What Are Your Career Highlights?

In the Sunday paper there was a recap of the highlights of Robert Redford’s career in honor of his new movie.  The author listed 15 or so of his favorite Redford movies, some of which would make it onto my favorites list and some of my favorites were missing from the newspaper’s list.  My top five favorites are:  Electric Horseman, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Spy Game, Jeremiah Johnson and The Natural.  It’s hard to pick just five!

Looking back over this this list, there seems to be a common theme.  Redford has played a wide variety of interesting parts, but looking at my favorites I was struck at the similarities – the essence of the men he portrayed.  They all struck me as humble yet confident men of integrity. 

In fact if I were directing a movie and looking to cast a leading man who personified a humble, confident man of integrity, Robert Redford would be my first choice, and I frankly wouldn’t settle for anyone else.

So here’s something fun to play with.  Pretend you’re up for a Lifetime Achievement Award.  (Congratulations, by the way!)  Look back over the course of your career and create your own highlight list.  What's on it?  What are those projects, accomplishments, ideas, lessons learned the hard way, and jobs that stand out in your mind as your proudest moments?  What are the moments that would be recapped on the screen in front of an auditorium full of over-dressed people?

List them all out – as many as you can think of - and then pick your top five.  It’s not easy!  When I did this exercise I had stronger feelings about the more recent experiences.  But I really made myself think through some of projects and accomplishments from earlier in my career and found a couple of gems.  Challenge yourself to not settle for the easy answer of the more recent events.

Once you’ve got your highlight list, what similarities do you see?  Do you see any patterns regarding your character, in the type of work, or the type of accomplishment you achieved or ideas you had?  If you were to be cast in a movie role (or hired to do a job or take on a new big assignment), what’s the profile of the role that you’d be a perfect fit for? 

Would you be a humble, yet confident person of integrity, or would you be a ‘get it done’ person who builds consensus and overcomes obstacles, or the go-to person who comes up with creative solutions to complex problems?

Pick out three qualities of your character and/or your work and turn them into a mantra, and repeat that mantra when you feel challenged or need a boost.  More importantly, find ways in your current job to create similar opportunities to add another item to your highlight reel.

3 Steps to Get Clear on What You Want

Confession time:  I’m a sucker for news about celebrities, aka gossip.  When I need a break I click over to people.com or eonline.com and glance through the latest info.

There’s lots of annoying information on these sites, but what cracks me up the most are those bits of non-news.  So-and-so is not dating George Clooney.  Brad Pitt has not been cast as the new Batman.  There’s a very long list of people who George Clooney is not dating (which unfortunately includes me), and just as long a list of people who have not been cast as the new Batman (which fortunately does include George Clooney).  The real news would be who is George Clooney dating (He appears to be in between.) and who is the new Batman (Ben Affleck).

I hear the same non-answers when I ask clients what they’re looking for in their next job.  There’s a long list of things they don’t want.  There’s nothing wrong with that as a first step.  We often begin to see what we want by contrasting it against what we don’t want.  But it can’t be the only step in the process and here’s why:  the list of what we don’t want is the list of what’s familiar.

As with anything in life, you won’t be able to find or create what you want if you can’t describe it.  You need to be clear, and the more clarity you have, the more likely you are to get the outcome of your dreams. 

Getting clarity is a process.  Your vision will evolve over time with experience and reflection.  If you want to make a change or have something new or different in your life, you’re stepping into uncharted territory.  You need to have a map.

Here are 3 exercises to help you gain clarity:

Start with ‘why.’  I have a client who takes care of an elderly and ill parent.  Her surface level answer to why she’s working is that she needs the money so she can financially support her family. Digging deeper she realizes she wants to make a positive contribution towards a successful outcome, which is something she doesn't feel regarding her family situation.  She doesn’t have that kind of job right now, and she’s beginning to see the gap between where she is and what she wants and needs.

Describe it in detail.  One of the first exercises in almost any coaching program is to write out a detailed description of your ideal day – where are you living, what does your house look like, what do you look like, who are you with, etc.  It’s done so often because it works.  You can do the same thing with your job.  Let your dream genie out of the bottle and don’t be afraid to think big.  If you’re feeling stuck, just start writing.  You’ll discover something new about yourself.  Perhaps you never thought about running your own company, but for some reason that’s what’s coming up.  Or managing people, or not managing people.  Don’t dismiss these thoughts.  There’s something there to explore.

