A some point you’ll likely ask yourself: “Do I have what it takes to be really successful at what I do?”

Role models provide clues to the answer. Look hard at what they’ve achieve and you’ll see they were willing to put themselves “out there.”

Now ask yourself, “Can I handle it when all eyes are on me?” Your answer either makes your blood run cold or excites you. In either case, it’s time to get prepared.

Understanding the big stage                                                                                        

Many of us go merrily along in our careers as part of a work group or team. We do our part but always in the context of others.

If we want our careers to grow, we need to demonstrate our unique talents and leadership to a broader audience.

You know you’re on the big stage when you look around and realize, at that moment, you’re alone with all the responsibility to perform exceptionally. There’s no one to lean on, save the day, or absorb the consequences.

It’s up to you alone to deliver your best and deal with the outcome.

Examples of big stage performers are everywhere:

• Singles tennis players facing an opponent across the net in front of 10,000 spectators, many of whom are not rooting for them; they’re on their own–no coach, no trainer, no teammate
• Live TV news anchors who carry their programs, changing gears seamlessly as updates are communicated through their ear pieces; there’s no stopping to catch their breaths, no one to bail them out.
• Keynote speakers who need show up and then hold the attention of diverse audiences while delivering a meaningful message; there’s no one to step in when it’s not going well
• Surgeons who literally have the lives and/or future well-being of patients in their hands, while other medical professionals watch; all accountability for the outcome is on them

There’s a big stage in every profession whether you’re a teacher/trainer, attorney, dancer, project manager, business owner, sales executive, or community leader.

It can be a lonely place or an exhilarating one. If you want to rise, you need to be able to take the stage when called upon and handle the inevitable heat.

Preparing for your role

Only a fool willingly steps onto the big stage before s/he’s ready.

When it’s our turn for the spotlight, we need to be equipped to handle the pressure. Advanced preparation is essential. We need to hone our skills, make a plan, practice, and visualize what success looks like.

We also need to be ready for the unexpected.

So, take a readiness assessment by asking yourself, “While all eyes are on me, will be I able to:”

• Deliver the goods
• Switch gears when I need to
• Deal with or ignore distractions
• Be mentally tough enough to stay on track
• Use humor to defuse or deflect a misstep or issue
• Trust what I know and my ability to execute my skills
• Take advantage of opportunities to hit a home run
• Draw on the energy of the moment to maintain motivation

Then work on things that need strengthening.

It’s easy to get freaked out about the big stage. We let ourselves get paralyzed by the pressure and the irrational belief that we might fail in such a big way that our careers will be ruined.

Don’t let that be you. Winners avoid beating themselves.

Pressure is your friend.

It wakes up your brain and gives it something exciting to process.

If you don’t believe that think of all the people who have failed at one business only to succeed at another, lost one election and won a bigger one, finished out of the money in numerous golf tournaments and then won a championship.

If you don’t work to get on the big stage and take your place when it’s offered, you’ll have no chance of grabbing your brass ring. You must play to win.

Succumbing to the fear of failure invites failure. Learning how to contend with pressure on the big stage is the path to career success and a special pride in yourself. Let the show go on!

Photo from loop_oh via Flickr

Often we’re warned that if we’re too generous with our time and talents at work, we’ll get taken advantage of. Well, maybe, but it’s worth the risk.

Most of us lend a hand because we:

• Can’t help ourselves; it’s how we’re wired, raised, or compelled
• Can put our knowledge and skills to good use
• Care about the person or group in need
• Enjoy collaborating, teamwork, and a new challenge

Our initial desire to help doesn’t usually consider the downside. We step up because it feels good.

The double-edged sword

Helping goes two ways: we give it one day and need it the next. We may go for long periods without needing help, but we’re pretty sure our time will come.

I’m as guilty as the next for resisting offers of help for reasons like:

• I don’t want to be a bother
• My need isn’t that important
• I think I can take care of it myself (when I really can’t)
• I’ll wait for something “really big” down the road

So I refrain from asking when I should, even when others are offering help.

At the same time, I’m eager to help someone else. I love nothing more than frantic phone calls from friends and clients who have some new craziness at work to figure out. This gives me a chance to provide help as a gift, my act of gratitude for their confidence and friendship.

Counted on or counted out

To help and be helped bind us. At work we need each other to:

• Get the work done
• Avoid being blindsided
• Build our knowledge and skills
• Create and innovate

We need coworkers we can count on and they need us too.

