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Strategic tips for managing your career – if you are – or seek to be – a paddler…

7. Keep your skills current at all times.

To be successful at managing your career, you must constantly upgrade and enhance your abilities. Seek out continuing education—learn new skills, methods, techniques, strategies, and tactics to stay at the leading edge of your field.

Whether you’re an executive chef, senior manager, or an individual contributor, you must be as good as you can be—there’s always a competitor one step behind you.  Fall is near, school starts for all children soon, and this is a great time to think about what skills you need to update or what new skills you need.

Spending 30 minutes a day you on your strengths or a skill, just five days a week will net you 130 hours of focus a year.  That is a small investment of time and will create solid mastery.  What skill do you need to hone?

Action Tip:

Identify a skill to update.  Write down why it is important to you to update this skill.  Now, develop a plan to hone or update your skill.

Do you have a question about applying this action tip to your search? Look to the right and sign up for next Q & A session, join the session and ask your question.

Strategic tips for managing your career – if you are – or seek to be – a paddler…

6. Know your industry and what’s happening within the industry.

Is your industry growing? Stagnant?  Shrinking? Individuals who plan carefully and stay abreast can succeed even during times of radical change. Strategic planning, discipline, and focus are a must to take advantage of changing industry conditions.

Paddlers hone their skills, and stay abreast of changing conditions.  Life like the river can change quickly.

What is new in your industry?  What tools do you use to stay current? Is it time to apply your experience and skills in a new field?

What do you want to learn or experience in the last quarter of the year?  Is it time for you to plan the next phase of your career?

Knowing when to paddle in a different direction is key, it helps you grow, and continue to live on purpose.  Just as industries change, so do people.  As the fourth quarter of the year approaching it is a great time to not only look at what is happening in your industry and your career, it is a great time to look at your plans for next year, the next 3 -5 five years, and the next ten years.

Action Tip:

Identify the top 3 changes in your industry this year.  Record where your industry is headed next year and over the next 3 – 5 years and how this impacts your current position and your career; finally review any changes in direction you should make for the coming year based on these changes in your industry.

Do you have a question about applying this action tip to your search? Look to the right and sign up for next Q & A session, join the session and ask your question.

Strategic tips for managing your career – if you are – or seek to be – a paddler…

5. Quality and customer/employer satisfaction are principal to your success.

Paddlers live and work on purpose.  They understand themselves and the environment around them.  There are some rare conditions paddlers cannot control.  A paddler’s success always comes from controlling the things you can control and handling those conditions you don’t control with experience, knowledge, patience and grace.

If the people who use or purchase your services or products are dissatisfied with the experience, they will go elsewhere. That is a condition you can control.

Just like a consumer, an employer will shop around if your services are not up to standard. A cooperative attitude, timely delivery of quality work, and all other aspects of the employer’s expectations must be met consistently. If they aren’t, you are out of business or out of work.

Do you have an open mind about your performance?   Do you work consistently to hone your performance?

Effective coaching works to connect you to an awareness of your habits, your decision-making, and performance that can significantly influence your results. Coaching brings clarity to your assumptions by placing your efforts and energy on the activities that can alter outcomes. A good coach will challenge, question, and help you get to the truth of the situation.

Action Tip:

Where is your performance today?  How do you know? List the 3 strengths you need to focus on this week, and this month.  List 3 habits you have that significantly influence your results. Who is you coach?  How do you get feedback about your performance?

Do you have a question about your search? Look to the right and sign up for next Q & A session, join the session and ask your question.

Strategic tips for managing your career – if you are – or seek to be – a paddler…

4. Understand your value-added qualities.

What value do you offer? What qualities make you unique?

Often, they are the tasks you do better than most other people. Understanding how you communicate this value to your employer/customers is critical.

You must be able to articulate your value-added qualities to get hired, be promoted, and continue to be compensated accordingly.  Are you aware of the way you communicate your value and help others to link their value-added qualities to the organization?

Your personal brand attributes often help you communicate your value.  Do you know your top brand attributes?   Knowing the attributes others value in you and being able to communicate your brand attributes is an easy way to help your unique value stand out.

Action Tip:

Ask twenty-five or more people how you add value to your job, tasks or the things you do.  Create a list of all your value-added qualities and define how you will communication these qualities to your customers to help them solve their problems or address their needs.

Do you have a question about your search? Look to the right and sign up for next Q & A session, join the session and ask your question.

Strategic tips for managing your career – if you are – or seek to be – a paddler…

3.  Know your customer.

Your career is a financial transaction.  You are paid because you offer a service or a product that a customer is willing to purchase.

If you want to be effective, you must know your customer. That means learning customer needs and wants and understanding how you can fulfill them.

