Career Savvy: Keeping & Transforming Your Job

By Denise Kalm

Career Savvy gives you the tools you need to regain control of your career and keep your job longer in hard times. This gives you the time to plan the steps you need to take to transform your job from the one you were hired for into the one you will love. If you are ready to take a serious look at your career-limiting behaviors and attitudes and how you can change your mode of interaction to one that serves you better, this book is for you. You don’t have to change who you are; you simply need to take a good look at how you are perceived by others every day if you want to continue where you are. And if you are ready for a career change, this book will make it easier to find the job you were meant to do at the intersection of your passion and ability.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Denise Kalm
• Release date: Sep 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301799855

Denise Kalm

Denise P. Kalm is a Board-Certified Coach and President of DPK Coaching offering personalized transition coaching services and workshops. Recently, much of her practice has been around career management. Years of experience in the IT and scientific communities helps her engage with clients working in those areas. She is also the Chief Innovator for Kalm Kreative, Inc., offering marketing, speaking, writing and editing services. Denise is the author of the novel, Lifestorm. She is married and lives with her husband and house rabbit in Walnut Creek, CA.

Book preview

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Career Savvy is organized around building your skills so you’ll thrive as a career-savvy individual. Each chapter builds towards that goal and is designed to develop skills or solve problems.

This book has been divided into two major sections: Keeping Your Job and Transforming Your Job. These areas include building blocks to career success in a world where many of the rules our parents used to survive in the corporate world no longer apply. Within the first section, there are three subsections designed to help you work on personal challenges, interact better with others and manage technology.

For some, there may be chapters highlighting areas of strength for you. Feel free to browse them quickly. If you have a specific goal or issue, you may prefer to first read those chapters that seem to be most relevant to you. Others may opt to read it as written. Try out something new. You may find that what got you where you are now may not be what you need to get you where you want to go. If you want to be able to transform your job into one you can have passion for, you need to be able to keep it long enough to have that chance. Both parts work to help you achieve your goals.

INTRODUCTION

When I started my coaching business in 2005, my first clients wanted me to help them find their next job. Two had been laid off and one man just wanted something better. He just wasn’t sure what something better would look like. I was curious, though confused. I had explained to them what coaching was all about. I wasn’t a headhunter nor was I a career counselor. They still wanted to proceed. I wondered - what else could be going on here?

As our coaching work developed, I learned a great deal from my clients about the challenges of a changing work world. I had made some of the very same assumptions as my clients had made. We relied on an old mindset about the way things worked. Yet, at the same time, I had begun changing my work behavior as I started to realize that expectations and needs had evolved. At first, I thought it was just this manager and just this company. My clients taught me that the changes were organic and would likely impact many white-collar professionals in the coming days. I noticed that in the left-brain world of IT, right-brain skills such as communication, empathy and synthesis were increasingly valued. But this was only the beginning. I began to wonder how many of my long-cherished assumptions would need to be abandoned to survive.

Working with clients to develop skills to survive long enough to explore their future, I noticed a number of common challenges. I wrote this book to share the learning from the journey my clients and I had taken. Since not everyone will engage a coach, I believe that you can coach yourself to a better today and tomorrow.

Coaching begins with powerful questions. Here are a few to consider. How would you answer them?

* Do you own your job or does your job own you?

* Have you created a carefully crafted career map with a plan for achieving your goals?

* Are you aware of how you are perceived by colleagues, subordinates, and senior and middle management?

* Do you regularly assess your standing in the company, checking it out with peers and managers?

For too many of us, the pressures of an increasing workload, coupled by a desire to preserve some work-life balance, have led them to neglect the important area of career management. Nothing could be more critical in a world where job security is as ephemeral as a wisp of smoke.

Work hard, do your best every day and keep learning; these were the ingredients for survival in the workplace for many decades. While they still matter, they’re no longer the only criteria on which you’re judged. Hiring, promotion and layoff decisions are made at levels where individual performance may not be well understood, so individual contributors may find themselves working long hours, sure that they have given their all and confident that management knows their value. They may be wrong. Too often, senior management doesn’t know, and they rely on your manager to define your value. Does your manager know how good you are?

Career management is an increasingly critical concern, one that has been spawned by the loss of employment-for-life jobs as well as the increased desire for career fulfillment. Whether your goal is simply to ensure a continued paycheck or if you aspire to a promotion or even a different kind of career, taking charge of your own career management will ensure that you can achieve your goals, whatever they may be. And in these difficult economic times, failure to manage your career could lead to long periods of unemployment or underemployment.

Elise[1], an up-and-coming marketing manager, believed she was doing a great job. Her team had been recognized with numerous company awards. She could do her job in her sleep, and that was the problem. While she still enjoyed it when she was engaged in a big project, she really wanted to know if there wasn’t something better that she could do that would be more interesting more of the time. Elise believed she had time to figure it out - her manager would give her some good career advice at her next performance review.

Elise had confidence that everyone recognized her talents and contributions. As another round of layoffs neared, she felt little concern. I’m great at what I do. I should be safe, she told herself. And then, she got the call. Elise, as of today, your services are no longer needed at the ABC Corporation. I want you to know that this decision wasn’t based on performance. Elise was in shock. What was the basis? How had she been chosen? She thought she had done everything right, sacrificing nights and weekends to her career. She had under-promised and over-delivered (and had the notes from colleagues to support it). Still, she was now unemployed.

Too many of us find ourselves in this position, surprised to be laid off when we felt we were stars. Why didn’t management see our value?

In a good job market, Elise would most likely find a job quickly. On paper, her skills and experience should stand her in good stead. In a tough market, this isn’t enough. We want control over our careers and our destiny, but unless we understand the changes and adapt ourselves, we cede that control. Human Resources won’t give you any information as to how they selected who they keep. If you want to retain your current job and be able to transform it into one you love, you will want to have a better way to judge your own behavior and how it’s viewed by others. You also need to learn to promote yourself.