The other day I was thinking about the “helpers-in-waiting” in my life. These are the professionals I can call anytime with a question or a problem–special people who know who I am and care sincerely about helping me like my attorney, my accountant, my computer specialist, my personal physician, and my large and small animal veterinarians.

These aren’t people I talk to every day or month or year, but when I need them, I really do and  pronto. They don’t have to drop everything when I call, but most of the time they do. That raises my gratitude level and they know it.

A help-seeker’s gratitude expands when the help giver:

• Acknowledges the need and responds quickly
• Does a thorough job done and gives sound advice
• Is fair and trustworthy
• Communicates information and answers questions clearly
• Takes a warm, pleasant approach and even shows a sense of humor

The help-giver’s gratitude comes from the help seeker’s:

• Expressions of appreciation and thankfulness
• Respect for their time, effort, and understanding
• Pleasantness, sense of humor, and flexibility
• Reciprocated care and concern for them as people

In a business environment, no one is obligated to provide selfless help just because someone is paying for services. I know plenty of highly paid individuals who don’t provide help that generates gratitude. In too many cases, their help creates resentment.

Be kind, be helpful

In my view, the good guys and gals finish first. They attract a community of like-minded people who help because they want to, promoting a spirit of gratitude that is contagious.

Each day we need to reach out to others while expressing thanks to those helping us, in even the smallest ways. Recognize helpfulness in an email, a voice mail, a word in passing, a greeting card, an invitation to lunch, a “how are you doing” inquiry, or an offer of support. Gratitude costs nothing and makes a big difference.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and other post posts here. Believe me, I am enormously grateful for your interest, your comments, and your support.

Photo from smiles 7 via Flickr

Think twice

Knee-jerk reactions never pay. When we’re fed up, we need to keep our wits about us. Most of the time, we’re reacting to situations that have been brewing.

I’m a big proponent of not becoming a doormat for anyone at anytime. We’re entitled to respect and fair treatment, both of which we need to stand up for in the right way at the right time.

I’m also a big proponent of understanding the consequences of the actions we want to take. Too often, however, people let their emotions get the best of them, shooting themselves in both feet.

If you choose to act on a workplace issue, you may be, at the very least:

• Implicating your boss who is responsible for the work environment
• Subjecting your performance history to review in light of the issue
• Challenging the company’s practices and their overseers like HR
• Setting up your motives and credibility for dissection

These daunting considerations are intended to sober your emotions not negate the legitimacy of your issue.

I’m a passionate believer in doing what’s right and fair. But we shouldn’t  be stupid about it.

A clear head, an understanding of workplace realities, and a good plan set you up to do what needs to be done. A little internal leverage with influential people doesn’t hurt either.

Know what you want

Just getting your issue noticed isn’t enough. If you’re going to stir the pot be specific about the remedy you want.

Here are two interesting cases:

My client, Annette, from a Fortune 100 company was promoted to lead a work group in another state while she maintained a home office. The prior manager had built a culture of favorites; that manager was now Annette’s new boss. The perceived loss of “favorite” status by one employee resulted in a public outburst during a workshop that included insults aimed at Annette. She turned the matter over to HR: Disciplinary action followed.

Impacts: Annette’s new boss felt the sting and so did the punished employee. Other employees assessed the situation through their respective lenses. HR validated Annette’s action, noting, however, that this was a severe step considering how new Annette was to the position. Will there be subsequent fallout? Time will tell. In this case, Annette had everything documented and took swift action. She was willing to risk backlash because setting a standard of professional conduct mattered to her. What would you have done?

Next there’s Victor who was receiving poor performance reviews from a boss who didn’t like his approach to handling complex technical projects. Victor saw his boss as uncommunicative, a poor leader, and politically motivated. Victor’s reviews got progressively worse; he was put on notice to improve or else. He wanted to defend himself by reporting his boss to HR or anyone who would listen. He considered suing. Ultimately, Victor was terminated..

Impacts: Taking on the boss would mean proving that each aspect of Victor’s negative evaluation was wrong and making a case that the boss had something against him. If Victor successfully makes the “bad boss” case to the company, chances are no other manager there would want Victor. If he could manage to negate the performance criticisms, he would likely end up pointing an accusing finger at some coworkers, creating bad blood. To sue the company would leave a permanent mark on Victor that could be an obstacle for future jobs. Victor chose to move on. What would you have done?

