The Heavy Lifting of Career (Re) Invention-5 Keys to Moving Forward

January 20, 2012 By 8 Comments

Whether you are a few years removed from college or a few years removed from that time when prior generations began thinking about retiring, chances are, you or someone you know is involved in defining or redefining their career.

It’s a daunting task in a world where the old rules no longer apply. For those just starting on their career journeys, many have sprinted out of college only to run face-first into the brick wall that is the job market in so many sectors and markets. For this group, career development has turned out to involve a lot more work than just graduating.

For those of us with a few more laps around the block to our credit, the future doesn’t quite look like what we expected. The book on career management has a new chapter that many of our parents never experienced. It’s called, “Reinvention,” and it’s really daunting.

Regardless of where you fit on the chronological scale, there are at least five key issues that I encourage you to wrap your arms and mind around. Like much of the invention or reinvention process, tackling these items is challenging, uncomfortable, and critically important.

At Least Five Keys for Career (Re) Invention:

1. Aligning Your Values, Purpose and Goals around a Vision.

While your tendency may be to roll your eyes at the fluffy and abstract discussion of personal vision and values, the reality is that you do have a set of operating instructions (your core values) and there is a purpose that drives all of us. Sometimes we ignore that purpose (often for decades), but it is there and aligning values and purpose around some big, exciting and challenging goals is an important part of the process. It’s awkward and difficult and squishy to grasp but when you focus in on a vision for yourself, it’s transformational.

For some help here, check out Ed Batista’s outstanding post, “Developing Your Professional Vision,” and Jesse Lyn Stoner’s (with Ken Blanchard) excellent book,  Full Steam Ahead. 

2. Cultivating Your Confidence and Self-Esteem.

Confidence is critical for fueling invention or transformation. Without it, we just dream. With it, we take actions to build towards our dreams.

I’ve long believed the biggest barrier to individual success is self-confidence. Recognize this issue as human, get over any stigma attached to it, and seek coaching, help and guidance on developing the inner-strength to tackle problems and issues that seem foreboding and practically impossible. A good coach is priceless here. My post, “9 Ideas for Strengthening Your Self-Esteem” is a starting point.

3. Strengthening Your Professional Presence.

A critical part of the confidence issue is the ability to project this confidence and to engage as an articulate, intelligent professional. Those who lack confidence AND who lack the ability present themselves as confident, knowledgeable and interesting human beings are relegated to bit roles in their own careers.

From your posture to your eye-contact to your smile to your eyes to your ability to listen and importantly, your use of your vocabulary and your ability to articulate your thoughts, it’s all on display and it’s all being judged. Solicit feedback from trusted sources, engage a speaking coach and take deliberate action to match the vision. One of my favorite books on this topic: Seeing Yourself as Others Do, offers some great guidance.

4. Planning to Act…Creating a Strategic Plan for Your Career.

Pardon the lofty sounding label, but you cannot operationalize a vision…you can’t put into play unless you’ve created a roadmap complete with those items on the critical path that are essential for success.

Armed with a vision, you need to set clear goals and define those very clear actions and milestones required for success. My favorite definition of strategy: “integrated actions in pursuit of competitive advantage,” reminds me of the need to coordinate my activities, measure my results and adjust accordingly. Put pen to paper. The act of planning forces you to think through what it takes to succeed. And then engage. You can update the plan along the way.

5. Building Your Professional Brand. 

There’s never been a better time to build and form and frame your professional brand…to build yourself as a thought-leader than now. The tools are there, they are mostly free and they are truly powerful. Sadly, just about everyone I know who is struggling with the career issue is failing to leverage these tools in the proper manner to position themselves as thought-leaders, as exciting and relevant professionals and as people worth listening to and investing in.

The person I pay attention to on this topic is Dr. Bret Simmons writing at Positive Organizational Behavior. Bret is a champion of the topic of building your professional brand…particularly when it comes to leveraging the power of social media to do this.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Whether you are building, rebuilding or transforming your career, the work described above is some of the sticky, dirty, roll-up-your sleeves hard work that builds towards success. There’s no silver bullet, no convenient short-cut and no getting away from the heavy lifting.

Filed Under: Career, Marketing Yourself, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , ,

A Black Friday Jolt of Leadership Caffeine-Book Promotion and Helping Hand

November 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Note from Art: It’s a great time of year to think of the people doing the heavy lifting for you. What better gift than one filled with ideas, inspiration and a call to action in pursuit of great results. Any and all of my profits from the book sale here will be donated to a local Chicago-area Food Pantry during this Holiday Season.

