The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Where do you find Influencers?

Whether you’re looking for a job, or to advance your career, one of the key needs is to find the decision makers who could help you achieve your goals.  These are often highly placed managers who are given formal authority by the organization.

They’re pretty easy to find, but often hard to connect with. That’s where the Influencers come in.  In many ways, these people are perhaps even more important, because:

• They usually influence multiple decision makers.
• They are expected to make value judgments.
• They’re often more accessible.

Decision makers will use their trusted advisors to bounce ideas off, to get more honest feedback, and to discover something closer to the “real story” about important issues.  When they are working on solving a problem, they’ll look to a small circle of friends and colleagues who might have ideas and wisdom.

These advisors, for you, are the Influencers.  When you are perceived as valuable by the Influencers, they are more likely to recommend you positively to those key decision makers.

But here’s the challenge:  They’re hard to find.

In theory, the staff that works directly for a manager would be the best advisors.  The problem they have, though, is that they’re biased by the fact that the manager has strong impact on their personal career and job role, and they can often be too “close” to a particular issue to see the big picture.  Paradoxically, the manager may see them as less trustable than someone else who is less visible, even outside their particular organization.

Influencers can often be found:

• In a planning, organizing, or strategy role
• In a partner organization that has an informal but important relationship with the decision maker
• In semi-professional relationships outside the workplace

Ideally, you would have access to find out where the decision maker is getting information and support:

• Who does she talk to right before or after group meetings? Who does he have lunch or coffee with?
• What semi-professional organizations is she connected with?
• Who does he connect with during more informal times, like at the beginning or end of the day?

Admittedly, it might be a bit creepy to watch someone that closely – not a good move for your career.  So the challenge is to put yourself in situations where you can increase contact with people who you suspect might be Influencers, and get a sense of how broad their impact might be.  And remember, you’ll have to give value in return in order to cultivate a healthy relationship.

An important resource

I’ve been using Google Alerts for several years now, and it sure saves me a lot of time.  You take any Google search that you’ve found to be valuable, and can set it up to repeat on a periodic basis and e-mail you the results.  I’ve found it valuable for monitoring competitors, industry trends, and even what other people are saying about me.

Since I have a unique name, when I type “carl dierschow” and “dierschow carl” into Google, I get a pretty complete listing of all references to my name.  But more important, I’d like to know when something new crops up – a review of my book, a pointer to my blog, whatever.  So I set up a Google Alert to send me a message whenever something crops up, and then I have a chance to see if it’s something I’m interested in.  I never have to go out looking, instead it comes to me.

Is there something you’re interested in monitoring on the web?  This is a must-have tool.

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals.

© 2010 Possibilities Partnership LLC

The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

Your choices when a company is shaken

As many of you know, I had a long career with Hewlett-Packard.  On Friday, I was surprised to hear that the CEO resigned amidst murky circumstances.  Perhaps we’re hearing the real story, perhaps we aren’t, but it doesn’t really matter that much.  HP is starting another change of leadership.

As an employee, I lived through CEO changeovers three times before, and I realize that there are some important choices that you need to make – as an employee, as a customer, or as a shareholder.  But they’re not what you might think.

Recognize that a company of this size ($115B in revenue, 300,000 employees) never changes rapidly.  The company for the next year will pretty much continue to do what it planned.  Product line changes will continue, hiring or firing plans will continue, and the financial profile of the company will look the same as it would have without this event.

Yes, HP stock took a dive Friday and is only gradually recovering.  The press is having a field day with the news, jockeying to get readers by uncovering (or perhaps trying to create) a compelling story.  This is what they do, in an attempt to capture eyeballs for their advertisers.

As an observer of this event, you have some choices to make.  The first is what rumors and speculation you choose to listen to, and propagate to others around you.  You can have a surprisingly large effect just by the conversations you have with your colleagues and friends, especially if they might view you as someone with an interesting opinion or some kind of inside track.

It’s important for how you help others feel, as well as yourself.  Do you want to spend your day frustrated, gloating, confused, or demotivated?  Simply listen to the rumors that support those points of view – there will be many – and repeat them to others.  For some reason people love to get caught up in emotional drama, so you’ll find ready ears.

Another big choice, one which may take many months to develop, will be how this changes your views of what the company stands for.  Will you trust future decisions more or less than the past?  Will this event, and the subsequent replacement of the CEO and others, make it more or less likely that you would want to be an employee or customer?  Don’t base your shift just on the initial announcement; instead, monitor how the company goes through the coming months of uncertainty and key decisions.

Finally, this particular event, like others which touch your life, might propel you to look at larger decisions in your life.  Perhaps this could end up changing how you look at your investment philosophy, or the companies from which you purchase products.  It might get you thinking about career choices, and whether you’re more or less likely to want to work for a large company in the future.

These are the key choices which may be useful for you.  But it’s not going to be anything that makes the popular press.  This is internal work.

An important resource

I’ve been reading a great book from Johnna Bavoso entitled From Laid Off to Living.  It’s primarily focused on helping people who have been laid off and want help navigating the tough emotions which result.  Step by step, she leads you through the thought process, ending up with a revitalized focus and energy which will help you in your career and life.

Johnna is local here in Fort Collins, so I had the good fortune of meeting her in person.  She’s also giving workshops on this topic through the local community workforce center, if you happen to be in the region.

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals.

© 2010 Possibilities Partnership LLC

The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com

What exactly is trust?

I think the universe is telling me something today.  A couple of days ago I submitted a blog post regarding building trust – that will be published on the Workbloom blog in the next few days.

This morning, I had a chance to hear a presentation by Richard Fagerlin on this subject, which I found quite thought-provoking.  Here are some great ideas.

Our paradigm of trust, historically, has been that it’s something you need to spend a lifetime earning from others.  To be crass:

• You are put in a situation of being tested
• You perform some action in response
• Someone else judges whether your action was “trustworthy” or not
• If it was, then they now award you with this thing called “trust”

That’s fine, certainly, but you might notice something:  You’ve given up most of your control.  And if, for whatever reason, another doesn’t grace you with this intangible “trust,” then there’s not much you can do except to try to pass the next test.

Instead, let’s think about the aspects of trust which are more about who you are than what you do.  The core elements are:

• Integrity
• Competence
• Compassion

To the degree that you have all three of these, then you’ve created the elements which will not only encourage others to trust you, but – more importantly – which will put you into a state of trust with those around you.

Trust isn’t a one-sided judgment.  It’s a two-sided relationship.  And it’s really just a foundation upon which the activities of the relationship can take place.

Let me describe these three elements, then:

Integrity: Being aware of, driven by, and consistent with a set of values, and displaying that consistency in different situations.

Competence: Being good at what you do - having skills, knowledge, and abilities which are relevant and valued.

Compassion: Being able to connect with others – not only empathy, but also to identify with their values even when they’re different than your own.

When you have these three qualities, you’ll be able to operate from a solid foundation of trusting others, to build the healthy trusting relationships we all strive for.

Just a final word:  Don’t assume that trust means only trusting blindly.  When I trust another, it means I have a basis upon which to predict their behavior – but that might still not be what I would choose.  So healthy trust also depends on communication and validating.  Trust but verify.

An important resource

I’ve been reading a great book recently, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, by William Bridges.  I found it quite useful for people who are struggling with a sense of travelling through life stages, and the transitions that are required for each.  It’ll help you to understand the bigger picture of your life, and quite possibly help your kids, partner, and parents.

It’s an easy read, and extraordinarily powerful.

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals.

© 2010 Possibilities Partnership LLC