to consider before throwing your hat into the ring.

1. Would your boss be supportive or offended if you moved on?
2. What are your strengths and how can you leverage them for this position?
3. How much time would you have before you’re expected to perform at top speed?
4. What skills do you need to be successful in the position and where will you get them?
5. Will the person in that position train you or will you have to dive in and either sink or swim?
6. If you do succeed in the new position, will it advance your career or just be another line on your resume?
7. And most important, if you fail or don’t meet expectations, how might this affect your career?

These are just a few starter questions to help you assess the degree of career risk involved in going after this position. Find someone objective, like a mentor or coach, who can help you look honestly at the pros and cons. Then decide is it worth the time, effort and the stress of taking on this kind of challenge.

Career Success Tip

Make sure you don’t get caught in the Peter Principle. Choose your assignments carefully. They can make or break your career. Also, be aware of Murphy’s Law. If anything can go wrong, it will. Nothing is as easy as it looks. Everything takes longer than expected.

How well do you choose your assignments? How much career risk are you willing to take?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

What do you yearn for? Our souls yearn for the things that make us most happy. Some of the words that describe yearning is to crave, long for, want very much. What do you really yearn for?

This has changed for me over the years and right now my soul seems to be yearning for time to slow down and let go of constant action and accomplishment. It feels great not to be so scheduled that I can take extra time after a training to stop by a store to check out the deals. Or I can spend extra long conversing with a friend because I’m not rushed to do the next thing.

Often times the work that we do provides us with what our souls are craving for. Or our work can do the exact opposite, it can give us the craving for other work that we hope one day we can do. Whichever the case is for you, take the time to really ask what your spirit is yearning for.

The daily devotional and journal that I’m reading is called God Calling. One of the recent entries shared how God wishes we yearned for Him, just like we yearn to take in fresh air on a beautiful sunny day. This really hits home for me living in MN as we’ve had a streak of “warm weather” (around 40 degrees) and everyone has been outside yearning for the day when all the snow will be melted. Being outside more this week than I have this past month, has created that burning desire for spring to arrive. So the same can be with our spirit. Our spirit inside of us longs to be heard, given a breath of fresh air.

How to listen to your yearnings

So I’ve been trying to breathe more and give my spirit the chance to come alive again. How do you do this you might be asking? I’m trying to figure out the same thing! All I know is that I’m taking the time to slow down, be more quiet and just listen to the yearnings that come my way. So far what I’m hearing is that my spirit is yearning for simple and easy.

One example is the “self love” date that I mentioned I would be checking in on from last week’s entry X is for eXtra special. I craved to have some time for myself doing what I loved in whatever way it unfolded. While my day consisted of volunteering, praying, writing, reading, shopping and connecting with loved ones, I especially enjoyed just spending the day without any expectations or deadlines.

Another example is that I tend to over prepare when it comes to my trainings. I’ll bring a bunch of props, books, and other resources to share. I’ll spend extra time working on my PowerPoint presentations. I’ll time out my agenda to make sure that I cover everything. I’ll get to the training an hour beforehand so I can set up the room and be totally ready before any of my participants arrive.

Listening to my spirit, I was getting the sense to make this training I had today more light and simple. It was telling me that I didn’t need to bring all this extra stuff and take all this extra time to get ready. I just needed to TRUST that I knew this material and to let it unfold as it needed to during the class. So today’s training went great and it felt so easy. I was there only 20 minutes before it started, brought only 4 books/props and only used 2 of them. I remained open to the flow of the class and let the energy of the 32 participants drive where the class should go. I spent more time discussing some aspects than I thought and other times I covered areas I didn’t intend on covering. I had a man who worked at the help desk in my class, so he helped when there was a computer issue and I didn’t have to stress about that. It was so fun, easy and effective. Having had this experience of it being easy and light makes me want to have more of these opportunities. However, when I’ve approached my work like I mentioned before, it was not the case. It felt heavy and a lot of work.

Again, what are you really yearning for? We would love to hear from you!

p.s. I actually thought all week that I would be writing that y is for yielding. Yet when I started writing, I didn’t feel the yearning or ideas flow. Right then, yearning came to me and I started writing about that. It can be that easy, if you take the time to go within so you can let your spirit guide the way.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.

What do you see on the horizon? I bet it’s change and more change!

In these days of takeovers and mergers, of downsizing operations of multiple “rightsizings”, chances are that you are going to be caught up in some form of major workplace change at least once in your career. Probably many times!

