Building Successful Careers

Many would say, what kind of stupid question! 2009 has been the designated dooming year without any possible hope. Is it true? 2009 is a pure 24k golden year if your eyes are focused on opportunities. It is full of opportunities over-shadowed by bad news. Their are opportunities in under-valued equities, IP's and new business needs in your own company as well as in your clients' companies. The coming three to nine months are a golden time to re-position yourself, from equity positions to skill sets, and to network with your clients. Feel their pain. Use your new services and repackaged products to help them ease the pain, to position their business in a more profitable arena. If you use most of your time just to stress out and complain, the sky will fall on you and you will be doomed in 2009. If you use most of your time to strategize, plan and execute your new plan, you will come out as a winner at the end of 2009 and claim the glittering prize of a golden year 2009.

Lots of people make them and then break them within a couple of months of the new year. Make this the year you are going to do something positive for yourself. Take charge of your life and your career. Don’t sit around and feel sorry for yourself because everyone has more control of your life than you do. Take the bull by the horns (take charge.) What things can you change about your life that would make you happier? Remember only you can change yourself…and even you cannot change others. Sit down and make a list…a short list of doable things you want to change. Be specific. For example: I will read one self-help book by February 15. I will add at least one new person to my personal network each month. I will read Elizabeth and Pat’s blog: leadershipmentorgroup.blogspot.com once a week and respond at least once every two months. Then take the time to follow-up on yourself. Success breeds success. When you start to see results, you will add other doable resolutions to your

Aim your goals high. Often this phrase is used to refer to someone who chooses a mentor who is rising in an organization (a rising star, someone who is advancing in an organization) and they are promoted to higher jobs as their mentor is promoted. ---Credited to Emerson

The Articulate Executive: Learn to Look, Act, and Sound Like a Leader By TooGood

Networking can happen anywhere, sporting events, holiday programs, children's parties and dances. December is always a golden time for networking. Send cards to your family and friends updating them on your life. Attend fund raising events and holiday parties both public and private. Talk to people, show your genuine interest in their lives, ask about their holiday plans, their accomplishments, their children's accomplishments. You will be surprised what they share with you, perhaps unveiling opportunities that might be mutually beneficial. Holiday time is also a perfect time to say thank you to all the people who helped you, but never received your appreciation in writing. Write a note or card and make your appreciation known! After the party, link to your new friends, send them follow-up emails and invitations to your private network. Schedule follow-up events such as lunches. Remember our 52 lunch networking tips? (Have lunch each week with a person you either nev

When you forward interesting articles to your friends or colleagues, instead of FYI, add a sentence to let others know your opinions.

These literally refer to old-time wood burning cooking stoves. Stoves were used for heat as well as preparing food so they were always in use. When the cook was cooking, food was put on the front burner where she could watch it. The back burner was for things to be served or dealt with later. For example, the cook would have a pot of soup on the back burner and would add bits and pieces of food over a long period of time. It may cook for days. The soup would eventually be served to the family. So when you put something on the back burner in the business world, you delay making a decision or working on it until later. When the project hits the front burner, it has become important enough to work on now.

Many managers are not comfortable asking the team to perform basic job duties. We have to remind everyone that we are paid to do our jobs. Managers are paid to manage the workload and set reasonable assignments for team members. Team members are paid to accomplish these tasks. If your team members are not self-starters, it may be necessary to point out what is required of them.

Food terms are often used in clichés. Soups to nuts refers to something served at the beginning of a meal, soup; to something served at the end of the meal, nuts. In the business world we mean this is all encompassing. “Tell me everything from soup to nuts.”

Brushing your teeth in two seconds is quite efficient but not effective.

No one is born with directions. Most leaders usually develop the vision in business, technology, team and organization. Leaders mostly likely are surrounded by an intelligent team, which provides data, opinions and options. What separated the leader from the regular team member is the unique ability to simply the situation, take the risk, identify the direction, validate and recalibrate the direction with his team along the way toward the target.

StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths by Tom Rath This book helps you to understand human strengths, also provides the test to identify your top five strengths.

All languages use clichés and idioms and English is certainly no exception. We will select some clichés you may see and hear in the business world Have a Chip on the Shoulder When one has a chip on his shoulder, it means he is ready to fight. You may want to avoid this situation. Here’s another chip cliché: The Chips are Down Literally in the game of poker it means when you have placed your bet (with your chips), you cannot pull them back and change it. So when the chips are down means things are urgent and you have to deal with them.

A blender has sharp blades, always moves very fast. It spins and forces everything around it into a high speed circular movement; it breaks everything into finite pieces. An engine moves one direction, drives everyone on board to that direction. The question is, are you a blender or an engine to your organization? Are you a sharp leader who drives everyone around you crazy, chops up their ideas and sense of direction? Or are you the engine, who drives your team in one direction and helps them to reach their goals?

Don't just command your people, develop them. Don’t just manage your people, mentor them.

