Sleeping with Failure? There’s Success Under the Covers. | Undaunted Leadership

Failure happens in spite of our best efforts to avert it.

Fear of impending failure can be haunting, even crippling. It can drain our self-confidence, crush our optimism, and stress our every move. It can also ignite us to fight the good fight, motivating us to do whatever it takes to stop it.

But failure will come anyway. When it does, we often feel defeated, believing our personal brand is forever tarnished and our career promise dashed.

That thinking would be wrong-headed.

Failure is an enigmatic bedfellow.

The reality is: Lots of success generally precedes failure. Companies don’t get to failure unless they’ve had a string of earlier successes that ultimately can’t bear the weight of the missteps. The same is true for us, as employees.

Leaders are the linchpin between success and failure. They are expected to take on business challenges and overcome them, facing potentially failure-laden problems like:

• Turning an underachieving work group into a productive one
• Achieving profitability from an existing or new product
• Influencing financial analysts to upgrade company ratings
• Attracting more investors/donors or winning grants to stay afloat
• Reducing costs to remain competitive
• Changing the operating model to increase efficiency
• Restoring lost customer loyalty and/or confidence

Each of these challenges has the potential to tank the organization and the leader spearheading it.

In truth, not facing these challenges will ultimately guarantee failure. Neglect  begets failure. Taking on risk is your most important career-enhancing opportunity.

Impending failure showcases the leader’s ability to lead in times of trial. The steps s/he takes essentially buy time, stave off the inevitable, provide opportunities for repositioning, and create more elegant transitions.

Success is between the sheets.

Organizational failures, whether large or small, are often for the best.

When a business ends up closing or a work group gets eliminated, it means that what they were offering wasn’t what the times required.

Business failures are generally the by-product of decisions that took place before you became the leader.  Failures are set up well in advance through a variety of causes like:

• A series of weak leaders
• Low accountability and productivity
• Unreliable revenue streams and poor expense management
• Technology deficiencies and ineffective processes
• A weak economy and the inability to compete

Business “failures” are basically transitions. Successfully leading an organization through the fallout from failure is a significant leadership achievement. It’s the most effective way to recast yourself and your professional brand as you move on.

The road to an unwanted business outcome is paved with an array of leadership initiatives that deliver, albeit temporarily, promising results like:

• Redesigned survival strategies
• Redirected resources (people, equipment, dollars)
• New or enriched programs
• Reduced costs and enhanced revenue
• Performance and process improvements
• Expanded partnerships and collaborative relationships
• Improved communication initiatives
• Broader outreach to community and public officials

As you look under the covers after a career-based failure, remember that the story line is about   the leadership initiatives you demonstrated. The culmination of those efforts likely:

• Created an effective transition to a new direction or to endings
• Demonstrated leadership decisiveness and courage
• Provided valuable lessons learned for future ventures
• Convinced stakeholders of hard-to-swallow business realities
• Revealed the leader’s capabilities to face adversity effectively

We don’t like the feeling of failure and shouldn’t. But we can appreciate its value and the courageous actions it extracts from us.

Lead undaunted.

It’s easy to lead when everything is rosy. However, it’s the leader who gets us through a ship wreck with minimal casualties who earns our esteem.

Too often leaders blame themselves when things start to go south, as though all the decisions that set that course came from their desks. That’s rarely the case.

When potential failure becomes your reality, it’s your opportunity to step up and take the reins. Your actions may or may not turn things around, but your efforts will reveal a leader’s heart.

Photo from arkworld via Flickr

Ready to Reboot Your Career? How “Reinventing” Worked for Me, More Than Once.

Careers can get old for a lot of reasons:

• Boredom when the work gets too predictable
• Declining fulfillment from achievements
• Disenchantment with a job going no where
• Curiosity about what’s out there
• Compensation ceilings that won’t meet future needs

I’ve experienced all of these at different times. Each one caused significant stress, confusion, and frustration–sometimes all at once.

I tried to force my way through them, telling myself that they were just temporary and would pass. But, of course, they didn’t and they don’t. The only way to get beyond these bumps is to change–not our favorite thing.

It’s not about reinventing your self.

Finding your way to a different career is not about reinventing who you are. Rather, it’s about redirecting your path so you can do work that fits who you are.

In my view, unless you are severely limited by problematic behaviors, trying to remake your essential self is an exercise that keeps you from going where you need to go.

