Me, We

“Me, We.” might just be the world’s shortest poem.

The story of its origins are legend but most attribute this poem to Muhammad Ali. Testimony as to when and where he said it varies but there is agreement it was spoken at a public event and that it was Ali’s response to a question regarding the shortest poem or verse in history.

Muhammad Ali was a boxer but he was also a great wit with a live, febrile mind and a poet with a compelling, powerful voice. The evidence may vary but the legend fits. It doesn’t take much imagination to hear Ali speaking these words and saying them with meaning.

[Apparently that is "laser" engraving. Does Buck Rogers work for Steve Jobs?]

This poem has followed me around since I first read it. It came up again last week in a question about the way most of us think about our careers. The question was:

“Can our individual career thinking be changed from Me to We?”

The questioner's premise was that our careers are never isolated, they are in fact always connected. Your career joins you to your work, your employer, your colleagues, your intentions, your life outside of work, the list goes on.

So if there are hundreds of touch-points, convergences and connections between ourselves, our careers and the outside world, why do we default to 'Me' when we think about careers?

Is there necessity around 'Me' thinking in careers or is it just history and habit?

Thinking about your career was traditionally a lonesome activity. The number of people going to their boss to admit 'thoughts about leaving' is growing but is still a minority. We take career advice from third parties (our friends, relatives, HR & career professionals even) but this advice is too often based around individualistic thinking alone: “What should I do?”, "What do I want?", "Where is my career going", etc.

It is still essential to resolve individual career questions but the Me to We shift behind career management is inevitable and has already begun. Your career may be yours but for it to be successful, for you to experience your career in full, for your career to deliver genuine satisfaction and fulfilment, it must be understood holistically too.

Although it wasn't always so clear, work/life balance is Me, work/life fusion is We.

Of course there is much more to learn (your opinion is welcomed for a start!) but - going back to Ali's poem - sometimes we need a simple and memorable expression to get us started. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time in history a poet has figured something out first.

Have a great weekend wherever you are!

All the best

Paul

Manifesto for a Career Coach

A career coach should...

✪ Focus on the career journey 'You' want to make

✪ Enable & encourage long-term self-leadership

✪ Provide effective support to thought & deed [theory & practice]

✪ Support career decision-making with confidence & conviction

✪ Know the difference between a job and a vocation

✪ Protect & safeguard the career interests of all their clients

✪ Make a lasting contribution that goes beyond immediate career issues

What would you want from a career coach? What would you like to see added to the list?

[Going Up or Down? - see more at Saundra's Flickr Photostream here]

Our list won't be anywhere near complete without your opinion!

All the best for now,

Paul

Career expertise

Career success relies on knowing your own strengths but it is also helped a great deal when you appreciate expertise in other people too.

Knowing what you do well - and when to call upon the expertise of those around you - enhances success in a number of ways.

'Best-in-class' leaders know that expertise is at its best when it is valued and applied appropriately. When this happens, experts complete their work to the best of their ability and achieve the best possible results.

As an example of the link between leadership and the value of expertise, how many times has an under-performing team had their fortunes turned around by a change in leadership before a change in team personnel?

[I'm no expert botanist but that is one tiny shell!]

The importance of knowing where our expertise lies - and when to apply it - is a big step forward in terms of career management.

Recognising and applying the expertise of those around you is an equally important step because it requires us to use our judgement objectively, values the contribution of other people and ensures that our own expertise stands out even more because it is applied only when and where it is needed the most!

For more about the importance of expertise in career management, follow these links:

Making network connections

Expert career advice

work/life fusion: talents

Know what you are doing

work/life fusion, perspective and perception

All the best for now!

Paul

Change we can believe in

This isn't a current affairs/political blog but I'm breaking that rule because last night's US election result is historic for too many reasons to list.

Breaking more conventions of this blog, I'm not going to rattle on about the seismic career change that Mr Obama will experience or his successes in the areas of self-leadership, opportunity management and personal success.

For many people inside the US and around the world, this election result will be warmly welcomed. The depth of this feeling was brought home when I received a text message at 4am [UK time] from a friend in New York. All it said was "OBAMA!!!!!". As a summary of the moment, I think that says it all.

Boulos's story: Job satisfaction

Job satisfaction is tricky to understand. The earlier Job satisfaction post on this blog looks at the difficulty analysing it, how it can be disguised and - for those lucky enough to find it - how uplifting it can be.

Here is another brief, first-person account, this time on the subject of seeking and finding job satisfaction.