You must sell your expertise to both external and internal customers. Critical internal customers to every employee are bosses, the boss’s boss, other departments, and the organization itself. Each of these constituents buys your services on a daily basis. Discovering how to build relationships and sell to those customers can enhance your career on many levels.

Customer needs change, just as you change.  You must continually learn and stay abreast of your customers needs if you want to stay relevant and have a fulfilling career.

Action Tip:

Define your customers.  List how you meet the needs and want of your customers.

Do you have a question about your search? Look to the right and sign up for next Q & A session, join the session and ask your question.

Strategic tips for managing your career – if you are – or seek to be – a paddler…

In the US last week, we celebrated July 4^th the birthday of our wonderful country.  Our nation was founded on ideals, passions, strengths, and vision.

The US has grown and changed since it was founded and it continues to grow and change.  Yet as a nation we have a unique value and purpose in the world.  Our citizens live, fight, and have died to define the unique value of the US.  The nation’s Founding Fathers drafted a living document to define and communicate the value the young nation would offer the world.

2. Define who you are and the unique value you bring to the marketplace.

Have you done this for yourself?  Do you have a clear idea of who you are and the value you bring to the marketplace?

Identify your strengths, your interests, and your passions. The use of assessments can assist you in this step. Typically, these factors drive your career accomplishments and motivate you. Coaching can help you discover and better express your message, and your attributes to others in a manner that enhances your value in the marketplace.

Action Tip:

Label three pages Strengths, Interests, and Passions. Write until you fill each page with your strengths, your interests, and your passions.  Then ask yourself the questions below and write down your answers.

How do I currently use my strengths?

What interests are really important to me and why?

What do I have so much passion and drive about and why is this important to me?

How do I incorporate my strengths, my interests, and my passions into my career right now?

How do I want to incorporate my strengths, my interests, and my passions into my career in the future?

Do you have a question about your search? Look to the right and sign up for next Q & A session, join the session and ask your question.

To the paddler, career management—like the river—is serious business. It means taking control and focusing on “career” as a business, taking action in key areas, and selecting an effective coach as a guide when necessary.

If you are – or seek to be – a paddler, here are eight strategic tips for managing your career.

1. Don’t turn your career over to anyone else to run.
2. Define who you are and the unique value you bring to the marketplace.
3. Know your customer.
4. Understand your value-added qualities.
5. Quality and customer/employer satisfaction are principal to your success.
6. Know your industry and what’s happening within the industry.
7. Keep your skills current at all times.
8. Always be open and able to change direction.

Recently, a client who enjoys the rivers of New England shared this insight. For her, a river is much like life. She can choose to travel the river in many different ways . . . she can float on an inner tube or paddle in a kayak. Either choice will take her somewhere.

She chooses to paddle down the river — her river — because she has discovered that choice provides her with more enjoyment, fulfillment, and satisfaction. It allows her to take control of her journey and of the results she desires in her career.

Stay tuned, read and discuss these eight strategic tips.  I’ll share action items for managing your career and provide insights to help you execute these for your personal success.

Do you have a question about your search? Look to the right and sign up for next Q & A session, join the session and ask your question.

People often manage their career and their search for a new career or job like travelers on a river.  There are FLOATERS and PADDLERS.   Anyone who has spent time on a river knows the difference.

FLOATERS let the river take them and their flotation device wherever it chooses. They are content to watch the world go by at its own pace—with their progress and direction at the mercy of other forces. Floaters sometimes take an unexpected dip because they are not prepared for the currents. Floaters just let it happen.

There are floaters in the workplace, too. They allow bosses, department heads, and other forces to direct their careers. Unprepared for change, they can find themselves “in deep water”, trying to figure out what happened – wondering if that promotion will ever come and where their career is going. Floaters don’t take control of their careers; they don’t live their purpose.

PADDLERS, on the other hand, take charge of their direction, path, and speed. Paddlers are going somewhere – with a purpose. Paddlers make it happen.

Paddlers have a distinct mindset and a purpose. They think like the CEO of a business. They assess their strengths and weaknesses, develop their skills, and hone an understanding of the currents, conditions, and environment. Paddlers, such as kayakers, have a plan for the trip. If they take a spill, they have the ability, confidence, and self-understanding to right the craft quickly and continue their journey. What might have been a disaster becomes a minor detour.

Are you a floater or a paddler?

Post your comments below.

First if you got the interview you can bet someone saw value in you, your skills and your experience.  Often being told “no” encourages people to try harder or push on doing the same things.  Most people believe coming in second means they just need to try harder to be first.

