The Truth and Your Career

The truth and managing your career. There are some not-so-obvious layers of meaning that you need to master in order to build a successful career. This concept is particularly important to grasp when you are heading into job search or career change mode.

Truth-Based Behaviour

The most obvious aspect of this theme is your behaviour and actions measured against ethical and legal standards. Not misrepresenting your qualifications. Dealing honestly with customers, suppliers, co-workers and other stakeholders. The importance of this principle is well known and it should be a cornerstone of how you manage your career. Here is a good guideline: Never behave in a way that you wouldn't want people to find out about later.

The Truth About Your Performance

Which brings us to how well have you performed in past assignments and how well are you performing now. What is the truth about your performance?

This is a very relevant question. You can't improve unless you understand clearly what you are doing well and what you need to improve upon. You cannot conduct an effective job search without understanding the truth about your performance history. Effective interviewing, and resume writing are predicated on you knowing the truth about your past performance. And, you cannot plan your career with any degree of accuracy if you don't know how you measure up.

There are two relevant views of your performance: external and internal. The external view is how your performance currently rates, and has rated in the past, in the eyes of the people you work for and with. This might include the objective measures discussed below as well as subjective measures. The internal view is how you feel about your own performance. You may have met external expectations, but not your own, or vice versa. It is vital that you have a clear handle on both.

There are more sides to performance than meets the eye. Achieving the numbers or a deadline is representative of the most common types. However, many a career has been scuttled because of "secondary" performance criteria like how well you work with colleagues. What kinds of performance are we talking about?

Objective Performance: What is measurable about the roles you have held? What can you quantify? Like it or not, the people who make hiring and promotion decisions respond first and foremost to objective data. Your performance may have been measured relative to a specific objective or as an improvement or change over previous data. There are a wide variety of measures of course, and within your job history, could be nuggets of information about the impact your work has had. You should take personal ownership for working with the quantifiable measures given to you, creating and tracking measures if they haven’t been identified for you, and recording your performance for future reference.

Subjective Performance: This is the harder part. You need to get beyond loose answers and understand the subjective sides of performance. The subjective side of your performance can include the level of impact you are having in the organization, how successfully you are fitting-in, the degree to which you exhibit the values of the organization, how effectively you are developing your skills, and how well you work with your boss. Why is subjective performance important?

First, understanding the truth about how you are doing beyond the numbers is essential for understanding your job security. Second, you require this information for your professional development and career planning. Third, this information forms the raw material for your behavioural interview question responses. Fourth, the truth about your personal value proposition is often contained in your subjective performance. In my experience with clients, this is both one of the hardest areas to figure out and yet, one of the most rewarding.

Contextual Performance: One aspect to be aware of is the context of your performance. We all work within varying economic and organizational environments. Meeting your sales objectives when the market is hot is a very different thing than when the market is slow. Understand the contextual truth about how well you have done. You may find some sobering realities to contemplate, or areas of your performance that deserve praise given the challenges you overcame.

To see how this theme applies to your resume, please also take a look at Truth-Based Resumes.

Technorati Tags: interviewing, resume writing

Having fun!

Wipe sweat off brow. Drink cold water. Phew. Busy.

But, busy is good.

Creating stuff is good.

Serving and making a difference is good.

Geez, I am having a lot of fun.

I love what I do.

Now, back at it.

Don't Give Up on Your Professional Development Goals

I am so glad to be writing about this topic this week. You see, more than 80% of resolutions are dropped by January 17th. Great intentions at the beginning of the month slide away in the face of day-to-day pressures.

If you are intent on doing something with your career this year (and I hope you are…we should all be developing professionally), then you need more than will power.

You need to establish what you want. And then, you need to set firmly in your mind why this is important to you. Make it a priority, based on the positive difference the achievement of your goal or the change you want will make on your life.
Then you need a strategy and a plan. The plan needs to be workable. Thorough. Achievable.
Then you need to work the plan. Faithfully. Diligently.
In a way, that’s it. Arnold Schwarzenegger once was asked what the key to success was. He said: “Make the plan. Work the plan.”

Reality Gets in the Way

Of course, it isn’t simple. You have pressures, at work, at home, and within yourself.

Don’t give in to your current environment: I wish it weren’t true, but the reality is that for many people, their job and workplace is draining. If your current job or workplace has the potential to be better, then pursue that internal career development. If, however, it is a really bad situation, then call a spade a spade and start to get yourself on the market.

Don’t give in to scepticism: As soon as you dare to make a goal you may be visited by a little voice called scepticism, or fear, or fatalism. By all means, acknowledge it. Then, move on. If your goal is realistic, and your plan workable, it is all in the execution, and your belief in yourself.

Don’t sell out: An amazing thing happens when we start to pursue a professional goal. A lesser opportunity challenges it. A minor reassignment at work. A job offer doing the same thing, at the same level, for 7% more in salary. You have to make a choice, based on how important and how realistic your goal is.

Make space: If you have set a major professional goal for yourself this year, but your life is already overflowing with commitments and activities, then something has to give. Unfortunately, most people are wired to procrastinate on the important, but not urgent activities. Make your professional development urgent and clear some space to make it happen.

What could go wrong: Ask yourself why your plan might not work out. Where are you weak when it comes to achieving your goal? I am a big fan of leveraging strengths, but in career development, you need to think about these weak areas, like lack of a professional network, your performance record, skill gaps, experience gaps and poor interviewing and job search skills. If there is something that has a high likelihood of torpedoing your plan, fix it.

Yes, external factors like difficult bosses, stressful work environments, jobs that don’t fit, and looming deadlines will challenge that commitment. However, I believe that it all comes down to practicing personal responsibility. If professional and career development is important to you, then you have a responsibility to yourself to move it forward.

I hope that helps provide some perspective to what is an all too common problem at the end of January. Good luck!