The greatest praise any leadership writer can receive is a comment that something he/she wrote made a difference…that it resonated, prompted a new idea or importantly, stimulated action. I’ve been thrilled to receive comments like that from executives and managers at SAP Corporation, NeoPost, McHenry County College, Bell & Howell, Best Buy Corporation, HP as well as from dozens of professionals.

The format of this collection…short, fast-moving essays, organized into 10-different sections on topics ranging from: Surviving the Tough Days, to Creating High Performance Decisions to Developing Yourself, Surviving and Thriving in a a Political Environment, Developing Leadership Agility, Pursuing Greatness as a Leader and Professional, and others, has fit well in our time-challenged, over-taxed world.

Whether the reader was viewing this in Kindle format or in its 341 page paperback format, the feedback, particularly from those who frequently occupy airplane seats, has been gratifying. I look forward to putting the book in the hands of as many motivated professionals as possible. If we happen to help a few people along the way as outlined below, all the better!

A Promotion with a Give-Back Component:

Here’s the straightforward promotion to help you put something truly professionally appropriate in the hands of your valued team-members:

  • Order 5 or more books via my bulk distributor, Marathon Books (see site for volume pricing plus shipping). Note: quantity and timing subject to availability, good for U.S. and Canada only.
  • Contact me to set-up a complimentary 30-minute individual or group phone session on one of the topics/categories covered in Leadership Caffeine. Order 10 or more and I’ll be happy to extend it to an hour. The session can be pre-scheduled for any time through the end of the first quarter of 2012.
  • Offer good thru Wednesday, 12/02/11.
  • For this promotion, 100% of my royalties will be donated to a local Chicago-area Food Pantry.

I would love to help support your efforts, and I look forward to supporting those in need of a helping hand this season.

Yours in professional development,

Art

Filed Under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine Tagged With: ,

Introducing: Professional Development Sprints

July 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Note from Art: today’s post is promotional in nature. Back to our regularly scheduled programming soon!

Professional Development Sprints: Practical, powerful coaching guidance and skills development plus a series of activities to apply immediately in the workplace, delivered on-line in 4 modules of 15 minutes or less.  Review the programs as often as you desire during the 30-day subscription period, and use the suggestions in the downloadable Action Guide to keep on improving beyond the program.

Cost: $100.  Return: Your professional development-priceless!

You Own Your Professional Development:

Long-time readers, customers (training and coaching) and my many management students well understand my conviction that you need to own your professional development over the course of your career. If you don’t take care of it, no one will.   In this era of rapid change, ignoring your own development is a subscription to becoming global road kill.

You’ve got to take care of yourself!

Wanted in Professional Development-Convenience, Accessibility, Practicality and Cost-Effectiveness:

In the spirit of Peter Drucker’s classic article, “Managing Oneself,” I’m consistently asked by motivated professionals on guidance for continuing professional development beyond the classroom, training room or coaching engagement.  I happily offer my ideas, from books to blogs to actions over time, and for some that’s fine. For others however, I appreciate that they’ve asked for something that goes beyond good reading, but doesn’t demand the time or cost of formal training or coaching.

Based on client demand for tools that energize and help sustain professional development in a convenient (translation: on-demand), practical and low cost way, I’m pleased to introduce my latest Building Better Leaders offering: Professional Development Sprints. 

What a Professional Development Sprint Offers:

  • On-demand access to Art (30 days per sprint). Listen/watch for 15 minutes and apply immediately.
  • Skills development…exposure to new tools and approaches to solve problems
  • Real world examples and experiences
  • High Intensity encouragement and a bit of professional prodding from Art to get it in gear and start applying the concepts.
  • Ideas/activities to put the new tools into play immediately!
  • Actions to support your development beyond the program.
  • Ideas and motivation to jump-start or sustain a professional development program.

What It’s Not:

  • They’re not outrageously pretty….just practical and filled with ideas, examples, approaches and tools.
  • They’re not a full blown substitute for in-depth skills training or comprehensive coaching

The First Sprint-Learning to Deliver Constructive Feedback with Confidence.  

In slightly less than 60-minutes, I work with you to:

  • identify and overcome fears/barriers to delivering feedback
  • Identify and explain the 6 “must have” components for every constructive feedback discussion
  • Teach you the importance of ensuring that your feedback is both behavioral in nature and must have a business rationale at its core.
  • Offer you a process for properly planning and then delivering the toughest of discussions.
  • Offer you a number of ideas to apply the concepts in each module in the workplace…and on how to sustain your on-going development and mastery of the art of delivering constructive feedback.