Instead, redirect yourself by aligning your capabilities, interests, and energies to a more suitable line of work.

On the surface, this may sound pretty easy, but it isn’t. Each redirection means:

• Acclimating to a different industry and/or workplace
• Forging new relationships
• Adapting to financial impacts
• Dealing with potentially negative feedback from friends and family
• Fear, self-doubt, and a new learning curve

There is, however, something exhilarating about a big change, so long as you’re ready for it. Newness, discovery, and challenge have the power to put you in high gear.

Keep options open.

This is a timely post for me since I’m getting ready to redirect my “career life” again, building on and remolding the pieces that have served me along the way.

My career unfolded like this:

Primary Career Path: Teaching ► Management  ► Consulting

I love words and how they can help us deal with life. So with an undergraduate degree in English, I became a high school teacher. Over ten years in the classroom, I learned how to instruct, manage groups, handle multiple priorities, and influence change.

Eventually, I got bored by routine, frustrated by some decisions, and curious about the world outside the classroom.

I decided to learn about big business by asking to speak to managers in HR about how public education could do a better job preparing their future employees.

Those meetings gave me a comfort level with business people and led to my first job at a large electric utility. There I learned how to manage effectively and lead when the stakes were high.

I also learned how the business worked and where its weaknesses were. After 20+ years as a senior manager there, I’d achieved my goals and realized I didn’t want to go any further.

I left and started a consulting practice, an entrepreneurial venture that would have to support me. I had done some freelance consulting that prepared me for this new venture which has been ongoing since 2002.

Corollary Career Paths: Production ► Sales

I’d always had a dream to own a horse so I started taking riding lessons when I was 30. Eventually I bought and boarded two horses. I wanted to care for them myself,  so I bought a small farm that needed plenty of work, all of which was new to me.

Before I knew it, I was breeding horses (production) for the race track and the show ring. This was an entirely new and foreign industry for me which fulfilled my curiosity, challenged me intellectually, and increased my fulfillment for almost 20 years.

Concurrently, my horse enterprise led to ownership for ten years of an equestrian art gallery, where I learned about retail sales. This rounded out my business resume.

Together, all of these efforts to redirect my career have created a range of experiences I  continue to draw on. Fortunately, careers don’t have to come to an end.

What next?

Career management is our job. It takes introspection and exploration, a good bit of courage and some luck. As our careers evolve, we evolve with them, learning what really floats our boat and what doesn’t.

I still have my original love of words, that’s why I blog. I love the quiet beauty of my farm where I can think and unearth new perspectives free from distraction. I am seeking to uncover how I will redirect again. Ideas come to mind and then fade into others. The same will happen for you until the right answer appears. Let’s continue to keep our options open. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and hope you will do the same.

What’s in your mind right now about how you might redirect your career? What challenges do you face? Sometimes writing it down makes it clearer. I’d love to hear from you.

Caught in a Mess at Work? 3 Ways to Get Untangled. | Avoiding Drama

It’s easier to complicate things than to keep them simple. That’s why most of us periodically find ourselves in a mess at work.

There comes a time when we realize that we’re:

• Too aligned with the wrong coworkers
• At odds with our boss
• Parked in the wrong job
• Part of a doomed project

Situations like these creep up on us.

Pay attention.

Each day we’re faced with decisions and options that take us down one path or another, usually believing we’re advancing our careers not putting them at risk.

I’ll write it here again: Things are rarely what they seem, and that’s especially true at work. The closer you are to where the real work gets done, the farther away you are from the decisions and decision-makers affecting the organization’s direction.

The less you really know, the more careful you need to be about your choices. This is why developing business savvy is so important.

We often make a mess our of careers by getting tangled up with the wrong people or by putting ourselves in places where we can’t meet expectations.

Here are a couple examples:

• You get hired by a boss who once worked with you as a staff professional and where you were also friends.  Now you’re expected to  support his wrong-footed policies. If you buck the boss,  you lose all around.
• You’re new on the job and the boss isn’t training you. You turn to coworkers for help which they give gladly along with their “rules” for getting along, so there are no “problems.” In time you realize that you’re in the wrong camp.
• You eagerly accepted a role on an important project team to gain some visibility for your technical talents. The forceful team leader has a predetermined result she’s promoting. You realize that her basic premise is wrong, the team is going in the wrong direction, and the result is going to be a bust with your name on it.

