Ready to Tackle Drama, Change, Fear, and Accountability? Follow 5 Reality-Based Rules.

I love a straight-shooter, someone who cuts through the fluff and excuses to expose the unvarnished realities of the workplace. That’s what I discovered with Cy Wakeman when I was invited to blog about the insights in her new book, The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace. We may not like to see the sides of ourselves revealed in her pages, but the insights will makes us better, happier, and more successful.

A lot goes on around us at work. It’s easy to become oblivious to much of it until we get caught in the crossfire.

Too often our own naiveté about what our companies and bosses expect of us causes us to adopt attitudes and behaviors that are detrimental. To succeed we need to understand the realities that drive business and the often unspoken  rules that, when followed, will propel us in the right direction.

Face yourself.                                    

In her new book, The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, business consultant and speaker, Cy Wakeman, cuts to the chase on the behaviors that will make or break your success.

She gets it about why we are lured down the paths of wrong thinking and provides clear steps to get us back on track. She never deviates from the point that success is about how you and I choose to think and act.

Wakeman reminds us that:  

When you feel vulnerable, even defensive, it’s all too easy to blame the economy, political leaders, your boss–everyone except the one person you can control: yourself.

…no one is born accountable, self-reliant, self-mastered, and resilient, yet these are the qualities that count, the ones that will fill you with confidence….

To become what she calls  ”happy high-performers,” we need to take stock of ourselves. Through her self-rating checklists and strategies to increase your rating score, you can assess:

• Your current performance
• Your future potential
• Your emotional expensiveness (the cost of being a high maintenance employee)

To assess emotional expensiveness she asks if:

• “You are dramatic….
• You come to work in a bad mood.
• You share a lot of personal information with coworkers….
• You complain a lot, or judge others.
• You have an entitled or victim mind-set….”

With your answers in mind, she adds a positive perspective:

…good things come to those who are Emotionally Inexpensive. They are magnets for jobs, promotions, raises, and opportunities of all kinds.

Wakeman makes a strong point about the importance of determining where we stand in the context of our workplace, so we can build a career sustaining strategy.

She writes:

Meeting performance expectations is now the price of keeping your job. But it isn’t enough to guarantee you anything extra–recognition, benefits, or job security.

5 reality-based rules

It’s not uncommon for us to struggle to understand what’s really going on around us at work.

It’s also not uncommon to need help understanding the reality of our own behaviors: what’s driving us, who do we let influence our thinking, how do we overcome our fears, and what are we doing to enable our own happiness.

Wakeman’s five reality-based rules help you sort through the maze. Here are the rules and a peek at Wakeman’s insights about them:

1. Accountability determines happiness

You will get results when you stop…focusing on what is happening “to” you, and focus on…what you can do …to compete, to deliver, and to succeed.

2. Ditch the drama.

Without drama weighing you down , you will be free to make accountable choices, free of your stories and excuses, free of your and other people’s drama.

3. Action adds value.

If your motive is to stop the course of action or question a decision, change your focus from why it won’t work to how you can help make it work. Get willing, buy in, and use your expertise to mitigate the risks you see.

4. See change as opportunity.

Be ready for what’s next….Don’t let fear of failure stop you from trying.

5. Face extenuating circumstances and succeed anyway.

Confront conflicts early, calmly, and in a spirit of teamwork…Ask, ‘How can I help?’ Get clear on goals, roles, and procedures.

Aha moments

The road to career success is paved with aha moments and Wakeman provides a plethora of them in her book. You will find yourself, your boss, your coworkers, and many people outside of work there.

Understanding how your attitudes, behaviors, and self-deception can create toxicity is a powerful realization. Realizing and practicing a new and more savvy perspective enables you to see things with the clarity you need

Get What It Means to “Add Value”? Find Your Niche and Showcase It.

If you want to:

• get that new job, then explain how you’ll add value
• move up, then demonstrate how you’ll add value
• get a better raise, then quantify how you’ve added value
• keep your job, then showcase how you continue to add value

Sounds easy enough, right? Unless, of course, you don’t know what it means to add value where you work or how. Sadly, that’s a lot of employees.