The latest version of the "Did You Know?" video created by Sony for a meeting of their executives in June of this year. Link: http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=x7aVOMrlfkkijQwcLllwk6WjB5JE0zrF

We all see the catastrophic economical meltdown and expect a long winter ahead of us. Many people lost their jobs and many lost hope in rapid career growth in the near future. What should we do? Companies are looking for a winning strategy to survive in this roller coaster business environment. They are revising their business plans and redefining processes. This same strategy applies to all working professionals who run their careers as a business. They should re-evaluate and re-plan their careers, redefine current daily tasks to be more competitive and gain the ability to win when the market turns around. What we do today defines what we become tomorrow. Transformation starts today and carries through each day whenever you decide to do things differently and more strategically. Let's first understand who we are today. Log your activities for a whole week and classify your activities into the following categories: Short term 1) Daily operational short term tasks 2) Temporary assig

1) Do you prepare your questions and suggestions according to the agenda? Yes: 2, No: 0 2) Do you insert your agenda into official meeting agenda? Yes: 1, No: 0 3) Do you talk to host and make sure your items will be discussed during the meeting? Yes: 1, No: 0 4) Do you talk to other stakeholders before the meeting and get their buy-in on your issues? Yes: 1, No: 0 5) Do you ask questions, re-phrase others and summarize during the meeting? Yes: 1, No: 0 If you score <2,>4, you are effective

1) Do you publish your meeting agenda 2+ days before the meeting? No: -1, Yes: 1 2) Do you talk to key stakeholders before the meeting to cover key issues?No: -1, Yes: 1 3) Do you constantly get surprises from the meeting outcome?No: 0, Yes: 1 4) Do you engage each participant during the meeting?No: 0, Yes: 1 5) Do you setup video or telephone conferencing for remote participants?No: 0, Yes: 1 6) Do you engage remote participants by asking for their opinions?No: 0, Yes: 1 7) Do you make long discussions or less important issues offline topics?No: 0, Yes: 1 8) Do you make action items with deadlines and be sure someone agrees to "own" the issue during the meeting? No: -1, Yes: 2 09) Do you send participants the meeting minutes with clear action items within 24 hours? No: -1, Yes: 2 If you score <6, you are not effective If you score 6-9, you are ok host If you score > 9, you are effective

Many of our students complain about not getting enough visibility. We ask, "Are you vocal enough or do you just sit in silence during meetings?" Try this simple test. 1) Do you prepare a question before a meeting? No: 0, Yes: 1 2) Do you prepare a solution or a suggestion to problems to be discussed at the meeting? No: 0, Yes: 1 3) Do you ask questions during the meeting? No: 0, Yes: 1 4) Do you offer to make presentations at the meeting? No: 0, Yes: 2 5) Do you summarize or re-phrase other's points so as to understand what they say? No: 0, Yes: 2 6) Do you offer to write meeting minutes? No: 0, Yes: 1 7) Do you publish your opinions, results and papers? No: 0, Yes: 3 If you score 0-5, you are not vocal enough. If you score 5-8 you are okay, but there is room for improvement. If you score more than 8, you are vocal enough. Action items: 1) Prepare 1-5 questions for your next meeting, ask at least 2 of them. Write the meeting minutes for yourself. 2) Comment on this blog,

To improve your Emotional Quotient (EQ or EI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence ), the ability to identify, assess, and manage your own emotion, other's emotion, or a group's emotion), you must first understand yourself thoroughly. The assumption is that everyone is different. Everyone is motivated differently, reasons differently and reacts differently even to the same event. You must first recognize the differences, accept the differences, work with differences, then appreciate differences and at last value these differences. Only the person who can really utilize human differences at levels above their own can truly and accurately capitalize on the value for their business. How do you internalize human differences? Construct a virtual box assessing your emotions. Then construct a virtual box for each of your peers, your boss, your partners and your clients. Try to understand why you made certain decisions and why others made different decisions. Understand

The question from one of our readers, was asked at a real interview for the first line manager job: You are a manager and there are a few engineers in your group. They are all smart and competitive engineers. One day one engineer comes to you and says he has been working in this area for a long time and he wants to transfer to a different group and try something different. What does it mean? How do you respond? Suppose that the engineer finally left and went to another group. Sooner or later another engineer comes to the manager again and wants to leaves for similar reasons. What should you do? Elizabeth: As the manager of the group, you should always understand your employee's 1, 2, and 5 year goals. Assign them tasks accordingly. If you have a very competitive group, you should ask them to spend 5% -10% of their time investigating new technologies, cross training each other, trying to initiate new projects for the group, and pushing them to re-invent themselves to keep up wit

7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

The first step in building a successful career starts from understanding one important person - you. It is the fundamental and hardest step, because you cannot see yourself externally, but only can get external validation from other people… people you trust, people you do not trust, people you love and even people you hate. It is very hard to get a real view of yourself when you live in an ever changing and biased world. We have to live with that person we see in the mirror everyday. It is human nature to be self-centered and love oneself. Most people are willing to live in a self-filtered fantasy world unconsciously rejecting other people's perspectives in order to protect such a fantasyland in their own minds. However, in some extreme cases, people who have low self-esteem can only see their weaknesses. They are living in a dark critical self- constructed cave in their mind and can hardly see any of their prior successes and strengths. These people must learn to love t