Your Return on Investment:

  • Improved personal performance as a leader
  • Increased confidence for tackling the important and difficult conversations
  • Improved performance of your team members
  • Improved unit and firm performance
  • The increased respect for you from your team members…good professionals want and need feedback
  • Confidence begets more confidence.

Enroll, Pay and Get Started Here!

Questions?

An Offer You Can’t Refuse:

The first 10 registrants will receive free, signed copies of my forthcoming book: “Leadership Caffeine: Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development” (expected publication: September, 2011)

But Wait, There’s More:

OK, actually, that’s it for the offers. However, alumni gain a 20% discount on future Sprints. And for you Managers, Trainers and HR Pros, please know that group rates are available. Drop me a note to discuss your needs. 

Future Sprints:

  • Next: Improving Your Decision Making Effectiveness
  • And then: Getting Started Successfully with Your New Team
  • And right after that: For Experienced Leaders: How to Re-energize and Strengthen Your Leadership Approach and Results.
  • Future Sprints based on your input.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

There’s no one magical approach to developing yourself, other than investing the time and deliberately striving to learn, improve and grow. I’m excited for my clients to offer one approach that will help energize and sustain any professional’s development efforts. The on-demand convenience and low-cost access are frosting on the cake. I’m looking forward to serving you in our first and in many more Professional Development Sprints to come.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

Leadership Caffeine-Need Market Insight? Ride with a Sales Rep and Learn

June 13, 2011 By 4 Comments

I had just been hired on in a senior strategic marketing role in an industry new to me, and job one was acclimating to the market and industry dynamics and trying to understand what a customer looked like in this world.

After the obligatory round of meetings with company executives, division heads and as many of their team members as I could convince to allocate some time, I recognized that the context, while appreciated, lacked the depth you can only gain from connecting with customers and industry players on their home turf.  No rocket science here, just good common sense.

The sales and customer teams were happy to schedule some client meetings with me, and I appreciated their courtesy, but I wanted to go about this in a different manner.

The typical “new executive wants to meet customers” meetings (or, as I’ve heard them referenced, “educate the idiot from corporate” meetings) many of us have attended or at least witnessed, are largely ceremonial and usually highly caloric. Long lunches or factory tours followed by fancy dinners are lousy ways to do anything other than waste everyone’s time and expand your waistline. I suggested an alternative.

I asked for the opportunity to ride-along/travel with the firm’s top sales representative from each region. I wanted to gain my insights through the windshield and eyes of the people out finding and serving clients and partners. I had the good fortune to be working with a sales executive who understood that the better educated I was, the better I could work with and serve his team. And to ensure that I was in for the full experience, he set me up with two week long trips…Sunday night to Friday.

5 Valuable Lessons You Learn Riding with a Great Sales Professional:

1. Success knows no shortcuts. There is no down time. Waking hours are working hours. From planning time over breakfast to strategizing in parking lots to setting up the next few days activities during the evenings. The only thing that a sales representative has to invest is time, and the best ones invest this time wisely.

2. Follow the money after you understand the real problems. You need to know both the people with the budgets and the people with the problems. We met with plenty of decision-makers on our tour, usually after spending considerable time with the people doing the work and feeling the pain points.

3. The best way in to a new client is usually not through the front door. When we found ourselves with rare time between scheduled meetings, I learned a few lessons in people skills and chutzpah as this rep pulled into a gated parking lot after saying out loud, “I’ve been meaning to get into this firm for awhile. Let’s try it.” He proceeded to talk our way through the guard gate. Instead of heading in the front door, we started at the docks and ended up eventually finding the person with the right title for a 30-minute introduction meeting. This person was so impressed with the creativity of getting in to see him, he agreed to give us time at his team’s monthly meeting. While security measures may have tightened since he employed that approach, the lesson was very real.

4. It’s impossible to know what’s really going on in a game from the skybox seats. After weeks of listening to glowing reports of all of the great things my new company was doing (and why competitors were flummoxed in the process), it was painfully clear that the market reality didn’t match the corporate messaging. Warts, bumps, bruises, bruised egos, the emotions from the customers and alliance partners impacted by the programs, and the true strengths of competitors suddenly became much clearer after talking with the people using and selling our systems.