You are money.                                                                                                

The concept of “value added” was first a business and economics term used in discussions around sale price, production cost, and profit formulas. Eventually it got defined as:

…extra feature(s) of an item of interest (product, service, person etc.) that go beyond the standard expectations and provide something ‘more’ while adding little or nothing to its cost. Value-added features give competitive edges to companies….

That’s where you, the employee, come in–adding value through talents and abilities unique to you. It’s how you demonstrate that what you do contributes to the success and profitability of the company.

Employees are a cost, often a big one, to a company. That means we need to produce work that contributes to the bottom line.

Unfortunately, we often don’t know or have a hard time seeing our connection with the company’s big picture. Our world is often just the task list and performance goals in front of us.

It doesn’t matter how far up or down you are on the company’s organization chart, you have to figure out and demonstrate what you do to add value. If you don’t, someone else may decided that you don’t add enough. The consequences follow.

It’s likely that you already add lots of value and either don’t see it or could add more.

Find your niche.

If you’re saying to yourself:

• “I don’t do anything special at work. I just do my job.”
• “I don’t have any unique talents or skills to offer.”

Please stop yourself. It’s time to adopt a new, more positive and generous self-view.

The value you add doesn’t have to  appear in lights. Small contributions can have significant impacts on the company, your work group, and your boss.

Finding your niche means looking at the skills and abilities you take pride in and then maximizing opportunities to brand yourself by them.

Your niche may be something like being known for:

• Coming up with ways to make routine tasks more efficient
• Boiling down a complicated issue into its key points
• Writing meeting minutes that keep decisions in focus
• Getting people at odds to talk with each other to resolve differences
• Injecting a light comment or bit of humor to cut tension
• Meeting deadlines, especially the tight ones
• Catching errors, written and computational, by being detail-oriented
• Defusing irate customers and preserving relationships
• Reading between the lines to uncover the real issues
• Anticipating the needs of others and preparing to meet them

It’s important to take the time to put together a 3-step value-added action plan:

1. Write a clear statement that describe your niche (This can be a challenge when what you do comes automatically, so really commit to doing this.)
2. Identify the real business value that results, creating a clear, strong context
3. Take advantage of all opportunities to put your value-added behavior to work

On the surface you may not think that what you do has business value, but it does. Think about all the time and money saved each time work is done without interruption, colleagues work together without strain, and customers remain loyal. Consider what it means when work is accurate, quality high, and communication clear.

That’s what makes organizations successful. It’s what helps your career.

Don’t  be shy.

Your value added emerges from your knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors on the job. You want your employer to look at you and feel gratified that you work there. When you add value, employers don’t want to see you go and wish what you do would rub off on others.

Your value needs to be seen routinely to be appreciated. So please don’t be shy about showcasing it.

Photo from memories-in-motion via Flickr

Ingredients for Becoming the Complete Executive–Fold Together and Serve

It’s hard to resist the opportunity to sample secret sauce ingredients for executive success. So, when invited, I was happy to taste the morsels in Karen Wright’s new book, The Complete Executive: The 10-Step System for Great Leadership Performance, and share some of them here.

Everyone wants them–recipes for fixing things like:

• Problem employees
• Broken work methods
• Complaining customers
• Stalled careers

Recipes work when we’re cooking: The same combination of ingredients produces the same outcome each time. It’s different,though, when we’re trying to put together the right behaviors to produce career success.

Invest in good ingredients.

Careers grow when we combine the right ingredients in the right way at the right time, folding them together until they blend to meet expectations.

Our career goals may be either modest or bold. Achieving them means understanding the knowledge, skills, and experiences (the ingredients) required and then systematically assembling them.

In her new book, The Complete Executive: The 10-Step System for Great Leadership Performance, Karen Wright, career coach and founder of Parachute Executive Coaching, identifies 100 practices for successful executives.

These practices will help you succeed where you are right now and/or position you to move up, while maintaining a balanced, satisfying life.

Wright describes the foundation for achieving leadership completeness this way:

The individuals who consistently thrive in the face of the extraordinary expectations of high-level leadership are the ones who have found the optimal combination of habits, practices, and personal discipline that sustains and strengthens them across all dimensions of their lives.