Remember, it’s business.

Our emotions can cause us to do reckless things. When it comes to our jobs, caution makes more sense. It may feel great for the moment to tell the boss to “take this job and..,” but that only gives the control back to him or her.

We need to know how to size up each situation, identify our options, and chose the one that’s going to help us get what we want or cut our losses. Please, keep it together, okay?

Photo from Roberto Kaplan Designs via Flickr

That’s okay, actually. Careers teach us to pay attention continuously.

A pulse exists below the surface of every business. It may be:

• Unseen or foreign to us
• Outside our understanding
• Separate from the work we perform daily

That pulse drives business all decision-making, actions which include both simple and wildly complex variables.

Directly or indirectly, that business pulse impacts us in ways we either like or don’t. When we “get” what’s going on, we’re better positioned to respond or react in ways that are good for us, building our savvy.

What you see v. what is

Marketing is the juice. The business markets its goods and services for profit; we market our capabilities for reward.

We are also marketing targets even when it’s not obvious that we are. When we feel the pulse of it, we’re likely on the verge of a “now-I-get-it” moment.

Consider this: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but several colleges have stepped out lately  in some wild, new football uniform styles and designs—from helmets to jerseys to shoes.

Journalist Mo Rocca did a piece for the CBS Sunday Morning Program (January 8, 2012) featuring the gridiron wear of the Oregon Ducks who won the Rose Bowl. Rocca’s piece described the Oregon Ducks as looking “less like football players and more like comic book superheroes, sporting mirrored ‘special edition’ helmets that had never been worn before.”

In fact Rocca reports:

This regular season alone, the Ducks wore eight different jerseys, six pants, five helmets and four different shoe and sock colors . . . a staggering number of possible combinations.

The Oregon football team isn’t the only one sporting snazzy new unis: Notre Dame and the University of Maryland did too.

On the surface, you would think the change to more high-tech gear was strictly for on-field performance, safety, and durability. Well, as Coach Lee Corso would say, “Not so fast, my friend!”

ESPN’s Paul Lukas explains to Rocca the story behind the new uniforms move:

…when you and I were kids, you couldn’t go and buy a jersey. That market didn’t exist…They hadn’t figured out that someone would drop $200 for a polyester shirt.

And…now that they know people will do that, ‘Well, you already bought this year’s jersey. Well, what if we change our jersey next year?’ You’d go and buy another one.

The “now-I-get-it” discovery is that this change was about merchandizing and not just great TV optics.

Savvy up

There’s a secondary story about most everything in business, that’s why you need to be savvy to the underlying pulse and needs of the company you work for.

Think of the last time you didn’t get hired or promoted. It’s likely the decision wasn’t all about you. The successful candidate may have been:

• Representative of an under-represented constituency
• Identified for a growth assignment
• Someone’s favorite
• Passed over once before and due a second chance
• A non-controversial choice

We all want to think hiring is purely about talent and capabilities, but that would deny the existence of the pulse.

Human beings create and lead businesses in service to other human beings who buy from them. The human element creates the pulse. To succeed ourselves, we need to keep our fingers on it!

Photo from Monica’s Dad via Flickr

• “With an attitude like that he’ll be an obstacle on our project?”
• “We don’t need a supervisor with an attitude like hers?”
• “I can’t give him a good rating with that attitude.”

People observe our attitudes and then define us through their own attitude-shaded lens. Like it or not, we’re locked in an inexorable cycle of labeling.

Attitudes revealed

Attitude is defined as either a positive or hostile disposition or state of mind. Our feelings, thoughts, and points of view form our attitudes.

No matter how we come by them, attitudes become features like traits and characteristics that can work for or against career success.

We live in a fast-and-loose labeling world. There are labels for everyone in every profession and walk of life.

Politicians will label you as a conservative, liberal, moderate, progressive, or independent even if your viewpoints don’t fit their label for every issue.

At work, you’re put into attitude boxes like team player, go-getter, troublemaker, or bullier even when your attitudes are situation based.

Attitude labels stick, so we need to understand how we’re attracting them and how to turn them around when they’re a liability.

Look at yourself

Your attitude is the one thing in life that you always control. So if you’re displaying attitudes that are causing you problems you don’t want, change!