We get ourselves into these situations through our own naiveté. As much as we want to be optimistic about opportunities, we need to stop and weigh the potential downsides.

5 ways to disentangle

It is much easier to get situations tangled up than to untangle them. (If you’ve ever tried to get the knots out of a necklace or a fishing line, you know.)

When you need to extricate yourself from a complicated  situation at work,  consider these approaches:

1. Avoid getting in deeper: Assess the people and/or decisions that are exacerbating the problem and figure out how to start distancing yourself from them. That may mean changing the way you communicate, reducing personal (not professional) sharing, and developing relationships with others who represent your viewpoints.
2. Resist the “lures”: Step away from the temptations that may have drawn you to the situation in the first place like special access to the boss, the need to make “friends” with everyone, associations with “big” players, and egoism. Instead, refocus on doing your best work for the right reasons, even it if means accepting a short term setback.
3. Plan and activate an escape plan: When you’re in a mess, you have to get out of it, slowly and carefully in most cases. This takes careful planning and a bit of finesse. You may need to craft a special bit of face-to-face communication, build new alliances, reduce your level of involvement, and/or make a big break. It all depends on the severity of the mess and the risk it imposes on you over time.

The worst thing you can do is nothing. The longer you stay in a bad situation, the more you risk increasingly dire consequences, the worst of which is feeling trapped and helpless.

Avoid drama.

The best thing you can do for your career is to avoid pointless drama caused by unhealthy entanglements. It only adds stress and needless complexity to the work you’ve been hired to do. Each time you’re given a career opportunity, first ask yourself, “What am I really getting myself into?” That should help you take the right step and avoid troublesome drama.

Photo from framelius via Flickr

Career Not Going Your Way? Try Relaxing Your Grip. | Words from the Wise

Feeling stuck? Frustrated? Just plain mad?

Choosing a career and getting the chance to pursuit it doesn’t always happen the way we’d like.

Careers are unpredictable beasts. They come with promise but no guarantees. While they seem to be about us, they’re actually more about others giving us the opportunity to make their organizations successful.

We often start out believing our careers are within our control. Then reality sets in and we hear ourselves saying:

• “I’m knocking on every door and still don’t get even an interview. Why?”
• “I’ve been performing at a high level in this job for three years and still no promotion. Why?”
• “I never thought the work I do would frustrate me like this. What can I do?”

Too often, we can’t answer these questions. They’re too big, too encompassing, and too far beyond our understanding of the conditions that drive them.

So we keep pressing, driving ourselves forward, dragging our frustrations with us. Some just curl up in a ball and do nothing. Sadly, this doesn’t fix anything.

Words from the Wise

Struggles with career choices and direction have gone on for centuries. Human beings generally want to do work that will support them and bring some satisfaction.

Especially in modern times, the hardest part is figuring out what we like and want to do, given our skills. Once that’s somewhat figured out, we set out to find the right employment.

This figuring-out process requires introspection, which many fail to do. It also requires owning what you know about yourself and the career you want, so that  you can set your direction with an uncluttered mind.

I’ve  worked for many years with job and promotion seekers who have been battered by rejection when they’ve pursued job titles, salary levels, and big name companies rather than the work they enjoy. They’ve held on so tight to their preconceived career must-haves that they have tuned out other opportunities.

I use this quote from Robin Fisher Roffer’s book, Make a Name for Yourself: 8 Steps Every Woman Needs to Create a Personal Brand Strategy for Success, to help clients (both men and women) get free of themselves:

The universe is waiting for you to say what you want…Everything that you are seeking is also seeking you.

Then I add these wise words from Henry David Thoreau in Walden:

 Men (and women, right Thoreau?) are born to succeed, not to fail.

Just think about how complex it is to get all the parts  aligned just right so that you and anyone else can intersect your objectives at the same time.

That means: The job you want has to present itself when your skills and experience are seen as the right fit for the company and when the political forces see you as having the right nature to meet expectations. Whew!

Your successful career starts with your willingness to “put out there” what you sincerely want and then to allow your conscious and subconscious thinking to work together to connect the dots. Your prospective or current employer is doing the same thing.

Relax your grip.

Lots of good things happen when you take that chokehold off your career pursuits and replace it with a realization that what you are seeking is also seeking you.