Her 10-step system covers everything from health and fitness to business basics and fun. She makes this especially striking point about leaders:

Someone who fully engages in building positive relationships at work probably places similar value on them outside the office. Similarly, if an individual is difficult to get along with or get to know at work, she is likely the same in her personal relationships.

Who we are goes with us wherever we go. Everyone sees how we conduct ourselves and makes a judgment. When folded together, those judgments start to form our personal brand,  our career currency.

Relationships matter.

The complete executive, as Wright notes, needs to place high value on building and maintaining healthy and mutually satisfying relationships.

She explains that it starts with our primary relationships (i.e., life partner or single-hood), children, extended family, neighbors, friends, and community. Then it expands to our business competitors, peers, and direct reports. For leaders to be complete, Wright reminds us that they need to invest in relationships that represent all aspects of their lives.

We often think that networking is the best way to expand our relationships. Wright debunks that notion with this compelling perspective:

 ’No executive at a high level does anything called networking.’ What they do is focus on building a valuable network. ‘It will grow through connections with the people you know through your kids, your parents, your siblings, and your other family members. You just never know when a connection in your network will lead you to another, helpful one, creating potential future business value.’

It’s all a matter of building on relationships that form naturally from your life and your work. To this Wright adds:

Contributing to your network is what makes it strong. If you only take from your network, it will be too weak to support you when you need it.

The book lists these relationship building sources that you can tap: alumni associations, lunches/casual meetings, club memberships, professional associations, and social media sites like LinkedIn.

Wright acknowledges that relationships ebb and flow. We learn along the way which ones are sincere and fruitful and which are not.

Intuition as ingredient

There’s a leader in all of us whether we’re atop the business organization chart or not. Reaching our full leadership capabilities is an ongoing process.

Wright’s practice #100 is intuition: An effective leader will state:

I recognize when my intuition is engaged, and I value and reflect upon the messages it sends me.

She finishes by  quoting Albert Einstein:

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.

We all need to give our intuition a chance to work its magic for us. Hey, if it worked for Einstein, who can argue!

Failure–Who Needs It? | You Do

We just don’t like it. We often fear it, dread it, struggle to avoid it, and sometimes succumb to it. Failure tests us. It makes us face up to what we’re made of.

Failure and fear are ominous bedfellows. They feed each other and us too in ways that can be crushing.

Embracing failure

If we want to succeed, we need to welcome failure. It’s our greatest teacher.

If it weren’t, we wouldn’t remember our failures more keenly than our successes.

Our failures have a habit of sticking, and because they do, they become the essential reference point that we need to grasp.

Failures in our careers come in all shapes and sizes:

• the blown interview
• unmet performance goals
• a failed project, product, or software application
• an ineffective presentation or rejected proposal
• job loss or business failure

Faced with any of these, you might choose to:

• give up, become inconsolably disgruntled or retaliatory
• blame others, the company, or some policy
• berate yourself, lose all confidence, or backslide

But, if you’re smart, you’ll stop and say, “I need to figure out what I need to do to get better, so I can avoid failures like this in the future.”

Tune in

No matter how great they are, professional athletes continuously experience failure. Every contest does not end up in a win and they know it.

Pro baseball players fail at bat more than they succeed. Pro golfers can compete for years and never win a tournament. (They may get a paycheck, but their ultimate measure of success is wins.)

As a result, athletes use every failure to learn something about themselves, ways to improve their skills, and insights to sharpen their game sense.

Lolo Jones is an American track and field athlete. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she was favored to win the 100 meter hurdles, but she tripped on the second to last hurdle, finishing seventh. It was a crushing failure for a competitor who had overcome a life of poverty through hard work and determination to reach such a pinnacle moment.

Lolo is competing in the 2012 Olympics in London where she will pursue gold in the same race. After four years learning from  her 2008 failure, she sees that by fighting her way back to the Olympics, she has already won. She said on NBC’s Today Show (8/7/12), “For me, it will be like facing my fears.” Facing them means she has already overcome that old failure.