Start with some self-appraisal:

• Make a list of the positive and negative words being used by others to define your attitude.  (Reread your last two performance appraisals for insights. Listen closely to what your boss and peers are saying to or about you.)
• Next to each word, write 3 situations where you remember doing or saying something that triggered it. (If you can’t remember, ask a trusted coworker or your boss for help.)
• Talk to a family member or friend about how you come across in certain circumstances. Chances are your attitudes show up in you personal life too.

Commit to an attitude management plan:

• Identify actions you will take to retain positive attitude labels and fix the negative ones.
• Identify triggers that bring out your negative attitudes and how you will manage your actions and words when they appear.
• Schedule a meeting with your boss to discuss your commitment to improving attitudes that need work.
• Share your plan for change and solicit your boss’s support. Be as specific as practical.
• Make good on your plan by sticking with it.
  

The harsh reality is that attitude is more important to career success than talent. No one wants to work with a gifted leader or technician with a bad attitude. Good results are more likely to come from those with average talent who are happy working together.

The consequences of inaction

Negative attitude labels that go uncorrected can crush a career. Winners showcase can-do attitudes, collaboration, courage, and trustworthiness, even in the heat of battle.

The also-rans (ah, yes, another label) are those who go unnoticed. Their attitudes are often unrevealed, other than their willingness to just go along with what’s asked. They don’t make waves and they don’t progress much either.

Employees with negative attitudes often resist direction, find fault with all decisions, bully co-workers, and/or obstruct progress. They perceive they’re winning when their careers are actually in free-fall.

When our attitudes are on display, observers reinforce the labels they’ve assigned to us, until one day their labels have replaced our names. We become known as the:

• Obstructionist or Problem Child
• Hard-ass or Power Monger
• Team Player or Advocate

Negative labels can be dangerous. Just watch a political campaign and see how labels about what a candidate believes are turned into weaponry through name-calling and pigeonholing.

You need to protect yourself from unfair attitude labeling by renewing efforts to manage your attitudes effectively. If where you work doesn’t fit your nature, do the smart thing: Employ attitudes that serve you positively each day while you take steps to make a career change. You can do this!

Photo from Ayleen Gaspar via Flickr

Navigating our career path can be lonely. What it takes to be successful isn’t always clear. The messages we get may be vague or conflicting. Our coworkers may have agendas that don’t include us. 

Going it alone is how many manage their careers. That makes about as much sense as trying to lose weight, quit smoking, or master tennis without a support system. We all need someone in our corner to keep us going; they need us too. 

A rescue offer 

I wrote Business Fitness: The Power to Succeed—Your Way to make managing your career easier and to get beyond the fluff. 

If you’re ready to get serious about your career planning, I’d like to make it easy for you get (re)started: 

For all of January 2012, I’m offering buy one get one (BOGO) free, signed copies of my book.  

Just go to my website “book” tab and add one (1) copy to your cart for $19.95. (I’ll know to send two by your date of purchase.) Shipping is free in the continental U.S. 

A great career development strategy is a powerful thing. Here’s how you can us the book to build yours.

The power of partnering 

When building your career, there’s real value in partnering with someone you trust and respect, someone to hold you accountable for setting goals and staying the course for success. 

There reasons galore why we benefit from the support of a partner: 

• It’s difficult for us to see ourselves objectively. We need a filter. 
• It’s difficult to stay motivated when things go awry, when we’ve been disappointed, and when we lose our optimism. 
• It’s difficult to stay up when our self-confidence wanes, self-doubt haunts us, and opportunities have been missed. 

Whether careers are exotic or mundane, they often progress in mysterious and unpredictable ways. The only aspects we control are the choices we make, the capabilities we develop, the chances we take, and the relationships we form. 

Along the way, we need to  build momentum around our efforts until the pieces take shape and a picture of our career emerges. A “business fitness” partner can keep us on track.

 Keep pushing 

Finding career success isn’t easy. It means always pressing forward. Funny, how we continually need to push and be pushed. So give this approach a try: 

• Select a single partner or small group (no more than 5)
• Agree to meet at a set day and time (at least twice monthly)
• Use your first meeting to establish ground rules, particularly confidentiality around information shared. Then share what kind of success each of you wants right now.
• Assign one chapter from Business Fitness to be read and discussed at each meeting. Agree to share answers to the inventories at each chapter end.
• After all the chapters have been discussed, go back and (re)write your career goals and share. Hold each other accountable for specific statements.
• Use each subsequent meeting to review progress on goals, provide insights and support, and identify ways to help each other move forward. 
• Make the meetings and the process fun!

