Make More of Your Job

Start Acting Like a Leader

I speak to a lot people about their career goals. One of the most common goals people strive for is to move into leadership.  However, the toughest part about achieving that goal is finding a way to hone your management skills before you have to do it for a living.

Take a look around your company or your community and you’ll find that there are lots of opportunities for you to take on a leadership role any time you want.  Most companies have brainstorming groups, peer review boards and project committees.  Your community is undoubtedly in great need of leaders for charity drives, book clubs or even coaches for sports teams.  Any one of these groups can offer you an opportunity to test your skills as a leader and get a taste for what a professional management role might require.

Finding a way to exercise active leadership behavior before you are employed as a manager is a good idea for many reasons. First, getting involved in one or more of these activities will give you the chance to practice your leadership skills in a safe environment where you’re not paid or expected to be the expert.  It’s a simple fact that most of us learn by trial and error; it’s always a good idea to get some of your early mistakes out of the way in a low-pressure environment.  You may not be the best at leading a local book club or you may start out as a lousy little league coach, but making mistakes in these settings won’t cost your company a penny and people will be quicker to forgive your shortcomings in a volunteer position.

Additionally, taking on leadership roles in non-core areas can send a message to your superiors that you are interested in being an example. As your skill set improves, it will give you an opportunity to showcase your talents.  No one has ever been passed over for a management position because they were too involved in leadership roles in the company or their community.

Finally, testing your management capacity in a non-career area gives you the opportunity to make sure that leadership is something that you really want in the first place.  Over the years I’ve seen many people who chased after management roles because they thought it was the next logical career move, not because they really wanted it.  Leadership is a team sport and requires you to work as an example and a motivator, not a doer. When it comes down to it, some people just don’t like it.  It’s a great idea to give yourself a taste of that role before you accept a new position and find out it’s not for you.

The only real key to landing a leadership role is a commitment to developing the skills you’ll need to excel one that job becomes yours.  Why wait until the next position opens up when you could start your leadership journey today?  Get out there and find out what you’re made of!

Have You Turned Over a New Leaf?

Have you turned over a new leaf at the office but haven’t seen any benefit yet? If so, what should you do about it?

Recently I’ve spoken to several people who have decided to renew their commitment and dedication to their jobs, but are getting frustrated because they haven’t seen results yet. Since this blog is all about making more of your job, it would stand to reason that many of you reading this may be having the same experience in your lives.  

If you’re newly committed to making the most of your job, there’s one very important thing to remember: you’re newly committed to making the most of your job! That means that while the changes that you are making seem huge to you, it may take others a while to notice.

It’s like going on a diet. The first five pounds may take a ton of effort and a complete life change to lose, but someone who sees you every day probably wouldn’t notice the difference. It’s not because they don’t care, or aren’t supportive, it’s because most of us are, well, somewhat caught up in our own lives. 

Sometimes if you want to get support or credit for the changes that you are making it’s important to let people know what you’re working on. You’re going to have to openly share with people that you’ve had an epiphany and decided to make a change. You may also have to accept that people (like your boss or co-workers) may be skeptical when you tell them you’ve turned over a new leaf. After all, they’ve become accustomed to the “old you," so you’re going to have to prove that you mean business. The good news is that once you’ve declared your new working goals, people will begin to pay attention and you’ll get both the credit and support that you’ll need to succeed. 

A word of caution, however: declaring your intentions is a great idea, but can really backfire if you don’t stick to your word. If you aren’t truly committed to changing the way you work, you should probably keep it to yourself and start looking for something you could commit to. While an employee who declares and produces a turnaround in behavior will be celebrated and fast tracked for bigger and better things, an employee who constantly cries wolf about what they are going to do will get a reputation as a liability and a fast pass to the unemployment line.

Prioritize Your Life

This blog is all about making more of your job, but its ultimate purpose is to help you live a more successful and fulfilling life. As you begin to think about the life that you want long term, it’s important to get a firm perspective on your priorities. 

Prioritizing your life is a tricky process, and not for the faint of heart. Every day we are the recipients of a vast amount of media messaging on priorities and these messages can be both confusing and contradictory. Too often our inability to achieve the life of our dreams comes as a direct result of our misunderstanding what our true life priorities really are. 

For example, let’s say Joe tells you that his number one priority is his family and his number two priority is his career. When you take a look at Joe’s life, however, you see that he’s working 80 hours a week trying to become partner in his law firm and doesn’t even make it home at night before his kids are in bed. 