Kerri Strug, retired American gymnast and member of the Magnificent Seven gold medal team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, is famous for her performance on the vault to win the all-around, despite having severely injured her ankle. Early on, as a gymnast, she was considered mentally and emotionally frail in her performances during times of competitive stress. So with everything on the line in 1996, Kerri demonstrated what she has now come to realize: “It’s your failures that catapult you forward” (from a 2012 interview on NBC).

Exploit your failures

It’s time to take hold of your failures and exploit them for your own success. Face them. Embrace them. That’s how you will free yourself from the hold they may have on you and turn them into an asset.

Make those failures clear by writing them down. State what you see as the failure and make sure you’ve got it right. Then start listing what the failure has taught you about:

• your skills and knowledge
• your attitude, point of view, understanding of the situation
• your commitment, standards, work ethic, courage
• confidence, relationships, honesty

Then write an action plan for yourself. What are you going to do to be better prepared to minimize the chances of failure next time. Find someone you trust to help you. Then get on with it. The only one who can overcome failure is you. So please make failure your friend!

Photo from nataliebehring.com via Flicker

Discovered the Trick to Career Success? | The Magic’s Up Your Sleeve

Career success seems so elusive as we face constant changes in the work environment and economy. Here’s a post I wrote in 2010 to help sort things out and form the basis of a plan.

Success is out there—somewhere. We watch others achieve it, but why not us? They don’t seem any smarter than we are. So what’s the trick?

We assume the answer’s in all those how-to books, so we read them. We go to presentations by celebrated experts, follow bloggers, and invest in webinars. These are all good things to do, but….

No one can tell you how to get the success you want. Why? Because they aren’t you!

We’re all in the same boat. Getting to success is a struggle. So what’s the winning formula? 

I can’t tell you that. No one can. We have to figure it out ourselves. No whining or complaining. No funny business or short cuts. And, hardest of all to swallow, no guarantees!

There are some concrete steps you can take to get started or to keep going if you feel stalled. Here goes:

1. Answer this: What do I want my life to look like when I cross the finish line? 

Describe what you see in your mind’s eye: your surroundings and location, who’s there and who’s not, and what you do on a typical day. Write it all down and save it. What you describe tells you what you want to achieve, what you’ll be working toward, and how you want it to come together.

2. Then answer: What career work fits me? 

The right career feels like lycra: a close (actually intimate) fit that supports you as you move freely in any direction. Lots of people wear burlap instead. They may find success but it comes with a rash. Real success includes work satisfaction, growth, and fair rewards.

3.  Can work in that career get me the success I want? If no, now what?

Sometimes the work you love doesn’t pay well or offer advancement. That means you’ll have to add another work component to your success plan.

There is no rule that says all of our income must come from one source, our job. Additional revenue can come from freelance work, side businesses, and on-line services/sales. The internet offers many new paths for adding revenue. It’s time to explore.

4. Visualize the success you want. Pick up on the vibes.

If visualizing didn’t help golfers make tournament winning putts, they wouldn’t pay their sports psychologists to teach them how to do it.  Every athlete who wins a championship says the same thing: “I’ve imagined this moment since I was 9.”

Once you focus on the success you want and the career work you love, you’ll find yourself noticing articles in the paper, segments on TV, comments at work, and on-line posts that will move you forward.

5. Write the words that describe the success you want and the paths you’ll explore to get it.

Writing things down makes them real and prevents you from side-stepping the work you need to do. When you explore options, you will stay open to alternatives until you’ve settled on the winning direction.

Anyone can do this. It’s not magic. 

I struggle and question just like you. The success I wanted was a life in the country, working for myself, helping others achieve their own career and business goals.

To get this far meant passing through many seemingly unrelated gates. I was a high school English teacher, a social worker, a corporate manager. While I was employed, I made extra income as a practice management consultant for veterinarians, then as a horse breeder and art dealer.

Each path led me to the life that I visualized. My definition and measure of success isn’t yours and yours isn’t mine. We each own the success we seek—that’s the beauty of it.

Don’t let anyone else define success for you. That’s important to becoming business fit. Own your success goals and desires. It’s what’s up your sleeve that matters. Keep looking—there’s a rabbit in there somewhere!