How do you want to feel?  For many people this gets to what motivates them.  Are you curious, do you like to learn new things?  Do you love the satisfaction of working on complex problems?  I traveled last week and got intrigued by an article in the US Airways magazine that profiled the group that does all of the airplane scheduling.  They need to keep track of each airplane, where it is, how many miles it’s flown, it’s maintenance schedule and lots of other information. If a plane unexpectedly needs maintenance, they need to get another airplane to cover those routes.  I kept thinking, I’d love that job!  I’d love that job because I love solving puzzles, and this seemed like one big, multi-dimensional puzzle.

Invest the time to get clear on what you want.  That investment will pay off big time.

Be a Rulebreaker

I went to a conference last week with about 200 other entrepreneurs.  It was 3 days of powerful aha moments and receiving the gift of inspiration from smart, creative people. 

The biggest gift I received, however, was the hardest to accept.  I got to come face-to-face with my own limiting beliefs.  At lunch and we were going around the table telling each other about our businesses.  After I gave my overview, one gal said, I’d pay you to …  and two others at the table agreed.  I said, but I don’t do that.  Then my little mini-me/angel who sits above my right shoulder whispered in my ear, “Did you just say that?   They’re giving you a gift, shut the hell up and listen.”  (Yes, my angel whispers to me like that, well, actually shouts at me like that.)

I sat back, opened my ears, and I now have a bunch of new ideas for my business as well as validation that multiple people would find them valuable.  A gift indeed.

Do you need my mini-me/angel to whisper the same thing in your ear? 

One of the best ways to spot your own limiting beliefs in action is to recognize when you’re in resistance mode, when you automatically deny, defer, decline or get defensive.  You can feel it in your body – that tightening in the tummy or jaw as the walls go up. 

If my tablemates had suggested an idea that I thought was not in line with where I wanted my business to go, I would have simply said something polite and we would have moved on.  But my immediate resistance was a huge wake-up call.  What was I resisting and why? 

It became clear that their ideas would push me outside my comfort zone and require me to step up a few notches to play much bigger.  I got scared and doubted myself.  That got me thinking.  What’s the different between a niche and a fence?  Had I put rules in place for my business that were keeping me from thinking and playing bigger? 

There’s nothing wrong with rules.  Look both ways before crossing the street, lock your door, double check your work, shred documents that contain your social security number, never run out of cat food.  There are lots of good rules that we abide by every day in our working and our non-working lives.  Rules are there to keep us safe, and that’s usually a good thing. 

But it isn’t always a good thing.  When you want to learn and grow, when you want to accomplish more so you can contribute more and get rewarded more for your efforts, some rules can keep you from achieving your goals.  As I said, rules are designed to keep you safe – to keep you inside your comfort zone. 

But guess what…everything you want is just outside your comfort zone.  To get what you want, you need to stretch, take a leap of faith, jump into uncharted waters.  If you start to feel resistance or get defensive, that’s a hint that you’re confronting a rule or limiting belief that you’ve put in place to keep you safe.

I have one friend who, for years, wanted to get married and have a family, but she had a rule that she didn’t date younger men.  Once she decided to drop that rule, it turns out she knew a wonderful man who was 4 years younger.  They’ve been married for over 10 years and have 3 beautiful children.

It’s easy to spot resistance at work.  Have you ever said, or heard someone say, “We can’t do that.  We’ve always done things this way.”  The way things have always been done is designed to produce predictable, safe results.  That’s not a bad thing unless you’re in a changing market, facing stiff competition or need to grow, evolve and improve. 

The biggest gift I received last week wasn’t all the new ideas, although those were yummy.  The biggest gift was shining a light on my own limiting beliefs and rules.  Now that I see them, I can start breaking them.

To get to your next level, what rules do you need to start breaking?

Be the CEO of Your Career

When you think about or talk about your career, what comes to mind?  You might say, “I do xxx for a living or I have xxx job at this company, and I make $$ a year.”  It’s a snapshot of your current situation.

So how are you measuring up?  Do you like your job?  Are you happy with the money you make?  Are you just happy to have a job?  If you’re like 80 percent of people in the world, the answer to the question do you like your job would range somewhere between “meh” to “no, I hate my job.”

