Building Successful Careers

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...