Photo from garethjmsaunders via Flickr

The Gift of Encouragement—How Generous Are You?

One day you’re setting the world on fire and the next you feel like a complete loser. It seems to happen so fast.   

• Your old boss loved your work; the new one not so much.
• You used to navigate software effortlessly; now the new system has scuttled your productivity.
• The work team once looked to you for leadership, now there’s a new member they’re following. 

You’re not alone. It happens to all of us. 

Perspective matters. 

We’re often our own worst critic, setting expectations for ourselves that are, perhaps, higher than is reasonable. Why? Because we want to: 

• Excel over others or test our limits
• Chase rewards like performance ratings, raises, or promotions
• Measure up to what we’re told is our potential
• Exceed our prior levels of performance 

These are pressures we create and/or accept for ourselves. This pressure leads to stress that can affect our performance, taking our self-confidence with it. 

The key to a successful career is to avoid the downward spiral of eroding self-confidence. The sorry truth is that you can kill your own self-confidence through negative self-talk, but it’s highly unlikely that you can restore it by giving yourself a pep talk. 

Encouragement as gift 

The beauty of encouragement is that you can re-gift it openly and should. You don’t need to give it back to the person who gave it to you, but you do need to be ready to give it when someone else needs it. 

Lest you think that encouragement really isn’t that important, consider what these two highly successful people have to say. 

Jim Furyk, professional golfer and 2010 PGA Tour Player of the Year, recently played in the 2011 President’s Cup, a tournament that pits a select team of U.S. golfers against an international team. Furyk won all five of his matches, a rare and totally unexpected feat. You see Furyk had just come off, quite possibly, his worst year on the tour. 

Here’s how he summed up his surprising success:

I enjoy the team atmosphere, and knowing Phil [Mickelson] for as many years as I have … I’m guessing he asked to play with me, because …I struggled so much this year and played poorly, probably the worst of anybody that’s sitting up here right now.

So knowing him for as long as I have, being good friends, I assume that he asked to play with me because he felt like he could get a lot out of me this week; that maybe he could help me and pump some confidence into me and get me playing well, and he did that.

You see, we give the gift of encouragement by what we do, not just by what we say, although they can go hand in hand.

Michelle Williams, the actress who plays Marilyn Monroe in the new film, “My Week with Marilyn,” was asked by the Today Show’s, Ann Curry where she got the courage to take on such a daunting role.

…in the beginning I just tried to ignore the risk because I thought if I really contemplated it, it would only stand in my way. 

You could say she wagered her self-confidence on her ability to succeed in that role. But Michelle revealed something else in an earlier interview with Mo Rocca on CBS’s Sunday Morning:

A lot of the time I feel like– I feel like I’m living hand to mouth on people’s compliments. I don’t ask anybody, like, ‘What did you think of that scene?’ or, ‘How did it go?’ or blah, blah, blah, because I get addicted to positive affirmation… There’s just so much uncertainty when you’re making your work, doing your job….

In all, we need credible compliments that encourage us, people to stand by us when we struggle, and the insights of others to help erase our doubt and replace it with optimism.

Give generously 

Encouragement builds on itself. The more we give, the more we attract. We need to make giving it a habit, our way to lift others up. In the process we’ll see our own situations in a brighter light. Please encourage generously.

Photo from lie_inourgraves via Flickr

Disappointment Got You Down? Dig In. Bounce Back.

Things don’t always go our way at work. Sometimes it’s because we haven’t: 

• Mastered all the skills we need
• Performed well at the right time
• Solidified our support system
• Been realistic about our readiness 

That leaves us open to disappointment when we don’t: 

• Get hired for a job we really want
• Promoted to a position when we believe we’re the best candidate
• Hear our name mentioned as a key project contributor
• Get included in issues discussions around our areas of expertise 

These letdowns make us feel like we’ve fallen short.  So we: 

• Berate ourselves with a pile of negatives that make us feel worse
• Let our performance decline by slowing our pace, losing our creative energy, and allowing our drive to wane
• Give up putting ourselves “out there” for future opportunities
• Ignore the lessons about what we can do better and how we can bounce back 

Everyone gets discouraged. 