The benefits can be palpable:

• Less self-imposed pressure, negative self-talk, and energy-sapping stress
• A refreshed ability to see and hear snippets of ideas you might otherwise have missed
• An openness and excitement that blunts feelings of frustration and isolation
• A renewed belief that you will get there and commitment to the effort
• Recognition that your attitude and effort are what you control; success will follow

Your career path is a function of the work you’ve done to offer value to an employer and the initiatives you take to get hired/promoted. Your biggest challenge is to be authentic in the process and prepared to act effectively when opportunities present themselves. Taking your hand off the throttle can help you make a nice smooth turn.

Photo from ladybugrock via Flickr

5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Career

A job is a building block. A career is what we build. When starting out, we’re never quite sure what we’re actually building, if anything. We could end up with a useless pile of sticks or a really cool house on a mountaintop.

Careers are not built by ourselves alone. So we need to understand the roles we play (including how we play them) and the potential impact of the supporting cast.

All eyes are on you.

It’s often said: “My career should grow because I do really good work.”

But good work is only one part of it. Well-chosen and savvy professional relationships are another. Without a cadre of colleagues at all levels who attest to your competence, value, and ability to “get along,” your career will likely advance slowly, if at all.

The quality and effectiveness of your workplace relationships are noticed and become part of your personal brand. You can shoot your career in the foot easily by saying or doing things at work that  paint the wrong picture of who you are.

5 cautionary steps

These five steps can help you avoid sabotaging your career along the way:

1. Don’t get ahead of yourself

The way employees move up is different in every company. Start by figuring out what the leadership sees in those who have been given more responsibility. Be alert to what is said about those who have been promoted. You need to know but don’t have to agree.

Advancement is not about when you think you’re ready. It’s about what the decision-makers think. Until you know, for sure, that you have regularly met the company’s performance standards, defer asking to be promoted or given plumb assignments.

2. Keep your wants close to your chest

Managers are generally the ones who create opportunities or obstacles to your growth. You may want to assume that your boss is on your side, but that isn’t always the case. So it’s important to build a strong, credible performance portfolio.

Once you tell your boss what you want from your career, s/he has the leverage to help or hinder. So be prudent about how much you let on and when. Timing can be very important.

I once had a client who, at each job change, told his boss that he was “title sensitive” which was also code for wanting to be a big player. In each case, his career stalled.

3. Don’t screen yourself out of opportunities

Too often, I’ve heard job seekers and careerists express an interest in positions and job challenges that are a notch up. They say, “I read the duties but I don’t meet  all of them, so I don’t think I should apply.”

It’s not your decision to (de)select yourself. That’s what management’s paid to do. It’s rare to find anyone fitting all the requirements of a job or assignment. What companies are looking for is the one who brings the best blend of knowledge and experience to the role. That may very well be you.

4. Don’t follow someone else’s plan

The most important person to please with your career is you.

Lots of careerists pursue paths that well-meaning others have suggested or chosen for them. Then they wonder why the work doesn’t make them happy.

The first sign of self-leadership is our willingness to identify a life plan and then to start putting the  building blocks together, including those that construct our careers. When you don’t follow your own plan, it’s easy to go adrift.

5. Don’t get seduced by the glitz

The trappings of better pay, high-sounding titles, greater authority, and any number of perks have a price. I’ve seen many people chase those things without seeing the personal and professional tolls that go with them.

There are advantages to career growth, but you need to make sure you understand how important they are to you…not to someone else…to you. Sometimes we need to see what’s behind the big door before we choose it.

Avoid self-sabotage

None of us ever sets out to make a mess of our careers. Sometimes we just do because we weren’t paying attention or had lost confidence in our ability to turn things around. By taking hold of your career, you can avoid self-sabotaging it.

Photo from davemendelsohn via Flickr

Craving the Secret to Success? Words from the Wise Break the Code | Howard’s Gift

I’m on a constant quest for answers to big questions about the direction of my life and my work. When I was asked to blog about Eric C. Sinoway’s new book, Howard’s Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life’s Work, I hesitated. I didn’t know anything about Howard Stevenson, the focus of the book. But I said “yes” anyway. I wish it had been written decades ago, when its insights would have spared me so many doubt-plagued hours as I struggled to figure things out for my career path. Fortunately, it’s now here for you.

