-
The Best Managers Catalyze Strengths
A manager who has a cookie-cutter approach to management is limited in his ability and is potentially limiting employees in their own abilities and careers, Stephen Harding explains. He outlines a much better way to develop employees.
-
Mapping Your Career Strategy
To reach your career destination, you need to map out a strategy, recognizing that the straightest course is not necessarily the best way to get there.
-
Create a Mastermind Group to Grow Your Career
Give your career a big boost by creating a group of like-mind professionals to learn from and with.
-
Wheel of Change: Planning for the Future
Improving your life or work, or the life or work of those around you, is easier using the four quadrants from the Wheel of Change as your guide.
-
Developing Yourself As A Leader
You are a leader when others see you as a leader. It all starts with this question: How can I be a better _____?
-
Play Your Own Game
Early in Jeri Finard’s career she was offered an assignment that was not a promotion, but sounded like fun. A mentor said, “Play your own game.” It’s not about promotions. It’s more important to love what you do than to worry about the title on your card.
-
Love Your Job, Don't Leave It
Jordan-Evans shares four steps for how to get what you need in order to love your job.
-
Be Proactive About Opportunities
There is more to getting promoted than just doing a good job.
-
Why You Need Power Skills
It’s a tough world. You need power skills to keep your job.
-
Your Network is Your Net Worth
The importance of networking can never be underestimated. Glain Roberts-McCabe discusses why you can never stop networking and how you can continually build your network.
-
Three Steps to Accelerating Your Career
Knowing your passions and goals are the starting point for accelerating your career.
-
Evaluating Your Career Satisfaction
Dominic Barton wants to make a difference in the emerging world, and evaluates himself with respect to that purpose. A co-worker he trusts periodically asks him questions like, “Why do you to do this? Do you think it makes a difference? Do you have enough time?”
-
Leadership Self Development
To be a better leader, pick one area for development. Check it with allies. Ask what the new behavior would look like. Then get feedback. For a CEO who wouldn’t listen, a subordinate reported the percent time he talked, and encouraged him to ask opened-ended questions.
-
Navigating a Career Like a Climbing Wall
The traditional career ladder has been replaced by a new and updated climbing wall, which offers more opportunities.
-
Choose Success
How we respond to adversity determines our success and happiness. Our greatest resource is the ability to choose our mindset. We seek evidence to support our outlook, whether it is positive or negative. Our success is determined by our choices, not by our circumstances.
-
Persevere through Desire
Terry Fox was a Canadian cancer amputee who ran across Canada on only one leg, to raise money for cancer research. He said he did it “one telephone pole at a time.” We persevere when our desires are more powerful than our disappointments.
-
Consistency is More Important Than Perfection
You win a point in tennis if you hit the ball over the net one more time than your opponent. To perform consistently you must distinguish fear from anxiety. Fear is based in reality; anxiety is imagining a negative event. Anxiety disables us and holds us back, not fear.
-
EQ and Income
Jen Shirkani has been described as someone who teaches unimportant “soft skills.” However, people with high EQ make $29,000 more per year than others. The ideal combination is competence, an average IQ, and as much EQ as you can develop.
-
Follow Your Own Path
Ultimately, people have to decide for themselves which career path they want to follow. Sharon Wood talks about when to listen to others’ advice and when to rely on your own instincts.
-
Take Charge of Your Professional Development
Rote box-checking on annual performance reviews confirms that you're able to do your job. But to improve professionally, you have to set development goals that enhance your skills over time.
-
A Strong Online Presence
To build a strong online presence, focus on gaining expertise in a specific niche.
-
Setting Your Vision
Your vision for life is a combination of short-term and long-term goals.
-
Make an Impact in Your First 60 Days
Dan Cable shares three pieces of advice for setting yourself up for success in a new job.
-
The Other Boat
Marshall Goldsmith uses a parable to dispel misconceptions.
-
How to Tell Your Story
To better understand your own value to the organization and how to convey that value to other people, ask friends to describe you in three words, write down experiences that were important to you, and relate your past to the future you desire.
-
Create Your Own Opportunities
Most people don’t try to achieve the highest levels because they assume they can’t get there. Learn new things by volunteering with professional associations, ask to shadow senior executives, and tell others what your goals and ambitions are.
-
Interviewing with Confidence
Having confidence during an interview demonstrates not only your competence, but also that you are the best person for the job.
-
The Hidden Job Market
The secret of the hidden job market lies within jobs that are not yet available. Here’s how to be first in line when the job you want opens up.
-
Finding Career Happiness
When you identify what you like to do and the skills you want to use, you can focus your energy on finding happiness in your career.
-
Make Time for Self-Development
People who take time for self-development see improvements in their personal relations and job performance. Take half an hour each day to read, talk, or otherwise be inspired. Treat these activities as daily rituals.