See Part 1 for Stage 1. Something’s Up and Stage 2 Getting Acquainted. Now Take a look at the last two stages.

Stage 3. Settled In: The Six Month Benchmark

Now that the dust has settled, it’s the time to gauge your career health. Do I feel like an active participant or am I on the sidelines looking in? Have I gotten reassuring comments or positive feedback? If you are in the dark, take the risk and request a meeting with your boss to discuss your performance.

You need to be direct. Say, “I’ve been working hard to cooperate and adjust to the changes. So how am I doing? Are there things I need to work on to be more effective?”

You may get an indirect response such as: “You’re doing fine, keep up the hard work”; or “Let’s set a time to discuss this further.”

However, don’t be satisfied with an evasive or avoidance answer. Performance feedback is essential during times of organizational transition. If all the signs are looking good, you can start breathing a sign of relief. But, don’t let your guard down completely. The next six months are also very important.

Stage 4. A Year After: Is The Coast Clear?

By the time you’re a year or more into a major change, it’s reasonable to wonder: Has my work life settled down at last? Has the sense of crisis passed? If this is the case, great! You’ve come through the storms of change and now are going on to calmer times, at least for the short term, – long term who knows?

Or, is the atmosphere still very hectic despite many attempts to try to fix what’s not working? Or, is everything on hold again for the nth time waiting for someone to make the decision? Or your workload is not easing up but getting worse? Sad to say, sometimes things never calm down especially in troubled company or rapidly changing ones. If this is your scenario, you may decide to take a break from the relentless change. You can try to find a calmer port within your company or you may need to seriously consider finding a new position somewhere else.

Career Success Tip

Taking control of one’s career sometimes means making some very hard decisions. But once a decision is made and action is taken, then you can get on with your life. Isn’t that what career management is all about—taking charge of one’s destiny?

Readers, are you currently dealing with a new boss, a direction or other workplace changes? If so, what stage are you in? How well are you doing? Let me hear your stories.

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

You will recall from my last post that the Eight Fold Path is a Buddhist approach to living and working to create greater peace, wisdom and compassion. The Eight Fold Path includes Right Livelihood, Right Action, Speech, Intentions, etc.

Many caring people don’t ever stop to question if what they are doing is the right thing, not ask the harder questions about what their company profits are used for, nor examine the end result of their business.

• If the system you are supporting through your work isn’t affirming life in some way, what are you called to do?
• If you aren’t working on a product or project that is life giving, life enhancing, are you doing the right thing with your time and talent?
• Is the ultimate outcome of your work life affirming or life diminishing?

Luckily, there is an approach to business that does affirm life- The Triple Bottom Line of People, Planet and Profits. The philosophy of the Social Venture Network (SVN) started by Judy Wicks and others is to ‘Do Well by Doing Good’. SVN includes many wonderful examples of Social Entrepreneurship such as fair trade companies and neighborhood empowerment businesses.

Social Entrepreneurship, along with the Triple Bottom Line approach, provide another option for running a business than the traditional view of corporate profits above all else. We’ve seen the destruction and damage done with the singular philosophy of profit maximization and the growth of the Military Industrial Complex. It’s time for another approach.

Check out www.svn.org to see a list of the SVN member companies and corporate philosophy- SVN Video You can also read wonderful stories of people living Right Livelihood in Yes! Magazine. Go to their ‘New Economy’ tab. (http://www.yesmagazine.org/ ) to read about companies who are using their entrepreneurial spirit to make the world more just and compassionate.

I welcome your thoughts and perspectives on this issue. During this time of economic re-structuring we have a unique opportunity to rebuild a new economy that serves everyone.

Share with us your reflections on Right Livelihood, The Triple Bottom Line, and Doing Well By Doing Good.

May your heart expand and express itself this week through your work – Happy Valentine’s Day

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Linda is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant. Go to her website www.lindajferguson.com to read more about her work, view video clips of her talks, and find out more about her book “Path for Greatness: Spirituality at Work” available on Amazon.

Change is a fact of life. Don’t resist it; thrive in it!

In these days of takeovers and mergers, of downsizing operations and multiple rightsizings, chances are you’re going to be caught up in some form of major workplace change at least once in your career. Probably several times!

Whether it’s a new job or a new boss or a new direction, the best career survival strategy is to respond effectively to these four stages of workplace change.

Stage 1. Something’s Up: What To Do Before The Change

If you’re lucky, you’ll have some advance warning and time to prepare. But most of the time, you just have an uneasy feeling. There might be lots of hushed conversations or closed-door meetings. Top management might seem especially busy and inaccessible. Or the rumor mill is running high.

