The Career You’ll Love

I was deeply affected many years ago by a workshop of Stephen R. Covey, when he explained that trust can be thought of as a bank account. Here’s the concept:

• You build up trust by your reliable and generous actions, those are the “deposits.”
• You lose trust when you make a mistake and damage someone, those are the “withdrawals.” It’s much easier to make a withdrawal than a deposit.
• When you damage someone more than you’ve benefited them, you’ve exhausted your bank account. They won’t want to trust you anymore, and it’s extremely hard to dig yourself out of that hole.
• Like bank accounts, deep trust is developed over the course of many years. It’s impossible to create deep trust in a short time.

This is a powerful idea, and explains a lot about how people work.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

If you have a job, you’re probably very busy. You’re now doing the work of three people, struggling to catch your breath.

The difficult part is to think about the long term. You not only need to be valued as a productive worker today, but also five years from now. Or ten.

Are you building that foundation for your future career?

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Does your next job exist yet? Maybe.

But many times jobs are created, or tweaked, based upon specific needs at a certain time, even connected with the talents of certain individuals.

This is one of the reasons why some jobs are filled before they’re even posted: The hiring manager was taking advantage of a great match of someone’s existing skills to address a specific pressing need.

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Earlier this year, Microsoft commissioned a study which asked hiring managers how much they used the internet to check out prospective candidates. Here’s a couple of interesting results:

• 57% used professional and business networking sites (such as LinkedIn).
• 98% used SOME internet resources to check out candidates.

This tells you that you need to have a positive presence on the internet, because your next boss is most likely going to check you out – perhaps even before ever setting up an interview.

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We’re constantly going through cycles in our jobs, in our careers, and in our lives. And if you’re out hunting for a job, it’s tough to keep your energy up to do the draining work every day.

Be sure to give yourself a break. Just as your body needs its rest every night, your mental stamina will also go through normal ups and downs.

But there’s also some tricks and techniques to regenerating your energy when you need to. Try some of these out to see what works for you.

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You may have heard the advice that it’s good to have a coach or a mentor.  But beyond that, it can be confusing.  Why?  What should I expect?  Who should I approach?

To start with, let me explain the difference between a coaching and mentoring relationship.  With a mentor, you’re looking to follow the path that someone else has successfully navigated, perhaps who can even open doors for you.  A coach, on the other hand, focuses more on your specific goals, bringing out your best clarity and motivation from within yourself.  Sometimes the two roles are combined to various degrees.

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One of the most frustrating things about working for other people is figuring out why they do such dumb things. Incomprehensible decisions seem designed to make your life difficult and stop useful progress.

It might be something as large as relocation, reorganization, or laying people off – or as minor as requiring useless codes on your TPS reports.

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It seems that recently many people, perhaps most, have struggled to be inspired by their work. With such an uncertain economy, 24/7 accessibility, fear of job loss, and lack of pay increases, we’ve created work environments where many focus more on keeping up with work than on making a great contribution.

There’s some really practical reasons why you should look to be engaged in your work:

• You become more productive, thereby more valuable to your employer.
• It helps you to be more creative and bring more energy to what you do.
• It affects the attitudes of those you work with, helping you to have some fun.
• It makes you happier and more satisfied with the work you do.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»