Develop The Mental Strength To Bring About Change In Your career

Develop The Mental Strength To Bring About Change In Your Career

Career change in one's life is easier said than done. While advising others to change careers, it may sound very simple and be a workable proposition. But when it comes to our turn, it normally becomes one of the toughest decisions to implement. A career change needs a lot of mental preparation. 

If you have a family, that may get disrupted by your career change. The income may stop for some time. The decision itself may turn out to be the wrong one. It needs mental strength to change careers. Let us see what it requires to engage in a successful career change.

A change in career shifts us from a comfort zone to a zone full of discomfort in the beginning. For a full-time production engineer, a change to a career as human resources consultant may need a total about turn, back to school, and learning new skills for the new job. 

Some people change careers so totally that it looks incredible. Let us talk about changes that can be done more smoothly. I am talking about learning about a new career along with the old one and then shifting to the new career slowly. This process also requires mental strength, because it needs a lot of extra work.

The first barrier that one encounters while thinking of career change is- how did I get into the wrong career? What if my new decision also turns out to be wrong? What if I continue with my present career? Why should I change my career? Some of these questions need the head to answer and some questions are for the heart such as asking why I chose the wrong career, to begin with, may involve damage to self-esteem, and acceptance of failure.

Before thinking of changing careers, you need to do an analysis of your life goals and decide how the present career does not satisfy those goals. Only after deciding that something drastic needs to be done can you think about changing your career. 

One has to develop mental and emotional strength to undergo these changes and emerge a winner again. Before you can engage in a successful career change, it is a matter of must for you to carry out an appraisal of what led you to the idea of a career change. 

Quite a lot of issues are to be deliberated upon to provide firsthand information on what is to be done while the outcome of the exercise will give an insight into the problem at hand and the likely solutions to the problem. 

The ability to provide answers to these questions will give you an insight into the results that are to be achieved, either positive or negative. The problem in the first instance may be due to the inability to have a better understanding of one’s interests, capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, and other things to consider before choosing a career. 

Before a successful career change can take place you need to take into cognizance all these personality characteristics listed above. Carry out another appraisal of your potential to know which direction is the best for you for a purposeful and eventful life career.

Do You Know If You Are On The Right Seat While Pursuing Your Career ?

Do You Know If You Are On The Right Path As You Are Pursuing Your Career?

We all have a chair that designates a position in our career. If you are just starting out, or you have been on for quite some time now, you will certainly be placed in a position to handle your organization.   

For most of us occupying a certain position, you need to understand that the responsibilities, the growth prospects, and many such factors can be used to judge or decide if you are happy with the seat you are occupying. Sometimes, we may be unaware that another seat may send us much higher in the hierarchy and satisfaction level. 

Sometimes we are frustrated with our job for no easily identifiable reason. There are many such factors that determine if we are in the right seat or not. Let us examine some of them.

What level of Involvement do you put across?

How involved are you with what you do? Are we so engrossed with our job, that we have no time to think of anything else? Or we are so less connected with our job that having it or not makes no difference to us? Albert Einstein, the great scientist was so involved with his job of thinking and finding solutions to mysteries of physics and the cosmos that he had no time left for anything else. His involvement was total, what about you?. Do you have such an involvement?

Do you enjoy what you are doing?

Is there any sign of fulfillment for you in your career? Are you proud of what you are doing? Let alone giving freedom to move closer to you to share your experience and achievements. You need to know that if you are dissatisfied with what you are doing for any reason, you will never get joy. However, if you get joy then most of the things you will be doing will go in the right direction. So think if you are getting joy in your job?

Are you respected?

If you are working with the right people and doing the right job, you will always get the respect of your colleagues. If respect is missing, please take that as a red signal telling you that something might be amiss. Being respected is a clear indication that you are being valued for the work you’re doing for your organization. Adding value to other people’s lives can bring quite considerable respect to your personality. You must also treat people with respect if you are to receive the same treatment from them.

Do you try to improve your skills and knowledge?

Do you find your skills and aptitude match the job requirements? You might be made for greater things in life. Please get your skills assessed and find out if you are wasting time with a low-skilled job when you should have been working with something requiring great skills and abilities. 

If you observe that the skills you have presented are not in line with where you aspire to be career-wise, try to improve by acquiring more skills and knowledge. 

This is the only yardstick that can be used to decide your achievement if it is positive or negative. The process of acquiring more skills and knowledge cannot be toiled with because the level of your education will undoubtedly dictate your position on the success ladder.