Boulos says, "I did find some job satisfaction in my previous career. I won promotions, got increases in pay and went on interesting assignments but there were also negative aspects that weren't being addressed. The work that interested me most kept pulling me away from what my employer wanted for me. In the end, this wasn't something that titles, money and travel could distract me from. I ended up taking a big risk to further my studies and turn the direction of my career towards the work I wanted the most."

Boulos goes on to say, "I wouldn't advise anyone to do what I did. I was lucky to have a boss who supported me and I now know the same can be achieved without putting so much at risk. Start with the work that interests you most and talk to as many people as you can about it, friends, family, colleagues, anyone. In the end you'll find partners who will help you along the way and make sure the steps you take are supported."

Boulos's story could be described as an attempt to define personal success. Boulos hung in for the work he wanted because the alternative was one that ultimately didn't satisfy. His progress could have been made easier with an earlier focus on his values, talents and goals - which could have helped him define his route and partnerships more clearly. But - and it is a worthy but - his conclusions on finding the right partners and his success in achieving the job satisfaction he sought will find no challenge here.

Laura's story: Career Inspiration

Every now and then - almost without fail - a personal story about work comes along that is just plain inspiring. Such stories are hard to do justice when they are re-told because the person telling their own story brings it to life best. I hope the following story doesn't lose too much in translation. 

Laura's family had a successful restaurant business. She worked in the restaurants from an early age and loved the interaction with the customers and being part of the team. She was talented, hard-working and the natural choice to lead the business in the future. After leaving school everyone expected Laura to continue in the family business but to their surprise, she turned this down to pursue a career elsewhere.

After carving out a successful entrepreneurial career in property development, having a family, buying several houses at home and abroad - all without family assistance - Laura had reached a key moment in her career. After a lot of thought, she surprised everyone again, this time by choosing to join the family business.

This story has been simplified a great deal but although it misses the vibrancy of its original telling it can still inspire. This is because it demonstrates a number of attributes essential to a successful relationship with work: determination, commitment, self-sacrifice, humility, self-direction, clarity of thought, the list could go on. But, more than any of these, Laura's story demonstrates the value of exploring your relationship with work at a fundamental level.

Laura could have easily taken the job in her family's business and been very successful but she realised - at an earlier age than most - that success without personal meaning isn't enough. Laura wanted to prove to herself that she was the best candidate to lead the family business and that this career choice was relevant to her values, talents and goals once she understood them better. Laura's reward is the knowledge that a genuine connection did exist and that with it comes a greater chance of success with personal meaning and a far more rewarding relationship with work.

Collaborate and co-invent, when your instinct says present

My apologies if the title of this post comes to you straight outta Seussville but I got carried away after talking with a friend recently about why he has a strong preference for dealing with issues around the table rather than making presentations. When I asked why, by the end of his answer I was amazed that anyone still gives presentations at all.

Presenting to an audience creates a degree of separation between the speaker and everyone else. Great speakers can overcome this but most subjects, and most businesses for that matter, are better served in the day-to-day by collaborative dialogue focusing on the vision, where things stand, the issues and their resolution.

Standing apart as a presenter can also place feedback - and possibly more worryingly, understanding and innovation - at one remove as well. Again, the picture of a group huddled around a table is a lot more given to action than its speaker/audience counterpart.

This also highlights essential questions around career leadership. When we search for that new job, send out our resume/CV, meet recruiters and interview, many of us act out speaker/audience roles by default. We are taught to tell our story, learn 30 second pitches and convey our strengths in the most compelling way possible.

With the above in mind, might we be better served considering more readily the two-way nature of these situations? Who is the individual we are talking with, what is their interest and what information do they need from us? What priorities govern their success in the context of the encounter? Already, this type of collaborative thinking changes the dynamic from speaker/audience to a more involving, collaborative interaction. All of a sudden there is more opportunity to learn and understand on both sides.

In the same spirit of co-invention, if you are reading this, what do you think?

Failure: A label applied by mistake

Failure is inevitable in every career. Experiencing failure, and managing the events that can cause us to fail, is therefore critical to the overall success of every individual. Dealing with failure means looking hard at what we - ourselves and others - label as failures and applying this knowledge to better define our success in the future.

Failure, large or small, will occur in every career. Outcomes we would have liked to be different contain valuable lessons for us all. Not getting a promotion or being made redundant are good examples. Most of us plan for the alternative outcome. The person with the greatest chance of succeeding in the future however, is the one who looks into the 'failed' outcome or event, seeking to understand it further.

Events like this - 'failures' as we are programmed to call them - can teach us where we went wrong and why. Under closer examination, such events create opportunities for future successes based on empirical, practical lessons that are also highly personal to us. In short, failures can author and enable genuine progress and they do so with a level of personally relevant insight hard to find in general examples or generic 'How-to' career texts.