This process is part book club, mastermind group, and individual mentoring/coaching. As you progress, you’ll come up with endless next steps that will build your capabilities, strengthen your self-confidence, and deepen relationships. 

Career building takes discipline. There are no shortcuts that are sustainable. When we’re at our best, we feel business fit. To get there, we need each other.

Each one has their own set of expectations. They want their leader to create a work environment that suits them by solving problems, removing obstacles, resolving conflicts, ensuring fairness, and minimizing disruptions. 

The harsh reality is: Every employee can’t have exactly what s/he wants. 

Disagreement triggers 

Like it or not, business needs trump employee wants. That can be hard to swallow if employees don’t understand the big picture their leaders see.  After all, a leader’s first responsibility is to keep the business going so we can keep our jobs. 

Savvy leaders anticipate decisions that trigger employee disagreement and are quick to defuse it. 

There are all kinds of causes for those disagreements: 

• Someone else was promoted and they don’t understand why.
• A work process was changed without their input.
• Work was outsourced, threatening their job security. 

Even though, you, as the leader, didn’t necessarily create these situations, you are expected to own them. Remember: you are the company’s agent even while you’re an employee in your own right. (Hey, no one said this role was easy!) 

Leaders need to identify signs of employee disagreement before they become flashpoints by being alert to: 

• Non-verbals: No eye contact, silence, avoidance, negative body language
• Verbal barbs: “I don’t think that’s fair” or “That’s not my job”
• Actions: Work slow-downs, huddled groups venting, non-compliance 

Resistance to new policies/processes, reorganizations, or increased performance expectations notoriously starts small and then takes on a life of its own. 

It’s tempting to ignore what might appear to be trivial employee disagreements. But they provide value insights that every leader needs to take seriously and reposition. 

When employees don’t see things your way, they act in either an overt or covert way. Some employees will be upfront and open about their disagreements; others will lie low and stoke the disenchantment of others. The leader needs to understand the root cause of these disagreements and tackle them head on. 

Defusing pushback 

Leaders tend to look at disagreements as pushback against their authority, which often isn’t the case. Too often, they are tempted to push back harder, using their organizational clout to make sure employees keep doing things “their” way. That only works for a short while and often makes matters worse.  

There’s real risk in failing to address employee disagreements like: 

• Declining morale and motivation
• Reduction in productivity and quality
• Inability to enact change successfully 

Leaders of all stripes need to moderate employee disagreements, resolve legitimate issues, build understanding, and keep lines of communication open. 

When employees disagree, they want to be heard. Sometimes this is all they need, an opportunity to go on record with their point of view. Other times, it’s the starting point for ongoing dialogue, helping the employee and the leader to resolve the disagreement. 

Here are basic steps for conversations with employees who don’t see things the leader’s way: 

• Understand the employee’s issue and its source
• Ask what the employee wants changed
• Be clear about your position and what you are able to give (if anything)
• Be prepared to explain your/the company’s rationale in words the employee will understand
• Confront the employee about their resistance (if any), its impacts and consequences
• Summarize what’s been discussed and state the next steps each will take 

The leader is not always right and the employee wrong. Effective leaders get important insights when employees disagree. 

Take the high road 

Disagreements are important for business growth; they constitute feedback. It’s the way disagreements are handled that separates great leaders from mediocre ones. 

Opening yourself to employee viewpoints and inviting them is key. Not every point of employee disagreement is valid or doable, but each should be heard and considered. 

Photo from stuant63 via Flickr

• “The work is boring.”
• “It’s a dead end.”
• “My boss is useless.” 

Ask them what they like and they pause a bit, then say: 

• “Well, I’m glad I have one.”
• “I work with some nice people.”
• “There are some good days.” 

We can do better than this. Actually, we need to do better. 

Why? Because our jobs are about us—who we are, what we bring, how we connect, and where we’re headed. 

A job is not a static thing. It’s a living manifestation of our actions. 

Discover what matters. 

On the surface a job looks like a compilation of duties, task, and requirements. When we only work on the surface, we fail to see what’s below. 

It’s a bit like swimming in the ocean without any awareness that beneath us there are colonies of species struggling to survive, wreckages waiting to be discovered, and mysteries of the earth’s formation. 

