The Lead Your Career Podcast

Silencing The Noise: The Best Ability is Availability

You may have heard the old adage that, "the best ability is availability". Well, in terms of Leading Your Career, that is absolutely the truth. Opportunities rarely walk up to someone neck deep in work or who are already being pulled in a thousand directions. Instead, the opportunities usually present themselves to the people whose eyes are up and anticipating the next challenge. Don't get me wrong, many managers have their "go-to" people they consistently think to reach out to first, and in those cases your goal is to be considered one of those go-to people! The only way to get there is to find, and convey, availability within your already busy world.

Change. Outcomes Matter, Not Intentions.

Change is the intentional evolution of our status quo. It's growth. It's putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. Ultimately, it's 100% dependent upon your wiliness to grab it by the horns and to inspire those around you to do the same! This episode talks about the three P's of anit-change, and how you can ensure you're NOT a barrier to change! :)

A Lesson From The Playground | Getting Promoted

You've been promoted! Congratulations! You have so many opportunities and plans in your new role, but first, you need to help transition to your current role. This isn't only trigged with a vertical move, it's anytime you leave a role or responsibilities on the team to move on to something else, and another person must fill your void. Once the person backfilling your position is selected, you should be ready to empower them to succeed as they look for new ways to solve problems and push that project, team, or group further than you could. You will often see the changes they're making, initiatives you led being mothballed for other ideas, and the culture around the group or team start to shift. They've moved on just fine without you. This is when it's time to double down on your empowerment and support, instead of falling into the childish trap of "that's not how you do that." Because the truth Is that IS how THEY do that, it's just no how YOU did that!

Delegating to Build Up Other People

Delegating is a challenging task for me. Not only because I have a skewed perception of my quality of work, but also because do not want to miss out on completing the responsibilities of my job that I love to do. That seems like a reasonable excuse, right? Right, except the way that surfaces in my team is I "can't let things go", "don't trust them to do the work", "hover", and "am not actively helping to build them up". None of those are the way I want to be perceived by my team, but actions speak louder than words. I believe that we could really benefit by treating delegation as a more intentional act. I also believe if we look at it as the greatest tool in our "building up the people around us tool box", we may actually get pretty good at it!

Embrace The Awkward

It's a strange feeling. You know what you should be doing, or should be saying but the feeling makes you hesitate and question yourself. Going any further would result in some level of vulnerability that you believe you're not mentally prepared for. In these moments many choose to not act, not speak up, and will remain in their comfort zone. As a result an opportunity is missed. It's in these moments I believe you should "Embrace The Awkward", because on the other side of awkward is a better, more honest reality.

Be Grateful. Be Kind. Be Human.

In the first "Lead Your Career" article I identified one act that makes me happy and that's "making other people successful". At its core, that's my purpose for writing these articles; Sharing with others actionable ways to make a positive difference in their life, the lives of others, and give them the tools needed to lead their career. But the concept can be tricky. First off, success is defined differently for everyone. Success might be every additional day of sobriety, getting elected to local office, or for many working parents of school aged children right now, just making it to bedtime. Secondly, not everyone is actively trying to master something. Not everyone wants to "be all they can be", plenty of people are happy being who they are right now. Lastly, you may not feel you have anything worth offering even if people were interested in improving themselves. So a lot of assumption goes into the idea of "making other people successful". This article is targeting that last barrier, aimed for the ones who feel they don't have much to offer, when in fact they do.

Master‘s Degree: Do you want the piece of paper or are you after the knowledge?

How many of you feel like the inevitable next step in your career is a Master’s Degree? Many times when someone on my team brings me that topic for discussion, it seems it’s framed in the same manner: Minimal context, no vision and questionable motives. Most often, they’re the highly-motivated employees who love a challenge and are looking for the next hurdle. Some people, though, see that many leaders in their career path may have a Master’s Degree and have been told "it's just good to have”. In either case, I always ask a follow-up question: "Do you want the piece of paper or are you after the knowledge?"

The Bounce Back

The Bounce Back is applicable to any situation where the outcome is not how you envisioned and you're left in the wake with a strong emotional reaction. It can be your performance review, your relationships or even the result of a big test. The severity of the situation that caused the emotion is relative to everyone but regardless, the situation is not as important as your reaction to it. Focus on controlling the controllable and begin The Bounce Back.

Lets Do Away With The ”Open Door Policy”

"My door is always open" – we’ve all heard management use this phrase to mean that they’re approachable and willing to talk whenever you need. But who is the target audience for that open door? Is it really everyone or only those willing to walk through the door? What else can we do to ensure EVERYONE has a voice, because the "open door policy" doesn't work?

Stop Telling Yourself No

As a mentor in my workplace, I frequently bear witness to employees telling themselves “no”.  No one phrases it that way, but that’s the reality. In a mentor or coaching session, we talk about goals, aspirations, opportunities and what they want to be doing. When I ask why they’re not doing those things already, it's some form of "I told myself no".  Let's STOP telling ourselves no, and accomplish what we set out to do!