The secret to success hinges on making the right choices at the right time. Our challenge is to understand the effect our choices will have on us should we pursue them.

If only we had someone to ask, someone with the experience and wisdom to help us see the big picture, someone who can clear away the fog so we can chart the right course.

Enter Howard Stevenson, whose wisdom is the focus of Eric C. Sinoway’s book, Howard’s Gift: Uncommon Wisdom to Inspire Your Life’s Work.

Howard spent 40 years as a highly respected professor at Harvard Business School, where his MBA  students included world leaders, corporate CEO’s, and entrepreneurs. He is also an innovator and entrepreneur in his own right, contributing to his distinction, according to Sinoway, as “the father of entrepreneurship at HBS….”

Howard’s books and teachings have created a following of “students” like Sinoway who committed to write this book after Howard’s heart attack, ensuring that Howard’s priceless wisdom would never be lost.

Antennas up

Our career and life choices involve our “inflection points.” We need to be keenly aware of them when they occur and committed to taking the right course of action.

So what is an inflection point? Sinoway writes:

It is a moment when–by choice or not–we pivot from the path down which we were traveling and head in an entirely different direction.

It’s easy to miss or ignore an inflection point, especially when it may not line up with the way we’d planned our course.

Sinoway shares Howard’s explanation:

Inflection points come in all forms: positive, negative, easy, hard, obvious, and subtle. The way you respond–whether you grab hold of a inflection point and leverage it for all it’s worth or just let it carry you along–is as important as the event itself.

In hot pursuit of success, we are frequently faced with inflection points that cause us inner conflict. Howard impresses on his students that “…success doesn’t always equal happiness….” I’ve certainly witnessed examples of that and suspect you have too.

Howard suggests approaching your career by thinking about it from a legacy perspective:

Starting at the end means investing time up front to develop an aspirational picture of your future–a guide for the decisions you make throughout your life.

Knowing what we value in a satisfying career and acting on it are often very different things. What we need to get a firm grip on is the way our notions of success and failure help us or get in our way.

Befriending success and failure

We tend to look at success as reward and failure as punishment for, well, just not being good enough. Our self-confidence, courage, optimism, and sense of self-worth are often held hostage by them both.

Howard removes the weight of success and failure when he says in the book:

You know, people throw around words like success and failure assuming they mean exactly the same thing to everyone–and they don’t….

Have you fallen into that trap?

He adds:

There is no standard metric for evaluating success or failure, in large part because our assessments are heavily affected by the expectations we bring into a situation…our definitions of success and failure change based on personal circumstance; they’re colored by what’s happening around us….

The next time someone tries to detract from your achievements based upon their own measure of success, think of Howard’s words:

 For me, the bottom line is: don’t put yourself in a definitional straitjacket, and don’t allow others to do it to you, either.

It’s inevitable that, from the time we’re very young, we are “shown the way” to success as defined by people around us and the media. No wonder finding our own way can feel confusing, particularly when things don’t go as expected.

Howard offers this perspective:

I prefer to expend my energy only on things that I can affect. What’s past is only useful to me insofar as it offers information to using going forward. ..What other people might call failures I simply see as situations laden with meaning–full of new data and new opportunities for assessing and recalibrating a strategy.

Breaking the code

If you need wise counsel on building your skills, finding mentors, facing your personal truths, attracting the right professional relationships, or achieving life-work balance, you’ll find invaluable perspectives from Howard.

This book reads like a conversation, where we get to listen in. We read about the trials and missteps of others, including Sinoway’s, and how Howard untangles complex career situations, just like the ones you’re facing, bringing important next steps into focus.

The secret to success lies within us. Words from the wise help us break the code.

The Unexpected Career Crisis–Got the Stuff to Survive It? | 4 Essential Steps

There’s no escaping problems. They show up whether we’re ready or not.  Smart businesses have crisis management plans so they know what to do when calamity hits. So shouldn’t we?

I was invited to review Jim Moorhead’s new book, The Instant Survivor: Right Ways to Respond When Things Go Wrong, concurrent with its release. The advice and insights are terrific!

Gone are the cradle to grave careers. Routine upheaval is more the norm than ever before.

We start our careers with great optimism and then experience a shot of reality. We soon discover success depends on our ability to survive the curve balls that come our way.