Given this scenario, it’s possible that Joe isn’t being honest with himself about his priorities. If he’s making good money at his job, and time with his family is what he really wants, then the best decision might be to give up on becoming a partner in his firm. Perhaps Joe is reacting to what he’s always heard or been taught: that family should come first. Perhaps Joe cannot be truly happy unless he is successful on the job. In this case, Joe would need to seriously rework his priorities. 

On the flip side, maybe Joe has determined that the best thing for his family is for his wife to be able to stay at home and for his kids to attend a private school. Perhaps in this case Joe’s rigorous commitment to his job is actually the way he is putting his family first. In this scenario, Joe is actually very clear about his priorities and should continue on his path regardless of how it may look from the outside. 

The key to prioritizing your life is to figure out not only what is most important to you, but then to tie that priority to all of the goals that will help you achieve it. In Joe’s case, the priority may have been his family, but it was a work goal that provided the path to success. The complex relationship between goals and priorities is one of the factors that makes it so important to think through your future in a logical step-by-step fashion. 

To begin getting a grip on your priorities in life, try the following exercise:

 

1. Rank the following categories in order of most important to least important in your life: Family, Career, Financial Success/Lifestyle Level, Spirituality, Freedom. It may be difficult at first, but you must not have any of the categories tied in importance.

2. Write down a few goals that would represent significant progress in the category that you picked as the most important, write. For example, if Career was your number one priority, you might make it a goal to get an advanced degree, or join a networking group. Come up with as many goals as possible with which you could judge your success.

3. Set aside priorities marked lower on the list. They will need to take a back seat until you’ve made significant headway in your top priority areas.

4. List current activities that you spend time on which are in conflict to making progress in your highest priority area. Make a commitment to phase at least one these activities out immediately.

5. Review your priorities, goals, and “phase out” activities and ask yourself if taking these steps would make you more satisfied with your life. You may find that the answer is no, a strong indicator that you have your priorities out of order. If this is the case, begin the exercise again until you find a balance and an order that makes you excited and hopeful for what the future could bring.

 

This exercise alone will not revolutionize your life. It is just a very small step towards achieving your goals. However, the more time you spend really getting to know yourself, the more your ability to create the life of your dreams will grow.

Don't Get Distracted from Your Goals

There are a ton of people in this world who have the passion and skill set to become truly successful, but most of them never make it to the finish line. What is it that keeps people with so much potential from becoming highly successful?

Over the course of my career, I have often asked people, “What do you think you need to really achieve your goals?”

Without a doubt, the most frequent response is “I need more time.” 

This answer makes sense when you consider the frenetic pace of the world we live in. Unfortunately, the answer is also completely untrue. For the overwhelming majority of us, there is plenty of time available in our lives. We’ve just never learned to use our time to our advantage. 

The average American worker spends more that 45 hours a week at their workplace. If you looked even deeper, you would find that those who work more than 55 hours per week earn nearly 15% more than those who work “normal” work weeks.  Though we reward those who work longer with bigger paychecks, I believe most Americans spend altogether too much time at their workplace. 

You might be wondering how I can claim in one paragraph that people do not need more time and then in the next paragraph claim that people spend too much time at work. The answer lies in a simple distinction: while I believe that Americans tend to be at work too much, I also believe that most work too little! So what does that mean? Let me tell you. 

One of the awful side effects of the fast-paced world that we live in is the sheer volume of distractions that are available to us at any given moment. In fact, some of you are probably reading this website right now while you’re supposed to be working. If the average American worker was to add up all of the time they spend at work chatting, web surfing (for non work related items), placing personal calls, taking snack or smoke or bathroom breaks, playing games or generally just sitting at their desk trying to decide what to do next they would find that these activities take up a majority of their day. 

I tell my employees all the time that I’d be happy to have them show up for only six hours a day, providing they worked for five of them. The truth is that with all of the distractions around us due to technology – all of the text messages, junk emails and sales calls – we’re no longer fitting distractions in between work, we’re fitting work in between distractions. 

If you really want to take your productivity and your career to the next level, your real goal should be to become a master of time management. Think about it this way: you’re probably at work more hours in the week than you spend awake with your loved ones or doing the things you like most. Why squander that time? Why not make the absolute most of your time on the job?

Once you become a master of time management, it will likely help you to spend less time at the office, earn more or maybe even both, which will result in more quality time doing what you want to with your life.

It may sound like a simple solution, but the fact remains that any worker who can accomplish more than their peers in the same amount of time will stand out from the crowd and will almost always be guaranteed the next raise or promotion. 