There are other factors such as a vision for the job, future growth potential, learning opportunities, and such other factors that decide if you are in the right seat. The right person for the right job. You can equally ask yourself - are you the right person for your job and more importantly, is the job right for you?

I have given some pointers for thought. Ultimately, it is your life goals and values that will always decide if the job fits you. That can be done only by you. What is most important is that you review your job accomplishments and your satisfaction level at frequent intervals and bring changes to create a more meaningful life. So find out today if you are in the right seat in your career.

How To Guide Against Sabotaging Your Career I

How To Guide Against Sabotaging Your Career  I

Some leaders across the globe most often do screw up their careers either knowingly or unknowingly. These leaders most often than not, are getting the wrong results or the right results in the wrong ways while little effort is put into correcting this wrong attitude. Interestingly, they themselves are choosing to fail.  

They're actively sabotaging their own careers. These leaders sabotage their careers for a simple reason: They make the fatal mistake of choosing to communicate with presentations and speeches rather than giving leadership talks. Speeches or presentations primarily communicate information.  While leadership talks, on the other hand, not only communicate information, they do more: They go as far as establishing a deep, human emotional connection with the audience.  

The question now is: Why is the later connection necessary in leadership?

It is a well-proven fact that leaders do nothing more important than get results.  There are generally two ways that leaders get results: They can order people to go from point A to point B, or they can have people WANT TO go from A to B.  Clearly, leaders who can instill "want to" in people, and motivate those people, are much more effective than leaders who can't or won't. And the best way to instill "want to" is not simply to relate to people as if they are information receptacles but to relate to them in a deep, human, emotional way that depicts having a tendency of greater connection with their followers. YOU DO THIS WITH LEADERSHIP TALKS!

Listed below are a few examples of leadership talks.

For example, when Churchill said, "We will fight on the beaches ... " That was a leadership talk.

When Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you ... " that was a leadership talk.

When Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"  That was a leadership talk.

You can come up with a lot of examples too.  Go back to those moments when the words of a leader inspired people to take ardent action and make people do what they don’t want to do to achieve great results in the first instance. By doing this, you have probably put your finger on an authentic leadership talk.

Mind you, I'm not just talking about the great leaders of history.  I'm also talking about the leaders in your organizations.  After all, leaders speak 15 to 20 times a day: everything from formal speeches to informal chats.  When those interactions are leadership talks, not just speeches or presentations, the effectiveness of those leaders is dramatically increased.

How do we put together leadership talks? It's not easy.  Mastering leadership talks take a rigorous application of many specific processes.  As Clement Atlee said of that great master of leadership talks, Winston Churchill, "Winston spent the best years of his life preparing his impromptu talks."

Churchill, Kennedy, Reagan, and others who were masters at giving leadership talks didn't actually call their communications "leadership talks". Nelson Mandela of the blessed memory also utilized the acumen of a great leader to inspire his people to fight for freedom for his people. The basic fact here is that only thing is common to all of them, they must have been conscious to some degree of the processes one must employ in putting a leadership talk together.

Here's how to start.  If you plan to give a leadership talk, there are three questions you should ask.  If you answer "no" to any one of those questions, you can't give one.  You may be able to give a speech or presentation, but certainly not a leadership talk.   (To be continued)

How To Guide Against Sabotaging Your Career II

How To Guide Against Sabotaging Your Career II

In the first part of this discussion on how to guide against sabotaging your career, the introduction aspect was deliberated upon. 

However, the concluding part that has to do with the questions that need to be answered to know if you have the ability to give a leadership talk, is hereby presented below. Keep reading 

(1) DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE AUDIENCE NEEDS?

Winston Churchill said, "We must face the facts or they'll stab us in the back."When you are trying to motivate people, the real facts are THEIR facts, their reality. You need to what your followers aspire to get at all costs and find a way of meeting their needs when they need it. You will undoubtedly become a crowd-puller within the shortest possible time. You as a leader also need to understand that your follower’s reality is composed of their needs.  In many cases, their needs have nothing to do with your needs. 

But most leaders don't get this.  They think that their own needs, their organization's needs, are reality.  That's okay if you're into ordering.  As an order leader, you only need to work with your reality.  You simply have to tell people to get the job done.  You don't have to know where they're coming from.  But if you want to motivate them, you must work within their reality, not yours. This is called "playing the game in the people's home park".  There is no other way to motivate them consistently.  If you insist on playing the game in your park, you'll be disappointed in the motivational outcome. 