If you’re not happy with your answer, it’s possible that your inner CEO is not doing it’s job; you’re only operating at the CFO and COO level.

CFOs and COOs (Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer) are senior-level and important positions in any organization. What makes a successful CFO and COO?  These positions are measured by looking backwards at numbers and results such as profits, earnings growth, cost reductions, and efficiency gains. Annual reports are filled with content from the Finance and Operations executives.

If you’re concerned about what you’re doing (or not doing) and how much money you’re making (or not making), you’re operating at the CFO and/or COO level.  Not bad, but there’s room for growth.  The top dog, the big kahuna, the uber boss in any organization is the CEO. 

What makes a CEO successful?  How are they measured?  Profits, growth, and those other CFO-ey/COO-ey things count, but what separates the successful from the unsuccessful CEO, is something else – it’s their forward-looking vision.  At the CEO level profits and growth are results created by how successfully their vision is being realized and how it resonates in the market with customers and investors.

How are you doing as the CEO of your career?  Are you getting the results you want?  Do you have a vision for where you’re going, and is your vision being accepted and supported by your market aka your employer?  Do you have a longer-term vision?

Many people, myself included when I worked in my corporate job, didn’t have goals beyond the coming year.  I didn’t know where I wanted my career to go. I was operating at the CFO/COO level in my career.  If you find yourself in this same boat, here are some questions to begin clarifying your career vision. 

Why are you working?  Don’t just say to make money.  OK, start there, but dig deeper.  Are you providing for your family?  Is it because that’s what’s expected by your parents, by society, or even by yourself?  Are you scared to not have money coming in?  Get real about your motivation. 

If you had mucho money and didn’t have to work, what would you do with your time? Go beyond the first six months when you’d sit on a beach and read.  Get to the heart of the matter.  If you come up with a blank page, think about what you’d miss about your work.  Would you miss the people, would you miss feeling productive, would you miss the challenge of solving problems or providing a service?

How did you end up in your current job?  Are you happy with where you are or did you get on a career escalator in your 20s and just progressed to this point?  Is your current situation the result of decisions made by others; e.g., a layoff or reorganization? 

Again, how are you doing as your CEO?  If you’re doing great, congratulations!  It’s likely that you’re also making good money and growing.  If you don’t like how your CEO is performing, it’s time to invest some time digging deep to find your underlying vision and ‘why.’  

The good news is that the clues and patterns are already in your life.  Here’s one thing I did to find mine:  for one month I kept track of activities that made me feel great (brainstorming solutions, mentoring people) and those that sucked the air out of my tires (arguing with audit, writing 8 versions of the same status report).  At the end of the month I sorted them into two piles and looked for the patterns.  Try it!

How to Stand Out In a Crowd

Do you want to stand out in a crowd?  Want your resume to go to the top of the pile?  Want hiring managers to remember you?  Want more fruitful meetings with prospects?  Want your ideas and recommendations to be considered and even adopted? 

If the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes YESSSSS!!!! the key is to talk about value.  And don’t just talk about value.  Really understand and ‘own’ the value you create, the value of your product, the value of your solution.

As I work with clients to revise their resumes, prep for job interviews, prep for performance reviews, or prep for big presentations, one thing I notice is that we all talk about what we do.  We might even talk about how we do what we do.  We think that’s what will influence and appeal to the hiring manager, the boss, the prospect, or the executive team.  It’s what we know.  We’re comfortable talking about those things – we could go on and on, and in our heart of hearts we believe that if others fully understood what we do and how we do it, they’d see how awesome we are. 

Or if the prospect understood how a product was produced, they’d buy it in an instant.  But the school of hard knocks quickly teaches that this isn’t the case.

I’m reminded of my pet peeve during my corporate job when looking at status reports where project managers (not people on my team) just listed the contents of their calendars for the week:  I went to this meeting on Tuesday, facilitated this other meeting on Wednesday, talked to so-and-so about x, investigated y.

Or resumes.  Here’s what my job responsibilities were and here’s a list of tasks I performed.  Yawn.

If you want to stand out in a crowd, you need to show ‘what’s in it for them.’  It’s Marketing 101 - so basic yet so often overlooked.  Whether you’re looking for a job, selling a product, or promoting an idea, you’ll be more successful if you can help people see the value to them or to the organization.  After all, that’s all they really care about no matter how awesome you are.  