We often forget that everyone gets smacked with disappointment. Some hide it well and others make a drama out of it. 

The big lesson is that disappointment is the cause of performance decline. Successful people don’t let that decline hang around very long. 

Professional sports let you see, literally, how disappointment hurts performance: 

I’ve heard Patrick McEnroe, ESPN commentator and former U.S. Davis Cup Team captain, report that losing the first set in tennis often causes a temporary lowering of player performance. 

Some professional golfers who have blown leads in major championships fail to make the cut at their next tournament. 

Basketball players who miss key shots at the end of tight games will often pass the ball rather than shoot in subsequent games. 

It’s about attitude and confidence.  

Winners know how to manage disappointment and preserve their confidence. They quickly come to terms with disappointing situations by putting them in perspective. They: 

• Analyze the contributing factors—their knowledge, skill, experience, the environment, situational politics, and/or relationships
• Examine their choices—what they did and said, their timing, strategy, and plan
• Consider their expectations—how realistic were they, how appropriate,  how egoistic, and how balanced
• Weigh the results—how important are they in the short and long-term, what are the implications on their careers, what will it take to get another opportunity 

We tend to give our disappointments bigger significance than they deserve. We feed ourselves negative lines like: 

• I’ll never get another shot at that job.
• I blew that promotion interview, so that hiring manager will never consider me again.
• I must not have what it takes to succeed in this company. 

For some reason, we think we have the inside track on why things aren’t going our way. If that’s you, then here’s your next step: 

Ask your boss or HR or your mentor or a trusted coworker what the real issue is. 

Believe it or not, sometimes our expectations aren’t met because of business situations that we simply don’t know about. Things don’t always have to do with us. 

In our careers, we can only control what we can control, and that’s our performance. 

You can’t allow your disappointment to cause your productivity to decline, your creativity to slump, or your attitude to darken. 

The people in your organization who disappoint you know it. They don’t like it any better than you do. That’s just how things happen in business and in life. 

But they do watch how you bounce back from it. Showcasing your can-do, will-do, want-to-do attitude in the face of disappointment is a sign of what you’re made of. 

Athletes complete the game no matter how far behind they are. That’s what the crowd pays to see—not quitters who walk off the field of play. 

Our employers hire us to work in good times and bad. They expect us to stay in the game with them. 

There’s no pride in giving up or beating yourself up when things aren’t working out your way. Instead, show your bounce. 

Photo from CJ Isherwood via Flickr

Want to Get Heard? Say Less.

Did this ever happen to you? 

You’re in a meeting about a complex problem facing your work group. Everyone’s got their own idea about the cause and what to do about it. The discussion consists of: 

• Blaming bad decision-making or poor management
• One-sided perspectives on the “real” factors obstructing a fix
• Accusations about how no one cared about the situation until now
• Seat-of-the-pants solutions with little viability
• Chest beating about the no-win situation everyone is facing 

The talk goes on and on. The veteran voices dominate. The boss takes it all in, affirming some positions and countering others. The meeting goes circular, covering a lot of ground but making no progress. 

Often, there is someone who’s saying nothing. The group hardly notices. 

Finally, when it seems like the discussion is at a dead end, the “quiet one” speaks, connecting the dots and providing the clarity the group has missed. Relief! 

When everyone walks out of the room, those crucial words and their speaker get remembered. 

Make that person YOU 

In case you don’t remember your Shakespeare, Polonius said, in his lengthy comments about Hamlet to the king and queen, “…brevity is the soul of wit.” Unfortunately, Polonius didn’t follow his own advice, but we should if we want career success. 

There is often the misconception that being the dominant voice in a meeting is how we demonstrate our expertise and commitment. We may think that talking a lot: 

• Gets us points with the boss (like class participation in high school)
• Means we will be seen as “bought in” (whether we are or not)
• Takes the pressure off our coworkers (especially those who don’t understand the issues)
• Deflects decision-making and change (particularly ones no one wants)
• Inflates the boss’s sense that we’re a solid team (whether or not that’s so) 

In truth, if you want to stand out, say just enough and make it valuable! 