(2) CAN YOU BRING DEEP BELIEF TO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING? 

Nobody wants to follow a leader who doesn't believe the job can get done.  If you can't feel it, they won't do it. But though you yourself must "want to" when it comes to the challenge you face, your motivation isn't the point.  It's simply a given.  If you're not motivated, you shouldn't be leading.  The point to take note of here is: Can you TRANSFER your motivation to the people so they become as motivated as you are? 

This is also called“THE MOTIVATIONAL TRANSFER”, and it is one of the least understood and most important leadership determinants of all.  There are three ways you can make the transfer happen.

*  CONVEY POSITIVE INFORMATION TO THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU.  The process of contributing meaningfully to the people around you will in most cases is enough to get people motivated to think of bringing considerable improvements to their lives.  For instance, many people have shun their addicted behaviorrs such as drug abuse and other vices because of information on the harmful effects of such habits on their lives

* TRY TO MAKE SENSE OF YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS. To be motivated, people must understand the rationality behind their challenges.  For example, while smoking, some people have been motivated to quit because the information made available to them about the negative implications of smoking makes sense.  The message passed across to them has meaning and is logical. They are able to discern it and work towards quitting smoking. and they are able to do that successfully.

* TRANSMIT EXPERIENCE.  This entails having the leader's experience become the people's experience.  This can be the most effective method of all, for when the speaker's experience becomes the audience's experience, a deep sharing of emotions and ideas, a communing, can take place.  Give the people to know where you are coming from and where you are going, as well as how to get there.

Thank you

How To Guide Against Sabotaging Your Career III

How To Guide Against Sabotaging Your Career III

There are quite a few thoughts on the third method. Generally speaking, humans learn in two ways: by acquiring intellectual understanding and through experience.  

In our schooling, the former predominates, but it is the latter which is most powerful in terms of inducing a deep sharing of emotions and ideas; for our experiences, which can be life's teachings, often lead us to profound awareness and purposeful action. 

Let’s have a glance at our schooling.  Was it your book learning or your experiences, your interactions with teachers and students, that you remember most?  In most cases, your experiences made the most telling impressions upon you.  

To transfer your motivation to others, adopt the system known as a "defining moment" technique. The technique is all about putting into sharp focus a particular experience of yours then communicate that focused experience to the people by describing the physical facts that gave you the emotion. Having done this you unleash the secret to the defining moment, and that experience of yours must provide a lesson and that lesson is a solution to the needs of the people.  Otherwise, they'll think you're just talking about yourself.

For the defining moment to work (i.e., for it to transfer your motivation to them), the experience must be about them not about how to make live better for you alone.  The experience happened to you, of course.  But that experience becomes their experience when the lesson it communicates is a solution to their needs.

CAN YOU HAVE THE AUDIENCE TAKE RIGHT ACTION?

Results don't happen unless people take action. After all, it's not what you say that's important in your leadership communication, it's what the people do after you have had your say. But yet, the vast majority of leaders don't have a clue as to what action truly is.They get people taking the wrong action at the wrong time in the wrong way for the wrong results.A key reason for this failure is they don't know how to deliver the all-important "leadership talk Call-to-action".

"Call" comes from an Old English word meaning "to shout."   A Call-to-Action is a "shout for action."  Implicit in the concept is urgency and forcefulness.  But most leaders don't deliver the most effective Calls-to-action because they make three errors regarding it.

First, they err by mistaking the Call-to-Action as an order.  Within the context of The Leadership Talk, a Call-to-action is not an order.  Leave the order for the order leader. 

Second, leaders err by mistaking the Call as theirs to give.  The best Call-to-action is not the leader's to give.  It's the people's to give.  It's the people's to give to themselves. A true Call-to-action prompts people to motivate themselves to take action.

You have a great opportunity to turbo charge your career by recognizing the power of leadership talks.  Before you give a leadership talk, ask three basic questions.  Do you know what the people need?  Can you bring deep belief to what you're saying?  Can you have the people take the right take action? 

If you say "no" to any one of those questions you cannot give a leadership talk.  But the questions aren't meant to be stumbling blocks to your leadership but stepping stones.  If you answer "no", work on the questions until you can say, "yes". 

In that way, you'll start getting the right results in the right way on a consistent basis.

Thank you