Learning to push past the distractions is tougher than it sounds. You’ll have to slowly relearn how to maximize your potential each day, and many times you’ll lose in the battle against distraction.  

In future posts, we will spend some time looking at strategies to master time management, and to start getting more out of the hours we’re given. After all, once you can learn to make more of our job, you’ll be able to do more with your life as well.

Get Your Creative Engine Running

When it comes to setting long-term goals for our lives, many of us struggle with where to begin. We live in a fast paced and highly pressurized world, so it’s easy to get through life without much thought about the future. It comes as no surprise that in a country where many people have unstable jobs or are living paycheck to paycheck that many of us forget to take the time to think about the next 20 years. Sometimes all we can focus on is making it to next week!

 

With that in mind, it is understandable that when starting the process of life-planning and goal setting, getting the ball rolling isn’t easy. It’s like learning a whole new way of thinking after years of just living day to day, and just like anything else that you try for the first time, your first shot at setting life goals will probably not be up to your standards. Be prepared to give it a couple of attempts.

 

The following exercise will not only help you start thinking creatively about your future, but is also a good emotional primer for someone beginning to set goals.

 

Your top 100

 

1. Write down a list of as many things that you want to do, see or achieve in your lifetime as you can think of, with the goal of listing 100 or more. If coming up with 100 ideas is difficult for you, that should be a good indicator that you haven’t been spending much time thinking about your future. To make things simpler, try coming up with categories first to get your creative juices flowing. Think of broad topics like “life achievements," “Travel," “One of a Kind Experiences” and then start filling in your wish list.
2. Once you’ve come up with your wish list, pare it down to the 100 that are your highest priority. You’ll find it’s easier to think about long term goals if you think of them in tiny single item increments. Instead of the daunting task of defining exactly what you want your future life to consist of, you now have some basic building blocks.
3. Now take some time to go through and count how many of the items on your list you have taken any steps towards in the last 30 days. Chances are that you’ll be shocked at how few of your dreams you will have worked on. These may be the top 100 things you’d like to do in your life, but just like anything else when they’re out of sight they’re out of mind.
4. Don’t make any commitments to achieving these goals. In fact, wait for a few weeks don’t even look at the list again. This step may sound crazy, but right now you are too new to the goal setting process to start any action. Have you ever started a diet or an exercise program only to give up in a matter of weeks?  It’s probably because you weren’t mentally ready for the change. Goals are tricky, and if we work on accomplishing them before we’ve gotten our minds in the right place we’re guaranteed to fail.
5. Return to your list 30 days later. Read through your top 100 again and make any changes or additions to your goals. Go through the list again to see how many of the goals you’ve taken steps towards in the 30 days since you wrote them. No matter how small the step (it could be reading an article, saving $25 or researching a trip), highlight the goal that you made progress on. You’ll be shocked how many of your goals you’ve started working on without even doing it intentionally. What has happened is that you’ve began conditioning your brain to think about more than just the day to day and naturally you will begin to make choices for progress. Now you’re ready to start taking conscious action.

This exercise is usually an eye-opener for novice goal-setters, but just the kind of energizer you’ll need to start taking control of your future. By now you’re ready to start planning your life goals more cohesively and it’s time to design a “picture” of what your life will look like when you’ve finally arrived.

Stay tuned for more info on building your plan...

Everybody Needs Goals

Have you ever thought about what your dream life would be like? I’m not talking about visions of yachts, and piles of cold hard cash. I'm talking about a very thorough, personalized vision of the life you hope to live one day?

Henry Thoreau once said: "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
 

It seems crazy to think that something as simple to do as thinking about, clarifying and even writing down your life goals could have such a dramatic outcome on your chances for success, but it’s true.

Think about it this way: let’s say you wanted to take a trip to Miami, but you just hopped in a car and started driving randomly. The chances are pretty slim that you’d end up in your desired destination, right? To get to Miami, you’d need to plan and you’d need directions. Goals are nothing more than the directions for the destination of your life.
 

Over the next few weeks this blog will highlight some specific strategies for starting the goal setting process, and some tactics to ensure that you stay on course. In the meantime, start thinking about what it is you really want in life. Stay away from pipe dreams and fantasies and instead focus on what it would really take for you to be truly happy. What would that life look like? What did Thoreau's vision of Walden enable him to discover there? If you can dream it, visualize it, and plan for it, then you truly can achieve it.

 
Once you figure our where you’re heading, we can start to figure what roads you’ll need to take to reach your destination: the life of your dreams. Once your goals and your plans are in place, then and only then can you begin the ride.