This is not the time to stay buried behind your desk or in your office hoping everything will be OK. Rather get out there, keep informed and start thinking about your options for riding the waves of change.

Stage 2: Getting Acquainted: The First Couple of Months

In the first weeks of the transition, take extra care to be visible, productive and open to change. This is not a good time to go on vacation for two weeks. Ask yourself: Is there still career opportunity here or should I now begin looking elsewhere more earnestly? You need to decide to put your energy into making a go of it or starting to let go.

If you have a new boss, ask for a meeting to discuss your background, to provide an update on your projects and to find out about the new priorities for your team, department or division. If it’s a restructuring, understand the reasons behind it. What is the company dealing with now, that it wasn’t dealing with in the past? What goals is it trying to accomplish in the reorganization? In what way can you contribute to these new goals?

Career Success Tip

It’s time to get off the fence. It’s time to make a decision and take action. Are you going to hang on and ride out the storm; or hunt for opportunities in other areas in the company; or start looking for a new position somewhere else? Whatever you decide, do it with commitment.

The next post will focus on Stage 3: settling in and Stage 4: a year after. Learn additional career survival strategies.

Do you know what YOU do today will directly influence your career in 3, 5 or 10 years?

• For more resources, see the Library topic Career Management.
• Start right now to be a Career Builder!
• Take charge of your future with the Career Success System.
• Get performance and career boosters in the Smart Moves Blog.
• Copyright © 2011 Marcia Zidle career strategist and leadership coach.

How can you be extra special to your spirit this week? How can you show love to your soul? The work that we do in our lives whether on the job, at our home, or on the stage, we need to be extra special to ourselves. If we don’t replenish, renew and refresh our spirits, then we won’t be able to give the best of who we are to others.

Overstretched

We get the importance of this, yet many of us don’t put it into action. Remember me writing about the bungee cord hitting me in the head and needing to get stitches (see V is for Vulnerable)? The symbolism of the bungee cord is relevant. We like to stretch ourselves to the limit, which is what is great about a bungee cord. You can take this little cord and amazingly stretch it to great lengths. Yet, when it’s been overstretched, it can snap back in the fiercest way (my nice scar proves it). I, like many of us, have been overstretching myself for years. If you’re like me, you have many things you want to do, relationships you want to nurture, and goals you want to achieve. And all of us only have so many hours and only so much capacity to achieve it all in a day or in our lifetime.

Permission slip to stop working harder

I was listening to my Divine guidance (see D is for Divine) and heard the message that I need to take some time off and stop “working hard”. So I gave myself permission to stop working harder this month so I can focus on being extra special to my soul.

So this is what I did. Another phrase on my vision board says, “God does His best work when you do no work.” I let all my work worries go. This “permission slip” to stop working harder has given me this extra special freedom. Freedom from expectations on what I should be doing or accomplishing. Freedom to be extra special to myself and pursue the work that inspires me.

Show yourself some love

I was inspired to write this entry while I was giving myself “some extra love” because of the upcoming international day of self love on Feb. 13. This amazing woman, Christine Arylo, created this day to help all of learn how to “fall madly in love with ourselves.” I do have on my vision board “goddess of unconditional love” so I thought this would be a good time for me to live that out and who best to start showing more love to – me.

I encourage you to check out her resources, including inspiring songs, self-love kit and audio interviews. I’m making a self-love date with myself on Feb. 13. I’ll check back in with you next week to let you know how this extra-special day for my soul went. How about you? What can you do to show yourself some love? We would love to hear from you!

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Janae Bower is an inspirational speaker, award-winning author and training consultant. She founded Finding IT, a company that specializes in personal and professional development getting to the heart of what matters most. She started Project GratOtude, a movement to increase gratitude in people’s lives.

“Your #1 priority must be to launch and grow a business called Me, Inc.”

That’s according to Tom Peters, leadership author and consultant, who encourages everyone to see themselves as self-employed, even if they work for someone. Therefore in this world of downsizing, right sizing, restructuring and mergers, you need to be focused on managing your career as a business that has assets, liabilities, customers, profits and losses.

Are you ready to launch Me, Inc.?

Here are three things you need to do today to be a career entrepreneur.

1. SWOT yourself.
First examine what you bring to the employment table. Review your Strengths (your skills and experiences that can move you ahead) and your Weaknesses (the lack of skills and experiences that can hold you back). Next look outside at your company or industry. Review Opportunities (situations that can move your career ahead and Threats (situations that can derail your career). Use this information to plan your next career move.