State insights, concisely 

If we want to have influence, we have to earn it. That means developing a reputation for being able to distill input into clear statements that can be acted upon. 

Ideally, you want the people you meet with to be eager to hear what you have to say. When they learn that you only speak after you’ve considered all the input, each time you open your mouth, they’ll listen. The more often you do that successfully, the more influence you’ll gain. 

Achieving this takes intellectual discipline. You don’t need to be the smartest person at the table, just the clearest thinking and most concise. 

Here are a few techniques that can position you to be that clear, crisp voice at precisely right moment:

•  State or restate the problem: Discussions often get out of control because no one has clearly stated the problem or issue upfront. That gives everyone license to go off in any direction. So, after a time, raise your hand and state the issue everyone is there to resolve. Use your moment to add your own idea and refocus everyone else.
• Synthesize ideas: Often important information and perspectives are expressed, but no one sees the connection between them. That’s when you take your moment to simply state how the pieces fit together.
• Summarize key points: After protracted discussion, there will be a time when everyone feels overwhelmed by the mounds of information on the table. That’s when you can relieve their mental exhaustion by presenting a point-by-point summation of the ground that has been covered.
• Simplify: Even though issues may be complex, their basis usually isn’t.  When you see that discussion is getting bogged down in details, refresh everyone’s perspective (and motivation) by focusing them on the desired outcomes and the benefits expected.

 The power of influence 

We can only make a difference if others listen to our ideas and act on them. A few right words at the right time around the right people can make a big difference in your career. Choose well and own your moment. 

Photo from Horasis via Flickr

Want to Get Ahead? Take 5. Learn to Be Quiet.

Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? When we want an opportunity or a raise, we need to ask for it. If we’re being mistreated, we need to speak out. When we see wrong being done, we need call attention to it. 

So how can being quiet help us get ahead? Crack this case and reap the benefits! 

Size up the situation 

The workplace is a din of noise. Everyone’s tuned into to multiple channels at the same time: 

• Engaging in live conversation
• Texting and taking cell phone calls
• Checking email on mobile devices 

We believe that staying “in the know” is essential to success, so we’ve become gourmands of information in a buffet without limits.

When everyone around you is gobbling up and spitting out the details, tidbits, and finds, you’ve now given yourself a career edge. 

Ideas and innovation move careers. S/he, who can put the pieces together to solve problems and create something unique, earns the reward. 

Quiet is your ally. 

You don’t miss things when your mind is quiet, you discover them. 

Quiet is a lot of things, particularly the absence of noise, turmoil, agitation, and trouble. What we need for our careers is internal quiet. 

When everyone else keeps their thinking fragmented, swatting at bits and pieces of disjointed communication, you need to use quiet to intensify your focus.  Zone into your internal strategist and set out to make your mark. 

Putting quiet to work 

Quiet is a powerful tool when you use it effectively, so: 

1. Listen and ask—We learn from what we hear, so it’s up to us to be quiet and listen to what others have to say. That’s where the insights are. The better you listen and the more you ask, the more you learn. When we’re quiet, others will talk.
2. Listen to yourself—We spend an amazing amount of time talking to ourselves instead of staying quiet within. It’s better to listen to our inner voice than to think over it. When we quiet our minds, give our subconscious a chance to reveal its insights, it will deliver powerful aha moments. Skeptical? Just try it.
3. Remove distractions—Learn to be alone with yourself. Distractions get in the way of your internal listening. If you’re scoffing at this, think of the last time you sat alone with no one around and nothing to distract you. If you can’t remember that’s a message to you. If you do remember and the experience was uncomfortable, you need to figure out why.
4. Stop forcing thoughts—Self-imposed pressure to come up with new ideas and solutions often becomes internal noise that blocks the quiet you need. If you have to come up with an idea, pronto, do something unrelated to your job: go work out, read a novel, take a walk, or take a shower where many good ideas are revealed!
5. Pick up on vibes—Vibes pierce the quiet. It’s what happens in the spaces between the noise. We get vibes about people, risk, and opportunity. Even when we’re in the thick of things, a quiet mind gathers up those vibes and triggers our next move. When we’re distracted, we miss those vibes or misread them, so it’s in our best interest to stay tuned in. 