-
Take a Step Back
Although she was in line to be CMO at Yahoo, Jennifer Dulski took a demotion to get a better job fit as general manager in a business she knew nothing about.
-
Out Work Your Competition
As Jerry Rice explains, determination and a tough work ethic are what allow you to out-perform the competition.
-
If You Don’t Disrupt Yourself, the Market Will
In an unpredictable, rapidly changing marketplace, you have to get out of your comfort zone. Will you choose disruption or yield to destruction?
-
Defining Personal Success
Defining your own version of success puts you in an immensely powerful position to shape your future. So... what are you waiting for?
-
Planning Your Career
Don’t leave your career to chance. By strategically focusing some of your time and efforts now, you can take control of your professional future.
-
Which Conferences Are Worth Your Time?
Professional development can be pricy, so it’s worth the effort to figure out which conferences you should invest in.
-
Cultivate Multiple Mentors
As it becomes increasingly difficult to find a mentor who has all the right qualities and enough available time, individuals are creating a mentor board of directors.
-
How to Make Learning Sticky
Share the training with others at every stage and tailor the training to individual needs, desires, and learning style.
-
Humility
Rick Warren reminds us that humility is not self-deprecation, but rather understanding our strengths and weaknesses, and knowing how to reach out to enrich others and yourself.
-
FeedForward
An exercise that's fun, fast, and helpful when you want to change a behavior.
-
The New Road to the Top
The program describes changes in demographics of executives in the Fortune 100 from 1980 to 2001.
-
Job Hopping and Career Advancement
Insiders became CEO faster than outsiders.
-
Dream Out Loud
Energy is created when you say your dream out loud. For example, saying that she was going to run the Boston Marathon helped her start training. Saying it out loud also helps other people to help you. These people are often one to three degrees of separation away.
-
Fear Means That It Matters
Whenever Whitney Johnson feels fearful about doing something new, she knows she cares. We’re happiest when we’re unstuck—when we’re in the messiness—when we’re doing something that matters for ourselves, our family, and our community.
-
Defining Yourself Can Hold You Back
Whitney Johnson wanted to be a jazz musician but didn’t try; she thought she wasn’t good enough. Writing, on the other hand, came naturally. To become an expert, approach things as a beginner, with a desire to figure things out. For her, interviewing is an example.
-
Identity: How Do We Know Who We Are?
Our identity includes memories of our past, what others say about us, and the programs others have given us. We can also create a new identity.
-
To Help Others Develop, Start with Yourself
To help others get better, let them watch you get better.
-
Career Transition
Promotions and transfers often require new skills. Understand what the new position requires. Show your commitment; ask others for their opinion, take classes, or find a mentor.
-
Reevaluating Goals
Goals are important. It’s also important to know when to give them up.
-
How Are You Perceived?
If you don't have access to an executive coach, 1) conduct a 360 on yourself; ask others who know you (don’t be defensive); 2) Google yourself; and 3) conduct your own focus room; assemble people you trust; ask them what your strengths and weaknesses are.
-
Ask for Feedback
The person most responsible for your success is you, so do not leave it up to your boss to give feedback.
-
Identifying Strengths in Yourself and Others
What activities drew you as a child, as a young adult, and last year? What patterns do you see? Ask your team what they see when you are at your best. See the strengths of team members and work to deepen them. Ask what’s right before asking what’s wrong.
-
Reframing Risk
Think of risk-taking as a skill you can develop. Normally we are in our green zone, where we’re comfortable. Don’t jump from there to a red zone risk, where it’s scary. Move into a yellow zone place of growth. Jodi Detjen gives an example of a person dealing with conflict.
-
The 5C Approach to Career Mobility
When it's time to develop your action plan, take advantage of the 5C approach to launching your career mobility strategy.
-
Career Mobility Roadmap
Once you've embraced career mobility from a kaleidoscope mindset, it's time to design your roadmap.
-
Three Rules for Leaving Your Current Job
So you've decided to leave your current job... Do you know the cardinal rules of what you need to do and what you need to avoid doing?
-
Career Development
Employees want career development and will go wherever necessary to find it.
-
A Kaleidoscope Mindset for Career Mobility
Career mobility is similar to a kaleidoscope in that three major factors combine to make a plethora of options.
-
The Six Emotions to Setting Goals
If you’re lost, decide. If you’re frustrated, pursue the opposites of what you don’t want. If you’re confused, design a plan. If you’re unclear, follow your heart. If you’re unsatisfied, ask what matters. If you’re uncertain, stay focused.
-
Two-Way Elevator Conversation
Sam Horn gives a quick lesson in how to turn an elevator pitch into a vibrant two-way conversation.