Every job we experience is an opportunity to discover what matters to us. That’s how we figure out what we need from each subsequent job to make our careers worthwhile. 

Not long ago, I met Donna, a personal care aid for the elderly. She worked at a church-run home that sadly was closing. She was losing her job and I was there to provide career next-step ideas and tools. 

Even though Donna was disappointed, she was upbeat. She’d worked all her life in service-related jobs—a waitress at various restaurants and a clearing person for individuals and businesses. She loved working, being busy, engaged with others, feeling energized. 

There were several good transition options for Donna, particularly setting up an actual cleaning services business where she could hire others as independent cleaning people to handle anticipated volume. Our meeting was going beautifully. 

Then I asked Donna how she felt about closing the door on her work with the elderly. Suddenly, her mood changed.

She told me that the previous day, she and the two other women who worked with her as a care team went to visit several of the residents relocated to a nearby facility. Then she started to cry. 

“What’s wrong, Donna?” I asked. 

She answered, “It was so hard going there and seeing that someone else was taking care of the people I took care of. It was hard for me to give them up.” 

Donna came to realize that her job wasn’t about administering medication, helping people dress and stay clean, or ensuring their safety. It was about that important the sense of personal fulfillment and connection that comes from doing for others. 

That core realization is something we each need to discover. When we do, our career path decisions are made easier. 

Find the right fit. 

We tend to understand what a job has meant to us when we don’t have it anymore. So if you want to jump-start your understanding of what matters to you, think about bygone jobs. 

Ask yourself: 

• What work did I miss when I moved on?
• Who did I miss and why?
• What part of myself did I feel like I’d left behind?

Now consider your current job, and ask yourself: 

• What’s the real reason I do this work?
• What do I really need/want to get out of my job? 

Your answers to these questions can help you discover the jobs that truly fit you. If you don’t like your answers, that may be a signal that you need to make a change. 

These lyrics sung by folk singer, Joni Mitchell, in “The Big Yellow Taxi” remind us how important it is to discover what matters to us before we run out of time to fully incorporate it into our careers:  

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Please don’t let anyone, especially yourself, pave over your paradise.

Photo from Bonsailara1 via Flickr

It’s mistake if you’re thinking: 

• “I’m not really a ‘business’ leader. I just direct a small work group.”
• “I’m responsible for internal services, so I don’t have to think about the marketplace.”
• “In my company, decisions about competitive edge and growth are made by the big execs. I’m not in that loop.” 

Everyone in a leadership role affects the future growth, competitive advantage, and sustainability of his/her company. 

Why? Because every function, no matter how big or small, has an effect on the business’s ability to out-perform and out-innovate the competition. 

If you need to be convinced, Andrea Kate’s book, Find Your Next: Using the Business Genome Approach to Find Your Company’s Next Competitive Edge, provides compelling insights. 

A powerful metaphor 

Scientists reveal the mysteries of our biology through DNA genome mapping. In a similar vein, Kate’s reveals a “genome” map of these six elements of business success. 

1. Product and service innovation—the invention of offerings that resonate.
2. Customer impact—a sustainable community of support.
3. Process design—alignment of the ‘how’ of a business with the evolving ‘what’ that customers need.
4. Talent and leadership—the culture that will move a business forward.
5. Secret sauce—the recipe of differentiation and competitive advantage in a new world of unprecedented transparency.
6. Trendability—the foresight to see the future more quickly and adapt more rapidly to shifts in the landscape. 

With an understanding of these elements in hand, what’s a leader to do? 

The answer is simple: ASK QUESTIONS. Lots of them. Make them challenging, unnerving, disturbing, pointed, wild, and complex. 

Then resist rejecting answers before you really examine, understand, deconstruct, and test them. 

Great leaders learn not to be afraid of innovative thinking, new direction, disruptive change, and paradigm shifts, even though they may be tempted to resist what they don’t immediately understand. 

Find your next … 

Leadership is about defining reality and then laying out a path for success. Every function in every organization is ripe for improvement, change, and innovation in order to keep up with best practices or to forge new ground. It’s the same whether its human resources, financial planning, product design or marketing. 

Kates lays out the struggle every leader faces: 

We are all facing new realities: the mountain of facts is huge, the speed of change is impossible to keep up with, the information that used to keep us ahead of our competition is now instantaneously available, our customers are talking about us to each other more than ever before, business dynamics have turned global, and the expectations for competitive advantage are rising at record speed. 