In job searching that may or may not be the case.  Far too often I see people who don’t really fit in a job or an industry, yet they fail into it, got hired again and again into a similar position so they just keep pushing in that direction.   For some it is time to stop, to assess, plan and execute something new.

Joe (not his real name) had eight jobs in eleven years in the same position and industry.  After his last termination, 120 weeks of unemployment and nine interviews he decided to explore help for interviewing skills.  He assumed his interviewing skills were his problem and the reason he was not getting hired.

When we discussed why and how his past jobs ended his answer was the work ended, then he collected unemployment until he was hired in the same position again.  I ask if I could call his references and check with this last two employers and he agreed. 

 The discovery from his references and his employers was different than his point of view for each of his last positions.  All of his professional references painted a different picture than Joe did of his work and his work style.  His references spoke well of his skills, yet painted a different picture of his work style. 

One reference shared that often when he was called as a reference he asked if he enjoyed working with Joe he said no.  One reference disclosed that after working with Joe at two different businesses he would answer the call with an example about Joe’s work style and how is affected him and let the new possible employer draw whatever conclusion they would from the example.

The reference valued Joe and his skills, yet Joe had a few blind spots about his work style and this caused issues, problems and a diconnect in cultural fit within the industry.  After gathering the information and sharing it with Joe, he said that his references had told him all of the information I shared before and one had offered to help him change to another unit were the work culture was a better fit.  However Joe had declined the transfer or the assistance to adapt his behavior. 

Joe had choices to make.  He could change is occupation, or change his style or change the positions he was seeking to find a work culture where his work style fit the culture and the needs of the business.  Joe decided to seek other positions using his skills and where the work style and culture of the organization was more suited to his work style. 

He was hired after 3 interviews and returned to work within 2 months of his decision to seek work that was a better fit for his style. Recently I got a message from Joe, he has been on the job a year, enjoys it, got his 2^nd pay increase, things are well.  Additionally, he noted thanks for helping him see the impact of his blind spots and assisting him to find the first job he ever liked and the only job where he had worked for a over a year.

What are your blind spots?  Do you have the confidence to take a hard look at your search and see what might be holding you back in your career?  

Are you pushing in a direction that will not help you accelerate your search or accelerate the success you want.  You may need to dust yourself off, stop pushing and head in a new or different direction. 

Do you have a question about your search?  Look to the right and sign up for next Q & A session, join the session and ask your question.

Mother’s Day in the US is almost here.  Since 1915, the second Sunday in May has been set aside to honor mothers, celebrate mothers and the role mothers have on our lives and in society.

Most of us have many mentors and coaches in our lives. Often our parents are the first coaches we experience.  

My mother without any formal training as a coach or mentor is a good coach and mentor.  Not always of course, did I listen, or want to hear what she had to say.  Yes, we have over the years had the intense mother vs. daughter discussions, disagreements and major differences in opinion.  Maybe that is our relationship or the norm.  I don’t know the answer to that question.

Actually, my mother is a good coach and connector.  She is also a good role model.  Connections from my mother helped me get many of my early jobs. From early babysitting engagements, project work typing insurance policies and what I view as my first ‘real’ job. 

When I look back over the years, especially when I was in high school some of the best career advice I ever received came from my mother.  That career advice had a positive and lasting impact on my career.

Did you receive career advice from your mother?   What was that advice?  Will you share your favorite career advice from your mother below?

Here is some of the advice I received from my mother:

Relationships count.  Building and nurturing relationships in your life and in your career matter.  My mother often encouraged me to see and understand the point of view of others, to learn about other people, what they liked and disliked, then to find a way to make a connection and build a relationship.  A skill that when honed is valuable to your career.

Service matters and when done gladly all the better.  Don’t just do the minimum, always do your best and then something extra.  My mother always adds the extra thing. It is part of her personal branding. Delivery of expected service and doing the job you are paid to do just covers the basics.  The skill of grateful service and adding value does set you apart from the crowd.  Something extra of significance to the person or organization you are serving adds instant value, gains favorable attention, encourages referrals, and repeat business, items critical to your career. 

I hope you will share some of the career advice you received from your mother, or someone special to that you will celebrate on Mother’s Day.  I thought it would be a cool way to honor my mother this year on Mother’s Day.  Join me in this honor if you wish. 

Sharing the advice your mother shared with you seems like a great way to say thank you and honor that advice.  Mothers you are also welcome to share the career advice you have given to your children if you wish.  Thanks for sharing your treasured advice.

Enjoy Mother’s Day on Sunday as you celebrate in whatever special way fits you!

Mother, Happy Mother’s Day – thank you for being a coach, a mentor, a role model, a friend and a wonderful mother.  See you soon.  Cindy