5. After riding with a rep, your view on supporting the front-line team members will never be the same. Spend a few weeks total riding or travelling with your top representatives, and in spite of the early awkwardness, you will form an important bond with these individuals, and you will cultivate a level of empathy for the challenges of everyone in that role that will make you a better professional.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I recognize that not everyone has the latitude to “ride with a rep.”  However, you can foster relationships and seek out the insights and wisdom of the people carrying the bags and cultivating the clients.  Find ways to provide help to the people in the field and show genuine interest in learning from and supporting these professionals, and they will repay you with insights and observations you can only learn in the trenches.

For those who come into senior roles, you will likely have the opportunity to gain access to clients and other staff members. Say “no thanks” to the ceremonial and mostly superficial client meetings at this level, and roll up your sleeves and help carry the bags for your top producers for a few days. The education is priceless.

Filed Under: Career, Leadership, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , ,

“I finished my MBA. What’s Next?” A Few Do’s and Don’ts for New MBAs

June 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

All over the U.S., there’s a fresh new crop of MBA graduates leaving behind their books and case studies, and in some cases, preparing to rediscover their families after several years of their noses buried in books and their fingers glued to their keyboards. A key question on their minds is, “What’s next?”

Putting aside for this post any thoughts you might have of the value of the degree in or you belief that MBAs might fit nicely in line with the lawyers singled out by Shakespeare, these individuals have worked hard and invested a great deal of time and someone’s money in achieving this milestone.

Their expectation (realistic or not) is that the degree will mean something in the workforce. They are looking for it to help open doors, remove career barriers and lead down new paths.

The Reality: “Congratulations, Now, Let’s Get Back to Work!”

There will be ceremonies and speeches and parties, and perhaps even a few rounds offered up by coworkers at local watering holes.  Bosses will congratulate the new graduates, and then work life will return to normal and June will melt into July, and in many cases, not much will change for the now former students.

Great Expectations?

A common question people ask of students nearing their degree completion is, “What are you going to do?” There’s almost an implied understanding that the now pedigreed professional will look for a new position in or out of their company, as a means of monetizing or at least leveraging the degree. Some do just this, and view the end of school as a phase-gate leading to something beyond what they’ve been doing thus far.  Others hope/expect their organizations will recognize their new enhanced value and offer an increased challenge as a means of knocking down their sudden career wanderlust.

In too many cases, there’s a lot of hoping, false expectations and plotting to leave that adds some toxicity into the celebratory waters of June. An alternative might well be for everyone to adjust their attitudes and expectations just a bit, and for the MBA graduates to recognize the need to ramp up for the next round of professional development.

7 Ideas for New MBAs following Graduation:

1. Keep your feet grounded in reality. Accept that there’s no immediate mantle of legitimacy or wisdom bestowed upon you as you shake hands and grab the diploma. You’re a work in process, just like the rest of us.

2. Do congratulate yourself for having the intestinal fortitude it takes to complete your degree while working, balancing family responsibilities and all of the other challenges of life. Believe it or not, your current and many future bosses will view your accomplishment not so much as remarkable or rare, but rather as a sign of your tenacity and ability to stay-the-course.

3. Don’t expect a promotion just because of the degree. I’ve heard of this happening, but degree-triggered promotions are rare. In the case where they occur, its usually more due to a good on-going professional development plan than anything prompted out of response to your graduation.

4. Speaking of professional development plans… . Do sit down with your boss and refresh your professional development plan. If your plan is clear, good…conduct a status update and reiterate your willingness to take on more.  If there is no plan, it is reasonable at any point to show interest in doing more, however, the MBA milestone is a nice discussion prompter. Do use the occasion to very professionally indicate how excited you are to have completed the degree and how motivated you are to have the extra time, insights and tools to dedicate to helping the firm.

5. Don’t even remotely hint that unless you are promoted you are gone. Especially in this economy, where regardless of degree, buyers hold all of the power.

6. Do accept that the completion of your MBA is the beginning of your next apprenticeship as a leader and a professional. Grad school doesn’t teach you how to lead, nor does it turn you into a great strategist, a future CEO or a management innovator.  You’ve apprenticed on the tools…mostly the science of management (hey, no jokes about the dismal science, please!), and you’ve got a license to begin applying them.  The real work of learning to lead and learning how to create value for your stakeholders has just begun.

7. Do recognize that your primary task is how to make yourself more valuable to everyone around you. Now that you are no longer distracted by school, it’s time to answer, “What have you done for us lately?”

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Congratulations! I’ll buy the first round and then tomorrow, we’ve got to figure out how to thump competitors and survive and thrive in this incredibly complex and fast-moving world. Sure hope you paid attention during that class.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , ,
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