The world has moved on. If you’re planning to be in the workforce for the foreseeable future, you will need to learn how the world works now. Learn how to take charge of your career and achieve your goals. In the end, you will find that jumping off the treadmill into the world of the savvy will help you design a work life that you love, rather than one to be endured. What would that be worth to you?

"My life didn't please me, so I created my life."

Coco Chanel

KEEPING YOUR JOB

WORKING ON YOURSELF

1 - CREATING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

Tom Peters

What is a personal brand? Your personal brand is the words people choose to describe you. You can choose to create your brand and make it your personal statement by understanding how brands work. We all know what brands are in terms of products and services, such as the familiar, strong brands of Apple, Starbucks or Coke. A personal brand is very similar; it represents what people think of when they hear your name. The way you present yourself is a combination of appearance, speaking style and body language. A personal brand may originate from your personality, but it isn’t simply who you are. It’s how you’re viewed. Many people find that they show up differently (have a different brand) at work than they do at home. You have a good deal of control over it, if you recognize the opportunity.

In today’s competitive workplace, branding yourself is critical to keeping the job you want or obtaining the new one you desire. Your default behavior tends to rely on habits and patterns you have developed over the years. If it isn’t serving you, it’s time to look at what behaviors may be holding you back. Behaviors that served you when you were younger or in a different role may no longer serve you in achieving your goals. You can choose how you want to be viewed, and your brand can be different for different situations or professions.

Let’s look at two branded individuals: Madonna and Martha Stewart.

Madonna is a gifted entertainer who has transformed her youthful sex goddess image into that of a successful entrepreneur and mother. Her concerts still have an edge, but increasingly, people respect her for how she has managed her image and her empire. To broaden her appeal, she created a business-mom persona of Madge, a secondary brand. She inspires many women to believe that they too can define who they want to be.

Martha Stewart is the quintessential mistress of home-making; she takes it to the level that Julia Child took cooking. She is hard-driving, a consummate do-it-yourselfer; to "do a Martha" means making it from scratch. She is tough, demanding and very aggressive. She has built a successful empire from nothing and is a successful businesswoman. The problem is that her personality - how she shows up - and her dishonesty turned people off. And that makes her a target, rather than an inspiration.

Scott didn’t know about branding. As he dreamed of moving into management, he continued to hone and advertise his prodigious technical skills, which had gotten him this far. Every time a particular challenge arose in the technical arena, Scott was asked to take on that task. When management jobs were posted, Scott was interviewed, but lost out to people he felt were less worthy. What the management team saw was a superb technician; they did not see evidence of the people skills he needed to manage others, nor did his approach to his job seem to demonstrate true interest in leaving the tech-world behind, despite his stated objective. His geek flag was flying and, as such, people preferred to leave him where he could continue to add so much value to the organization. He felt confidence in those abilities, but the focus he placed on them made it difficult to see that there was so much more to him. He had been pigeon-holed by his brand.

Is your brand what you want it to be? It’s important to know where you are first, then to decide what you want your brand to be.

Exercise: Ask a few colleagues and friends to tell you what they would say to an employer if asked to describe you. Write down the key points. Wait at least one day to get some distance and then review the points. If you didn’t know the person described, what role in the organization would you place him in? Is this where you want to be? Is this who you want to be?

How do you create the best brand for yourself? There are many possibilities and methods for formulating your brand. They all start with how you need to be seen to be successful in your career. Consider the corporate brand where you work. What are the cultural rules demonstrated by the most successful people above you? Your brand must support and align with your company. Consider what you are saying with your attire, your approach to running a meeting and the skills you have chosen to develop.

You have the opportunity to define your brand when you understand how it’s created. Your brand is a synthesis of the following five elements:

* How you show up [timeliness, dress, personal hygiene, attitude]

* How you do your job [thoroughly, on-time, within budget]

* What skills you offer [technical, management, organizational]

* How you communicate [oral and written communication]

* What makes you special or unique [differentiation].

What is your work style? Are you the go-to person for technical answers? Are you known for top-notch time management, achieving your goals when you say you will? Is the time pressure induced by procrastination a disaster or a way to inspire your best work? Understand what you are known for. Determine the kinds of work people rely on you to do. If your work style keeps you in flow[2] and you’re achieving the recognition you want, this part of your brand is working for you; what you want to be is how you are seen.

What do you offer an employer? What we offer is no longer limited to highlights noted on our resumes. Companies are beginning to value what was previously dismissed as the soft or right brain skills. Do you manage projects superbly? Or are you valued for your agility in learning and getting up to speed fast? Your ability to work as part of a team, to respond quickly and robustly to change and to align with corporate goals may be more important to your longevity than your left brain skills.

You also need to look at the difference between what you value in yourself and what is getting recognized. What is the one skill or ability you personally value for which you aren’t getting credit? Are there gaps between what you would like to offer and what management wants you to do?

Communication skills, both written and verbal, are very important. In our instant message (IM) and email world, people aren’t always aware of the image they present in these short messages. It’s all a part of how you’re viewed, so text accordingly. While learning to craft your brand, be careful when you’re engaging in casual conversations. It’s too easy to be overheard.

Your distinctive competence - what sets you apart - is an important element in your brand. We all have special gifts. Too often, in an attempt to fit into the corporate world, we dismiss or downplay them. Or we don’t realize the importance of identifying and celebrating these skills. You might be the best at explaining complex technical concepts to business people, or one of the few who can write clear, short communications across your company. Perhaps you’re gifted at arbitration - the one person who can achieve a win-win