So what can any of us do when faced with uncertainty or facing up to failure in our careers? Initially, the aim should be to understand our situation: How did we get here? What were our previous aims? Do we feel different about them now?

Understanding these questions begins to focus on our relationship with work. Exploring our values, talents and goals (see earlier posts for more details on these) continues this and prepares us for the future independently. In time, this externally tested, individual preparation helps us manage opportunities in the immediate future and give our preferences a better chance of coming out on top in the longer term.

Failure is essentially the title we give to our mistakes. Learning from failure can be a fast-track to identifying and defining personal success. Through the failures and mistakes that are inevitable in all of our careers, an insight into lasting satisfaction and fulfilment can be achieved.

What would you like to be doing 5 years from now? - Revisited

A previous post on this blog (What would you like to be doing 5 years from now?) suggested that the most successful answers to this question place genuine career knowledge ahead of what might get you through an interview. For that reason, it is probably worth considering that the most successful answers have two main components:

1) Relevance to their audience (company, job, interviewer, etc.)

2) Relevance to the future of the individual's career

A great deal of effort is expended to ensure that our answers are relevant to their audience, particularly the interviewer. Of course the most successful answers do not forget this but they also do not forget the importance of the individual's career.

Understanding a preferred direction for the future of your career offers insight into both areas. With greater insight into what is important to you, what you are good at and what keeps you going, your answer begins to resonate with interviewers for its clarity and depth.

Whether you are interviewing for the role of a chief executive or an administrative assistant, an answer based on your values, talents and goals is arguably the best method of creating a link between this question and your personal success.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Learn how your answer to this question can evolve over time at exploreyourcareer.com

Where do you want to be in 5 years time?

Looking back, around and ahead

We all want something different from our careers. Some prize the creation of wealth above everything else, others are satisfied by the security that comes with a profession or trade. More still work for necessity or view their careers as a means to an end, whether that end is providing for their family or financing next year's holiday.

The individual aims for our careers are further complicated because for most of us they change with the changing circumstances of our lives. For example, when you got your first job you might have been single, after 10 years you might be in a relationship, possibly married. After 25 years at work, whatever your partnership status, your motivations and needs are likely to be different again. A multitude of events and factors, either at home or at work, contribute to this change. Change that every individual needs to respond to and manage if their career is to deliver personal success.

This blog started with a challenge to the way we manage our careers. The intention of that challenge wasn't to provide all of the answers, it was to try to understand if a better way existed to deliver success from our working lives. I'm not a professional writer and sometimes I don't think I have done this subject justice but I have continued the challenge, learning from my mistakes along the way.

Looking back over this blog (the other career related blogs and the opinions and experiences of the people I have encountered along the way) there is more evidence today to suggest that independent, forward-looking career leadership is not only possible, but also within the reach of more people now than any time previously. The moment anyone has a decision or choice related to work (e.g. Which company do I join? What skills should I learn? or What do I want from my next year at work?) they also have the opportunity to make that choice alongside a preference for where it might lead their future career.

The best and simplest method of ensuring that the decisions we make today are connected to what we would like from the future, lies with an understanding of our individual values, talents and goals. Asking three simple questions, "What is important to me?", "What am I good at?" and "What do I want more of?", brings values, talents and goals and our relationship with work into view. As this understanding develops, for the first time decisions can be made in a context that looks beyond immediate factors and needs. A connection between the decisions we make today the opportunity they create for our careers in the future.

Although supporting evidence has grown, this conversation needs to face new challenges today if it is to deliver value to anyone else in the future. Its future relies on the ability to make a difference to individual careers and that future was never in the hands of this blog. To use a personal example, a great deal has changed in my own career since this blog started but responding to this change and continuing in a direction that makes sense for my career is down to an understanding of my values, talents and goals and what they define as my personal success.

There is some risk to considering this conversation in your own career decision making but if this blog has achieved anything to date, it is demonstrating the rewards for doing so.

Seek to understand

In an interview some time ago while answering questions on leadership, an interviewee summed up his approach as, "seeking to understand before trying to be understood". This phrase made instant sense to me and it was clear how this individual had utilised it as part of his own career and leadership success.

I have come across this phrase a number of times since and in a variety of forms. Quite a few people claim authorship, others attribute it to well known books about the habits of successful people and some point to its roots in religious texts (if he is reading, Ben might be able to clarify for us here!).

Rather than its origins, its relevance in a career context is all in its meaning and practical application. Seeking to understand forces an individual to test their ambitions externally rather than basing them purely on internal assumptions.

Seeking to understand is also useful for the role it can play in identifying opportunities for career development and personal success. If you can understand their priorities and what an individual or a business needs, you are creating a broader context for your skills and experiences to be seen as relevant.