2. Establish an early-warning system.
Don’t be a modern day Rip Van Winkle. As the pace of change accelerates, careers will be profoundly affected by what’s happening inside and outside your workplace. If you can get a sense of where your company is heading, then you can avoid that nasty, but all too frequent, occurrence of the future creeping up and taking you by surprise.

3. Think resume in everything you do.
At the end of each year, whether you are looking for a new job or not, take the time to write or update your resume and compare it with last year’s. See if it has gotten noticeably better? See if it shows growth in a variety of skills, or growth in satisfied customers, or completed projects. Avoid becoming a professional dinosaur. If you don’t evolve, as in nature, you will face extinction.

Career Success Tip.

Most people forget they really have two jobs. The first is to do what they get paid for and do it better than others. The second is to do what’s required to ensure their career success isn’t left to someone else.

Readers, what actions can you take be a successful career entrepreneur?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?

As we approach Valentine’s Day I couldn’t resist the urge to write about working from the heart. I like the teachings of the Eight Fold Path in Buddhism as a roadmap for working with a pure heart.

In the Buddha’s sermon on how to eliminate suffering and achieve self-realization, he outlined eight ways to bring peace, compassion, and wisdom to your life and by extension into the world.

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

If you want to find more ways to bring a pure heart to your work, consider these eight practices.

The concept of Right Livelihood refers to work that is honorable, makes the world a better place, or at least does no harm by killing or destroying life.

Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh describes Right Livelihood this way,

“To practice Right Livelihood (samyag ajiva), you have to find a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion. The way you support yourself can be an expression of your deepest self, or it can be a source of suffering for you and others. ” … Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or erode them. We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living.” (The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching [Parallax Press, 1998], p. 104)

Right Livelihood does not stand alone. It must entail the other approaches as well. Even working for a noble cause, you could not have Right Livelihood if you are not honest, take advantage of others, do not act with good faith. The other folds of the path to enlightenment, such as Right Action, Right Speech and Right Intention, all have to be taken into consideration to walk the path of peace and compassion, to work with a pure heart.

So I invite you this week to focus on these steps as a way to bring your best self to your work, to bring peace and compassion to your work place. Pay attention next time to speak to a co-worker to see if you are speaking with a pure heart.

• Are you speaking with compassion, wisdom, honesty?
• Is your effort and concentration focused on accomplishing what you are hired to do?
• Are you setting the right intention and doing the right actions to serve your clients in an honest, caring way?

May this be a time for greater awareness of your pure heart at work. Write to us and let us know what insights or aha’s you achieved following these eight practices.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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Linda is an author, speaker, coach, and consultant. Go to her website www.lindajferguson.com to read more about her work, view video clips of her talks, and find out more about her book “Path for Greatness: Spirituality at Work” available on Amazon.

How well do you toot your own horn?

There’s a well know saying: “It’s not what you know …but who you know?”

Well in today’s changing world, replace it with this: “It’s not only what you know, it’s not only who you know, but, as important, it‘s who knows you.”

In order to be known you can’t just stand there and wait for things to happen. Don’t assume people will notice the wonderful quality of your work or that of your department. Rather, build your reputation as a can-do professional or leader. Successful people don’t hide their achievements. They broadcast them at the right time and the right place.

Build Your Reputation and Career

Do you dread the idea of touting your skills and your work; think self-promotion smacks of showing off; and believe that it’s playing politics? If you do, then you‘re missing out on a key skills of managing one’s career. Here are some tips to get you started.

1. At the end of each week, document your accomplishments.
   This will ensure that you have an accurate record of the value you provide. It will also make it easier to talk about your achievements without feeling that you’re exaggerating.
2. Be seen and known in your organization.
   For example: Take on a high-profile assignments, volunteer to be on a multi-departmental task force, attend community events sponsored by your company, write an article for the internal newsletter or blog, etc.
3. Grow and maintain your network.
   Stay in touch with clients, supplier, partners and industry leaders because they also need to know of your accomplishments. They can be a great source for information, contacts and referrals.

Career Success Tip:

In a fast paced, changing workplace, it’s who sees you and knows your work that matters. Promote yourself, not be your title, but by the outcomes or results of what you do. Don’t assume people will notice the wonderful quality of your work or that of your department. How well do you toot your own horn?

Readers, what’s your experience with promoting yourself? Has it helped your career?

Do you want to develop Career Smarts?