When it comes to thinking strategically, the model most leaders use is SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). Instead, Kates suggests business genomic thinking: 

1. Sort through the options for your company and assess your hunches.
2. Match your genome to successful businesses that have already steered themselves in the direction you want to explore.
3. Hybridize your company by grafting the ideas that work in other companies to your own.
4. Adapt and thrive by breaking out of old habits and fostering new traditions in your business that will enable you to take advantage of a rapidly-evolving business environment. 

To Kates, the key to competitive edge is looking at how you perform in any aspect of your business compared to businesses much different from yours. Even though apples and oranges are different on the surface, they are both fruit with attributes that are good for you. 

The leader’s coda 

Find Your Next is “based on the idea that the possibilities for what a business leader can do next must come from somewhere other than what they did last,” Kates writes. 

One of the smart moves of business fitness is to implement new ideas. To do that you need to think about what’s really going on in your business, how it addresses the vortex of marketplace change, and then what course of action to take. Kate’s book is filled with approaches, insights, and a wide-range of case studies that will help you find your next.

I’m pretty sure you missed this post or forgot about it. It was my first, written two years ago, marking my foray into blogging. During my first month, I had 125 page views, now I get about 4,500 views monthly, totalling over 50,000 for those two years. I’m so grateful for every reader and subscriber, for all the wonderful comments, and for the chance to learn from you. Risking-taking is a path to growth and discovery. When we’re lucky, we get more than we hope for. I sure did. Thanks.

Sticking your neck out is scary. It’s a different kind of scary than maybe getting the a deadly disease or watching zombie movies or walking down an unlit city street at 1 AM. Taking risks that expose us to potential failure, criticism, embarrassment, or loss is personal.

Truth is: First steps take guts. They represent our willingness to acknowledge trial and error as our friend. But they can scare the pants off us, particularly when we really want things to work out.

What your belly knows that you don’t

Take this blog as an example. This is big first step for me. I’ve been writing my whole life. As an English major, I scratched out a ton of papers. I taught writing for ten years. As a corporate manager, I penned hundreds of memos, proposals, and strategic plans. As a consultant and coach, I’ve written magazine and newspaper articles, and had my book published.

So why did my stomach start to churn when I decided to become a blogger? Because it was a new format, a new audience, and a new kind of exposure, that frankly, I find scary.

My head’s answer to that was, “Don’t be ridiculous, you know how to write.”

My heart said, “Listen, my dear, it’s important for you to be courageous and offer useful insights to people building careers and small businesses.”

But my stomach said, “I’m not feeling too good. What if your big blog idea falls flat and you make a jerk out of yourself in front of a lot of people (most of whom you don’t and will never know) who, before this blog, might have thought better of you.”

The stomach can have a lot to say when you least expect it. And it can start to convince the head and the heart that the risk is too great and the potential discomfort not worth it.

5 ways to sass back!

To build a successful life, we need to get out of our own way. Calculated risk-taking is necessary to build the career we want or the business success that we need. Risks are about adventure and promise.

Each time we stick our necks out, we control how far. The more success we have, the bolder and more confident we become. Overcoming the obstacles imposed by our stomachs, in cahoots with our heads and hearts, are the challenges we face.

When you feel reluctant to take those first steps, ask yourself these questions:

What’s the worse that could happen? Unless the answer is death or financial ruin, then there’s no reason not to step out.

Have I done my homework? You don’t have to know everything about what’s ahead, but enough to have a realistic understanding of what you’ll need to do. If you have enough knowledge, skills, and experience to draw on, you’re good to go.

Am I ready? Take an inventory of your motivation, commitment, and energy level. Once you’ve got plenty in the tank, put things in gear and go.

Who’s there for me? Nothing beats a good support system, folks who are in your camp, ready with ideas, help, feedback, and healthy perspective. It doesn’t have to be a crowd, one good ally will do.

What would I do if I weren’t freaked about this? When we aren’t scared, we’re just out there doing the things we love and want to do. So if you want and love to do this thing you have before you (like this blog for me), then just do it. (Thank you, Nike and Socrates.)

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and will read those that follow. Yes, I’m still a wee bit scared but excited to have made the plunge. There are so many wonderful bloggers out there who have provided terrific approaches for me to model. Thanks for paving the way.

Do you have a first-steps experience to share? What are your tips for overcoming fears about risk-taking?

Photo from from useitinfo via Flickr