The art of surviving

Jim Moorhead’s book looks at what we need to do when faced with the unexpected. His 4-step system for conquering professional and personal crises takes the essence of a business crisis management plan and turns it into a survival kit for us. The Instant Survivor puts the control back in our hands.

If you think that crisis will skip over you, Moorhead shares innumerable, fascinating and true stories about people like:

• Robin Roberts, ABC’s co-anchor on Good Morning America, who publicly faced her breast cancer
• Terry Francona, professional baseball manager, who navigated career highs and devastating lows, eventually winning the World Series twice with the Boston Red Sox
• Michael Dell, who, at 27 went from having his company on Fortune 500′s “Best of the Top 500″ list to a stock plunge that nearly ruined the company

The crises we face are just as significant to us, and we need to know how to fight  through them.

4 Survival Steps

Problems can’t get solved until we start solving them. A simple process makes it easier to get going. Moorhead recommends these four steps in “Instant Survivor”:

1. Stay Frosty

Instead of staying calm (which is always easier said than done), Moorhead tell us to move forward calmly  while “freezing out negative emotions of fear, anger, and bitterness.”

He says to sort things out objectively:

Develop a crisis management plan with three stages:

• Diagnosis (What’s the problem?)
• Action (What can I do?)
• After-Action Report (What did I do well and what could I improve?)

He tells us that being self-focused  is the way we can “stay frosty.”

2. Secure Support

It’s tempting to withdraw when a crisis catches us off guard. We may feel embarrassed, ashamed, and hurt–emotions we don’t want to air in front of others. Trying to shoulder a crisis alone is the wrong tactic. Support is essential. Moorhead says,

You can survive and even thrive by denying national and worldwide crises. Yet there is one crisis, whether current or incoming, that you cannot deny. Your crisis. You cannot deny it, and you must take immediate action to deal with it. Because if you don’t, no one will.

The support of others empowers us to lead our way out of the crisis effectively.

Moorhead reminds us that before we’re in a pickle, we need to create a crisis management team (professionals, friends, and business associates) that we can call into action at a moment’s notice.

3. Stand Tall

We need to get a grip on our next moves and that means crafting a written plan. Moorhead emphasizes the importance of getting your proposed actions down on paper and managing your way out of the crisis

He emphasizes the need to be flexible, monitor your progress, and maintain momentum. It’s your plan to turn your crisis around, so you need to own it proudly. He gives you a terrific set of questions to keep you on the right track and standing tall.

4. Save Your Future

Every crisis is a fabulous learning experience. Moorhead’s book is filled with inspiring stories of every magnitude.

He writes about what to do after the crisis is past:

Choose to build a different, brighter future.

• Your past does not dictate your future–unless you let it.
• Use calamity to gain clarity on what you want in life.
• Give meaning to your disaster by helping others through theirs.
• A life comeback is possible from any depth.

Surviving is a brand

Moorhead ends reminding us that what we do to survive and how we do it contribute to our brand identity. I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “Look at Pat, s/he’s a real survivor.”

There’s a survivor in all of us. We can either make it easy on ourselves or difficult. The Instant Survivor is your leg up.

Bankrupt or Flush with Transferable Skills? A Telling Story

Transferable skills get us hired or promoted. They’re our career currency. Without them, there’s no deal.

The more transferable skills we have the more valuable we are. Resumes market them. Interviews showcase them. 

Can you list your top ten, most marketable transferable skills, right now?

Bankrupt or flush? 

Transferable skills are attached to us all the time, not just at work. It’s time to get a handle on your bank of skills.

Pick a recent life event and write it down.

As you uncover your transferable skills, insert them like I’ve done here.

Casey, down for the count 

I start every day (dependability) in the barn, feeding my horse, cats, and Casey, my seven-year-old, Lab-golden retriever mix. Casey’s a busy dog, full of energy who, as a puppy, wouldn’t tolerate being a house dog. The barn was way more interesting. So she got her way.

About two weeks ago, I noticed that she wouldn’t eat (attention to detail) her breakfast. That happens sometimes, so I went about my other chores. Then I noticed that when she tried to go into the horse stall, her back end faltered. Three minutes later she was down and couldn’t get up.

My large animal vet was at a conference, my small animal vet on vacation. I suspected I didn’t have much lead time (problem assessment) to get help for Casey.

There is a veterinary hospital about four miles from me where I had never been a client. I called (decision-making) at 6:30 AM to learn they opened at 7.

