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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.

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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?

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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.