If you’re looking for a job, your resume should focus on the benefits past employers got because they had you on their staff.  As Dr. Phil would say, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.  So list out the benefits (how you created value) backed up by multiple examples, not the features (job duties and tasks you performed).  When someone reads your resume they may be reading about you, but they’re thinking about themselves, it’s basic human nature.  You want them to say, I know what this person can do for me - they’re the solution I’ve been looking for.

Do you create order out of chaos?  What a great statement to put on your resume followed by concrete examples that recap results produced through your efforts.  If someone is wrestling with chaos, you’ll make them sit up and take notice more than if you say you analyze processes using SIPOCs and paredo charts, and facilitate cross-functional work teams to identify best practices…blah blah.  I’m bored just writing that sentence. 

Whether you’re selling yourself, a product or an idea, you’ll get to explain the ‘how,’ but only after you’re invited in.

When I start working with a new client, they often claim that they don’t know the value they create – they’re not conscious or aware of it.  They know what they do, but it often takes a game show’s worth of questions to get to the underlying value.  Once we’ve gone through that process of few times, they start paying attention and seeking this perspective. 

And wonder of wonders, they’re happier, feel more fulfilled and are often viewed by others as being at a more senior level. 

How do you create value?  

3 Ways To Turn Up The Volume Of Your Job

Your job is OK, not bad, just OK.  But you’d like it to be more than OK, you’d like it to be – dare to dream - great! 

You don’t need to find a new job to have a great job.  Here are three ways to redesign, add on, and de-clutter your way to a great job.

Work To Your Strengths:

We all have things we do really well, without even trying.  People ask, how do you do that?  And we answer, I don’t know – I just do it.  That’s one of your strengths in action.  A strength is a combination of innate talent combined with knowledge and skills acquired through experience. 

Becoming conscious of our strengths is the fast path to success because your greatest potential for growth comes from your areas of strength, not your areas of weakness.  To turn up the volume of your current job, redesign it around your strengths.   You probably have more leeway than you think to design your job around your strengths.

One of the core questions Gallup asks is, “At work do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?”  Think how great it would feel to answer, “Yes!”

I love the Gallup StrengthsFinder tool.  If you’ve never taken this assessment, purchase a new copy of StrengthsFinder 2.0, complete the online questionnaire using the access code in the back of the book, and download the detailed report of your top 5 talent themes.   Then identify your strengths and find ways to incorporate them into your days. 

Don’t’ Go It Alone

When I interview new clients who are unhappy in their current job, the common theme I hear is they feel alone.  No one supports them, no one appreciates them, and interactions with coworkers are generally negative.  They feel isolated, set up for failure, and the only solution they can see is to find a new job. 

Don’t let things deteriorate to this point.  Building authentic relationships with coworkers, networking in your industry, and partnering with others is something successful people make a conscious effort to do well, even if it’s outside their comfort zone.

I was coaching a new client recently who likes to work at a really fast pace.  But he understands the risks associated with his business well enough to know when he needs to reach out to a couple of trusted partners for help thinking things through.  We all need those sounding boards, no matter what we do for a living. 

My last boss in my corporate job asked me about my networking outside the company. I was not an industry networker, and I regret it now.  When coaching people in senior management positions, I urge them to make sure they have a network (including LinkedIn connections) with people outside of their company – people they meet at conferences, etc.  Keeping up with trends in the industry keeps you current and could spark some new ideas.  And of course it comes in handy if you find yourself looking for a new opportunity.

Stay Away from the Dark Side

The dreaded dark side is populated with negative people and energy vampires as well as your own inner beast or shadow.  The sooner you recognize that you’re engaging with the dark side, the sooner you can extricate yourself.  This includes Negative Nellies as well as those people who might be gunning for you, determined to make you look bad in public.  Find a way to disengage or limit your engagement with these people.  Recognizing them for what they are is the key.

We all have a shadow, that inner ogre that takes over when we’re stressed or pushed beyond our limits.  Different people have different looking shadows.  Mine retreats, but other people have shadows that turn combative, judgmental, overly critical, manipulative, close-minded, or pessimistic.  Learn what triggers your shadow so you can take steps to avoid those situations, or if you can’t avoid them, manage your responses.

Implement these three strategies, and “kick it up a notch” at work!