I lifted 79-pound Casey into my car, drove to the vet hospital, and waited in the parking lot for someone to show up (assertiveness).

The receptionist was the first to arrive. I explained that I wasn’t a client but had a dire need (communication). She looked at me kindly and explained that she didn’t have an appointment open until 10:40, but she’d let the doctor know when she came in at 9:30. I scheduled the appointment as a back up (planning), took a deep breath (stress management), went home and waited.

I parked the car in the shade and brought Casey some water (safety and initiative). She lay quietly. I took a shower so for my next appearance at the vet hospital, I wouldn’t look so shabby (brand management).

At 8 AM the phone rang. The veterinarian was there and would see me. Relief.

It took me and a technician to carry Casey into an exam room (collaboration). The veterinarian examined and then admitted Casey. After some blood tests, it was clear she had Lyme disease (big surprise, I had it and my horse too) plus a seriously low potassium count.

The decision was to keep Casey overnight with IV fluids. I received several update calls from the veterinarian and one that unnerved me a bit. Since the hospital didn’t have 24-hour coverage, did I want them to transfer Casey to a monitoring facility about 35 minutes away (risk assessment)?

I opted to keep her where she was, thinking it would be less stressful  (decision-making and accountability).

The next day the vet called saying that Casey was a “new dog,” on her feet, hungry, and wagging her tail. She could go home with medications and a few restrictions.

The technician hugged me when she brought Casey to me. I struggled to hold myself together (self-control).

Next I wrote a commendation letter to the veterinary hospital owner, the case veterinarian and technician who cared for Casey (communication).

I admit I was braced for the worst. I’ve been through other events here at the farm that didn’t have a happy ending. Each time I have to face uncertainty, I need to draw on those experiences and transferable skills for strength.

Finding yours

 You have your own transferable skills that you undoubtedly take for granted since you’re using them without thinking.

It’s time to make your transferable skills part of your consciousness and your conversation. They are the building blocks of your career and your business fitness. Uncover them and use them well.

Unleashing the Career Superstar in You—Ready?

Superstars aren’t just sports and entertainment icons. They’re also us. Every workplace and every career has its superstars. There’s no reason why you aren’t among them.

By definition superstars are individuals in prominence who attract attention. Look around: That’s lots of people you know.

We have to perform well and consistently to be considered a superstar in our line of work. On-the- job superstars are those indispensable coworkers and leaders who:

• Solve our IT problems in the nick of time every time
• Always exceed sales quotas to help keep the business profitable
• Deliver projects on or before every deadline
• Defuse unhappy customers and employees consistently with effective messages

There are superstars in every industry, company, department, and work unit. Everyone knows who they are and we can’t imagine work without them.

Clearly, we need all the superstars we can find in this struggling economy, so now’s the time for us to raise our bar.

What it takes 

Paul McCord, internationally recognized authority on sales, prolific author and blogger, wrote in his compelling book, SuperStar Selling:

“You don’t have to become a superstar overnight. It’s not one giant leap, it’s one step at a time.”

That’s true for attaining superstardom in every career. We need to keep our eye on the ball and dig deep to keep it in play.

To start we need to build and maintain a high-achievement mindset. It’s always our attitude and performance that stand out, get noticed, and ultimately create our prominence. No one gets to be a superstar without doing the work.

McCord makes this important point:

“Looking at the big picture is daunting. Looking at just what you need to accomplish on a daily and weekly basis is not such a hurdle to overcome.”

He adds that the three characteristics of a superstar are: desire, commitment, and belief. Do you have all three?

We live in a “what have you done for me lately” and a “what’s in it for me” world. That’s where the pressure to perform at a high level comes from.

This reality tests your desire to achieve, your commitment to stick with your goals, and your belief in your capabilities.

All success is a process. The twelve keys to becoming a sales superstar in McCord’s book apply to us too. Superstar sales professionals own their careers and operate with an entrepreneurial mindset.

We need to own our jobs/careers too and set goals for ourselves that demonstrate our value.

McCord spells out his twelve keys elegantly, providing fascinating case studies and powerful tools, particularly useful to salespeople. (If you’re in sales, you really must read this book.)