Quiet practice 

We’ve been conditioned to run a fast pace. We’ve come to believe that the faster we run the more success we’ll have. Just look at the movers and shakers where you work. Some may have “arrived” by running over people, but most had their wits about them and showcased their focused, clear-headed, and centered way of getting the job done. 

So we need to practice internal quiet. Career success is, in large measure, about differentiating ourselves from others, by standing out through the way we achieve essential outcomes. Not only does learning to harness quiet help you to get ahead, it also helps you the manage stress. Now shush…. 

Photo from jumpinjimmyjava – iKIVA via Flickr

Not Your Ordinary Interview Preparation Checklist—Everything Counts

Every conversation becomes an interview, of sorts, when there are questions to:   

• Get information and/or share ideas
• Form or validate perceptions
• Assess capabilities or weigh credibility
• Develop or broaden relationships
• Explore or finalize next steps
• Offer or retract opportunities 

That means we always need to be ready to answer questions effectively, especially when they are part of: 

• Job interviews
• Promotional discussions
• Performance feedback
• Special assignment offers
• Requests for project support 

Interviews affect our careers. We can’t afford to be sloppy or naive about them. 

Be on your toes 

There is casual conversation at work and there is serious conversation. We need to know which is which and when one suddenly becomes the other. 

What starts out as a “how was your weekend” conversation with your boss can quickly turn into: “I didn’t know you were so involved as a youth soccer leader. Do you know _________? He’s a good friend of mine.” (Interview question) 

In an instant you have added another variable to a work relationship and more data about your skills. 

There thousands of bits of information and experiences plus endless relationships and connections that you’ve accumulated in your life so far. 

I suspect that you, like most, don’t consider most of them assets for the interviews that are coming your way. That’s a big mistake. 

Our credibility as employees, job candidates, managers, business owners, consultants, and teachers is rooted in our experiences.

Everything counts 

Careers grow on the basis of knowledge, skills, experience, and relationships. 

“Been there, done that” in business is exactly what management wants when we’ve done both well. It’s what an interview is designed to reveal. 

Surprise yourself by completing this inventory about what you’ve done that is relevant to your career today and for the future. 

Then turn it into a checklist to help you prepare for your next “interview.” (The parens are ideas to get you started.) 

Your “been there” list 

1. What different kinds of organizations have you worked for? (Companies, non-profits, start ups, store chains, mom and pops)
2. What states, town, and countries have you worked in?
3. Whom have you meet that you’d admit to? (Business owners, community leaders, politicians, journalists)
4. What career experiences have you dealt with? (Job loss, promotion,  transfer, company closings, achievement recognition)
5. What schooling, training, and travel experiences have you had? (Institutions attended and degrees/certificates received, countries and states visited, cultures experienced) 

Your “done that” list 

1. What kind of office work have you experienced? (Management, administrative, technical, financial, communications)
2. What kind of field work have you done? (Sales, construction, troubleshooting, installations)
3. What entrepreneurial or freelance experiences have you had? (Hobby business, social media marketing, blogging)
4. What volunteering have you done? (Cause promotion, political candidate support, fund-raising)
5. What have you done that’s creative? (Musical/theatre performances, artwork exhibited, writing published, arts patronage) 

Everything adds up 

Every interview and conversation is an opportunity to connect with someone. What makes you interesting are your experiences. Where you’ve been and what you’ve done create a picture of what you know and the skills you have. 

Some experiences are serious and others funny. They all have value. 

I’ve written in this blog about being hit between the eyes with a spitball when I taught high school, hauling cartons of frozen butter and turkeys to Head Start centers when I worked in social service, and being questioned by a dozen lawyers during a utility company rate case. 

You have your own stories like these to draw from but better.   

Keep track 

It’s tempting to minimize our experiences. We tend to think the experiences of others are grander. 

A successful interview isn’t about being grand. It’s about connecting, being authentic, and sharing experiences that demonstrate your capabilities, integrity, and commitment. 

Take a little time to create your checklist. Use it when you prepare for your next interview. You’ll be surprised at what an asset it is. 

Photo from bpsusf via Flickr