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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.

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

1. Don’t turn your career over to anyone else to run.

Your career may be your most significant asset.  Be cautious about allowing others to control and manage your assets. You can manage your own career and you can find others to help you.  We have all experienced coaching at some point. The coaching process can help you discover any number of blind spots you may have.

Who is managing your career?  You may be managing your career or you may be allowing others to manage your career to their advantage.  Bosses or human resources departments usually work in the company’s best interest. Sharing appropriate information with them about you may help advance your career and help you get where you want to go.  For these coaches to help you do need to know where you are going, your purpose and how you can help them with their goals along the way.

Having your own coach, someone who works for you can help you if you are still in the process of discovering your purpose, your vision, your goals, and how to communicate those to others.  You can also discover these things on your own over time or find others to help you with the process, just be sure those who help you put your interest before theirs.

I often refer to those who live their purpose and manage their careers as paddlers.  PADDLERS take charge of their direction, path, and speed. Paddlers are going somewhere – with a purpose.

Paddlers have a distinct mindset and make life happen.  They take time to understand what they want, why that is important to them.  Paddlers know a fulfilling life is not stagnate.  Paddlers know that they do control how they react and handle the life they have been given.

Paddlers have a purpose. They don’t look to others to define why they do something, their value, direction or career.  They assess where they are, what they want and then they form an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, skills, of the currents, conditions, and environment.

Action Tip:

Write down what you want from your career, your next position, and in your life.  Ask yourself the tough questions below and jot down your answers.

What is my purpose?

Why do I work?

Why do I do what I do as a career?

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.

Does your past or present behavior impact your job search?  Is the hurt, anger, frustration you feel hurting your search?

Yes, I believe these things will impact your search.  I see and work with people all the time that are holding on to something that is impacting their job search.  That something might be anger about losing a job, how the end occurred, or sadness about how they did or did not handle something.

For many we are at least somewhat defined by where we work and live, the work we do, and our jobs.  When a job ends for whatever reason, there are emotions tied to that ending.  If you are happily moving on you will have different emotions than if the end was not in your control.

Some call the behavior that impacts you and your life karma, some call it fate, or luck, whatever the name you use for this, you need to look at and understand your thoughts control your behavior, habits and actions.  So if your thoughts and behavior are not aligned with what you want and where you want to go, you create push pull and in your energetic vibration.  This will impact your search.

For some it keeps you for getting clear on what you want or need to do, for others it shows up in a way that makes other not trust you.  If an employer doesn’t trust that there is upside to hiring you, the bottom line is the employer will not hire you.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Joe and his blind spots.  Most of us know or have some awareness of our blind spots, our strengths, and our weaknesses, yet we often find it hard to sort this all out and move forward to do what we need to do.

Here is a tip to help you.  Set aside a day write down your feelings about your job lose and job search.  If you are mad write down why you are mad; if you are sad, why you are sad.  Write, write, and write.  At the end of the day think about what you where you are and what you want to do about where you are.  Think about where you are out of alignment or out of integrity with yourself.

Now decide what you want to do about these areas.  Decide what you want and create energetic alignment. If you want help, then offer help to others.  Letting go of the things you are holding on to that are impacting your search will change your behavior and the energy around your search and your transition.

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.

Post your suggestion to help others or your comments below.

This is an interesting question.  It came from someone who is really running a focused and productive search.  The question came as he prepares to travel to a family wedding followed by a family reunion.

Family events, holidays, etc. can be fun, uplifting and stressful all at once.  Or at least those with my family can be and that is really my only experience I have in this arena. Don’t get me wrong I love my family, but with five kids, spouses, grandchildren, great-grandchildren…you get the picture.

I suggest you set some boundaries, and focus on the event rather than your search.  You don’t want to ignore possible help or a great networking opportunity.  However the odds are you don’t need added stress, a drilling about being out of work, or loads of career advice.

Your family cares about you and they want to help.  So, be prepared to tell them specifically how they can help you.  It will help you avoid listening to extra advice, long sad stories and set a neat boundary around your job search.

Here is my suggestion.  Be well prepared to deliver a 30-second introduction, 100% focused on your ideal position, include your top three target companies and when you wrap up your 30-second comments explain how the person you are addressing or anyone else can help.

Imagine you are at the reunion, Uncle Ben walks up and begins to pick around the edges starting a conversation about your job search or point blank says “Grandma tells me you are still out of work, you could move back to town and work for your brother”.  How can you respond?

You can say,

“That’s a great suggestion however, my brother doesn’t have an opening or a need for <fill in the blank with your target job title & experience; then describe your ideal job in one sentence> and I am targeting <list your top companies>.  I am looking forward to joining one of these three organizations soon.  You could help me a great deal if you would share your contacts at <repeat your top three target companies>.  Would you do that for me?  (Add a brief pause, as you take a pen and paper out of your pocket)  Can I get the names of your contacts and their phone numbers at <repeat your top three target companies> now?   (Pause, look Uncle Ben in the eye and smile and add) Or feel free to call or email with your contact names and how to reach them by phone at a time that is best for you.  Thanks for your help.”

This technique allows you to set a respectful boundary around your job search.  You will have shared the critical information about your experience, the job you are seeking, and you will have provided a specific manner for someone to help you if they wish to do so.

The technique also allows for a graceful transition to another conversation in a manner that is good for you and honors your relationship.  It allows anyone wishing to help with contacts to do so in a specific way at that moment or when it is best for them without any pressure or requirement to do so.  You will have created a polite boundary and space for the conversation to flow to another topic.  And it takes less than a minute to do this!

You can modify this technique and use it in other situations too.  It is a powerful way to gather contacts and set boundaries.

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.

Post your suggestion to help others or your comments below.