While it can never be the only component of a successful career plan or leadership career, seeking to understand is a simple and effective means of keeping your activity meaningful to you and those around you. The successful career of the interviewee who introduced me to the subject is a excellent example of that.

Challenging and qualifying to lead

Challenging to lead is something any would-be leader has to commit themselves to. The decision to challenge for leadership roles can also be taken alone. Whatever your age, experience and industry, you could begin your challenge by promising yourself a leadership role and applying for jobs today. Qualifying to lead differs from challenging because it can not be done alone and without it a leadership challenge has very little hope of success.

Qualifying for a leadership position requires you to take into account something greater than ambition alone. For example, qualifying to lead in a manufacturing business might rely on specialist knowledge of the market or consumer opportunity. Although, it could just as easily be influenced through a relationship with the owners of the business and an understanding of the priorities as they see them.

The fact remains that there are many more challengers for leadership positions than qualifiers. It is also true that clear success indicators exist in most cases and knowledge of them can turn a leadership challenger into a qualifier.

Both challenging and qualifying are essential to the success of any would-be leader but, if challenging for leadership is your decision to enter the race, qualification is what will decide the result.

Career leadership and Personal success

With a clearer idea of personal success any individual can exercise a greater degree of leadership over their career. Decision making and direction gain new, helpful reference points and situations become easier to recognise for the opportunities they present.

Examining what is important to us, what we are good at and what keeps us going (our values, talents and goals) helps us to understand our relationship with work. As they begin to take shape, our results also make it harder for external factors to separate us from the sources of our satisfaction. This remains true even during stressful career events like redundancy and unemployment.

For example, if delivering great customer service is important to you [and if you are good at it and you want to do more of it in the future] an event like redundancy does little to change this. Whatever the difficulties an event like this causes, your ability to deliver great service [and your desire to deliver more in the future] are not in any way diminished by it.

Of course, individual careers and the changes they must go through are more complicated than the above example but pursuing personal success can create leadership opportunities and does enable informed choice even in tough career situations.

[Thanks to everyone who has read and contributed to this blog over the last few months. There will be a short holiday break but posts should resume towards the end of next week. Enjoy your hols and all the best! Paul]

Career leadership: a question

As discussed in a previous post, career leadership is essentially taking responsibility for the direction of your career. In response to the Leadership post, I received the question, "If I am not leading my career, who is?"

A full answer to this question would vary from individual to individual but anyone asking it would benefit from looking at their work-related future for a moment and asking, "Where is my career going and how well has it progressed so far in that direction?"

If the answers don't come easy, think back to the last time you made a career decision. What influenced your choices at the time? Who else played a role in the decision making process? Were promises made regarding your future? How would you measure your progress since that decision was made?

If your answers prove that you know where your career is going, that you are happy with your career direction and your progress along it, there is a good chance you are already leading your career.

However, that does not make less conclusive answers a bad sign. By gathering this evidence you have taken important steps towards understanding and leading your career and towards creating new opportunities for personal success.

Enjoy the weekend ahead!

Organisational politics

What do most people mean when they talk about organisational politics?

Wiktionary defines politics as, "the practice of responding to conflict with dialogue" [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/politics]. This appears to be the most appropriate definition for the context of work and careers but the everyday labelling of politics within a company often has negative connotations, i.e. political behaviour = unhelpful and obstructive.

The labelling of certain behaviour as political also depends on the perspective of the people involved. What may be obstructive from one viewpoint can just as easily be seen as essential to survival from another.

Politics and political behaviour occurs within an organisation where there are differences in strongly held opinions and/or beliefs. Response to these differences through dialogue is labelled by some as political. For the individuals doing the labelling, the desire to act or change the agenda is felt more urgently, hence the frustration that more dialogue causes.

Ultimately, the success of a business and the individuals within it presents the acid test for the health and continuity of its political environment.

And if that is an unsatisfactory conclusion, then let the debate continue...

Leadership

There are as many opinions on leadership as there are leaders. In the business world, leaders and opinions on leadership are highly valued commodities. Leadership also has a direct connection to personal career success but what does it ask from us in that context?

Leadership is essential to personal career success because without it a clear direction can not be defined. Leadership in the career context is taking personal responsibility for your overall direction and what you would like to achieve. It is also about developing an awareness of the factors that define and influence success and applying good opportunity management to convert situations and events into progress.

This blog has discussed career direction, opportunity management and decision making in a number of previous posts. Leadership is a newer theme but I have the feeling that its relevance will grow in the future. That is of course unless anyone can suggest a better person to entrust with the leadership of their career than themselves!