His keys are the underpinnings of every achiever, especially those who have become superstars in their line of work. Here’s my take on how the twelve keys can help you become a superstar in your career:

1. Turn past experiences into learning and data that can move you forward
2. Acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses. Build on and fix what’s needed
3. Invest in your career—time, learning, tools
4. Figure out where you add value and position yourself there
5. Showcase your strengths/value in the right way
6. Set realistic goals that build on one another over time
7. Develop and apply your capabilities systematically
8. Stay visible and top of mind with those you impact
9. Continuously develop and expand your skills
10. Convert your big ideas into small steps to achieve them
11. Seek help from advisors, mentors, and experts during uncertainty
12. Adopt and maintain a positive mindset 

Sell yourself tall

Too often we set our sights too low. We think that it’s other people who become career superstars. Yes, we sell ourselves short, instead of tall.

McCord makes this powerful point:

“In essence, we are what we believe we are; we do what we believe we can do; we are who we believe we are.”

When we believe there’s a superstar in us, we make a huge leap. When we take action to unleash our inner superstar, we’re on our way to becoming one. Now go!

Photo from cletch via Flickr 

Self-Confidence Lost? 5 Steps to Getting It Back

Here one day and gone the next. It’s a fickle state—our self-confidence. The littlest thing can fuel it or snuff it out.                                     

Self-confidence is part of our brand identity. Our bosses and coworkers look for it, even evaluate it. It’s part of our behavioral attire, so we must do our best to wear it well. 

The fear of exposure 

The problem is that we’re not always self-confident. When we’re not, of course, we don’t want it to show. 

Revealing faltering confidence in our skills, leadership, and decisions can have devastating career effects. It can disarm our followers and give our detractors a target. 

So we do our best to cover up our declines in confidence. Too bad we can’t hide it from ourselves. 

Periods of lost self-confidence affect everyone, not just you and me. 

Highly accomplished, consistently successful, standard-setting individuals paid lots of money and given lots of public visibility lose self-confidence too. 

Take Roger Federer, for example: Professional tennis player who’s won a record five ATP World Tour Finals, 17 ATP Masters Series tournaments, an Olympic gold medal, and was once ranked number one in the world for a record 237 consecutive weeks. (Not bad, eh?) 

Now 30 years old and ranked #3 in the world (still not bad!), Federer, recently played in the Western & Southern Open Cincinnati, a key tournament leading to the U.S. Open in New York City.

 Steve Tignor from Tennis.com wrote these observations reflecting on Federer’s self-confidence:

“Before his first match in Cincy… Federer talked about his nerves coming into the event, about how he didn’t want to go out in the first round…It’s not as if Federer had suddenly decided to bare his soul…But the emphasis was different. Federer was more open about both his anxiety and his desire to get back on a winning track.”

No matter how many past successes we’ve achieved, self-confidence is about how we’ll perform today and tomorrow. It’s about what we want to achieve going forward.

Fortunately, we can draw on our past successes, no matter how big or small, to help us restore self-confidence.

Getting it back

We’re all up against the inner battle to sustain our self-confidence, especially as we try to advance our careers.

Here are some steps to help regain self-confidence lost:

1. Face it—Denial gets you nowhere, except perhaps in a deeper hole. When your confidence flags, get busy figuring out the cause—a situation, a look, something said, your own reactions, or a disappointed expectation. Once you know the cause, you can address it.
2. Dig in—The best remedy for fractured self-confidence is action. You may need to rework an assignment, re-learn a policy or practice, talk to a mentor or trusted coworker, redo your plan, or put yourself out there. Take charge.
3. Buck up—Remind yourself that this will pass. Focus on what you’ve learned, what you did well and can do more of, and how to position your next move to generate a more desirable outcome. Tomorrow’s another day.
4. Reach out—Find a positive person who’s successfully experienced career ups and downs, someone who can offer useful perspectives to help you. A success coach, mentor, or other advisor may be good for you and happy to help.
5. Connect—Being with others keeps us from wallowing. Our associations feed our perspectives, distract us from our worries, and keep us moving. Holing up in your office or avoiding interactions adds to the isolation that often comes when our self-confidence is low.

Take heart.

We talk about losing self-confidence like it’s a permanent state. If that were so, there would be no comebacks. Our job is to be good stewards of our self-confidence, being careful not to neglect it, give it away, or allow it to take a long holiday.

No matter how dreary things might seem, there’s always reason to take heart and grab hold. Forward you go!

 Photo from Cristian V. via Flickr