July 2007 Newsletter
Success! Summer is a funny old season, all year we look forward to our holiday but when we get back instead of feeling full of beans, sun kissed and refreshed we can feel tired, jaded and dismayed at the thought of returning to the same old job. What’s the point in working hard and being good at your job when nobody notices you anyway?
We’re here to help you find the energy and focus that’s missing. Stick to your goals and you’ll achieve the fulfillment you crave. So, this month’s we are taking a look at success at work, how to raise your value and visibility and finding the time to do it.
Here’s how –
Raise your value and visibility.
You know you are hardworking, forward thinking and pretty darned good at what you do. Don't get taken for granted. Learn how to raise your value and visibility.
You walk into the office, early as usual, sit at your desk and start work. You know you are hardworking, productive, forward thinking, pretty darned good at what you do. In fact your boss is lost without you. So why is it that you tend to get taken for granted. Sounds like you need to raise your value and your visibility. You need the “V” factor”.
So what is the ‘V’ factor. When it comes to being taken as a serious player, factors other than performance come to the fore. That’s not to say you can get away with poor performance – that would be career suicide. The ‘V’ factor is about valuing yourself and raising your visibility – being noticed for the right things by the people who have influence over your career.
The natural response to this is often “But I don’t like to boast – and I shouldn’t have to. Isn’t it enough to do a good job?” First of all, raising your visibility is not about boasting. It is about building your own brand as a competent professional. Secondly, it’s all very well doing a good job – but the right people need to know that you’re doing a good job. The question then is, how do you inject the ‘V’ factor in a way that fits in with your own personality?
Jacqui Dove, one of our training experts, has the following advice to help you raise your value and your visibility:
Step 1 – Identify the key stakeholders in your career
Your stakeholders will be those who have the power to make decisions about you or influence the decision makers. Stakeholders also include those who could potentially put a block on your career. List them all. Think further than your immediate boss – what about colleagues, people in other departments that you work with, customers etc. Think about you as a major stakeholder. Where do you act as a blocker?
Step 2 – Talk yourself smart
Do you say things like, “I’m useless at …” or, “I’m stupid”? People remember what you tell them about yourself. And what’s more, your own confidence is affected by the messages you give yourself.
Send out positive messages. For example, “I’ve not had much exposure to budgets so far, but I’m keen to have a go.” “I’ve made a mistake and I’ve learned from it.”
Step 3 – Know your worth
What are you good at? Get out a piece of paper and write a list. Can’t come up with more than five? Then do the following – it’s a real confidence booster! Ask a range of people – colleagues, friends, parents, significant others – people whose opinions you rate - to tell you what they value about you. What they come up with will often amaze you. Things about yourself that you take for granted are often what other people appreciate. Remember, these are people whose opinions you value – believe them!
Step 4 – Speak their language
How do your stakeholders influence other people? What drives them? Is it costs and the bottom line, or is it efficiency, or saving time, or how it affects other people? What words and phrases do they use? You probably use these quite naturally when your boss asks you to draft a letter from them. You know the terminology and the favourite phrases they use and, when your boss reads the letter, it really is as if they had written it themselves. During a conversation, the words people emphasise are usually the ones that are important to them. Listen out for them and use them in your conversations with them. They are more likely to hear what you are saying.
Step 5 – Get yourself noticed
Think of yourself as a brand. Get known and noticed by more people. So go ahead, volunteer for those high profile tasks like managing projects, attending meetings, organising events, making presentations. Show how business focused you are. Consider how systems and processes can be improved and draw up a proposal with a cost/benefit analysis. Read work related publications and quality newspapers so that you are up-to-date with new trends in your sector and are able to contribute in meetings and discussions.
Quick trick
Imagine you are a client or a colleague who doesn’t know you and you are looking at yourself for the first time. In your mind’s eye, run a movie of you in your normal work setting. What do you see? What are you doing? What are you saying? What do you feel when you look at you? What would be your first impression of you? What advice would you give yourself if you wanted to become even more successful in your job?
And, finally …
Let’s up the stakes. What else would you be doing if you were acting as if you really valued yourself?
Our plan for becoming a success at work.
Practical tips on how to stay focused and become more successful wherever you work.
So what is success? – Doing what you’ve said you’ll do? Fulfilling all your goals? Making loads of money? Balancing work and home?
To be clear on what success is and what it means to you is the first step to getting there.
Archie Mundegar you:unlimited’s MD says:
“Success means different things to different people but essentially it’s all about goals and reaching them is the key to success and that in turn is the key to happiness. Career success is measuring your effectiveness against the goals and objectives you've set. But doing what you’ve said you’ll do is harder than you think which is why focus is so important - directing your attention to the tasks in hand and keeping it there”
Here we share our top ten practical tips to help you focus and achieve success wherever you work.
1. What are you doing here?
It may sound simple and it may be something you already know but find out what you are supposed to be doing? Why does your role matter? How does it fit into the bigger organizational picture? What are the organizational goals? What results do you need to achieve to help the business to be successful? An understanding of the organizational goals and objectives and your own goals and how they fit together will help you focus on the important tasks and be better able to achieve the results that matter.
2. Are you doing what you like and what best suits your skill set?
Think about what you really want out of your role and your career and what your real ambitions are. Remember success means different things to different people so be true to yourself and measure your own achievements by what’s important to you.
3. Network, network, network
Don’t be nervous about keeping in touch with others. Networking doesn’t need to be big and scary. It can be as simple as making a regular plan to stay in touch with employees at the same level in your organisation or tracking down your peers in other organizations and swapping ideas and experience, you never know what great ideas you’ll get.
4. List, prioritise and do
Focus on the tasks that really matter and that are going to make the biggest difference to you and the organization. Try to stay focused and be aware of your distractions. A simple “to do” list can be powerful and effective and simply writing things down can reduce stress by up to 25%. Also, learn to say “no”. This can be tough for some people but learning to say “no” to the right requests means you will have more precious time left to focus on the tasks that really matter.
5. Raise your value and visibility
We’ve already explored this is some depth in this month’s useful stuff, but it’s worth repeating here. Remember if you only do 5 things make them these – 1. Know and value your unique selling points 2. Consciously market yourself 3. Upgrade your skills and knowledge 4. Make a business case for requests and 5. Volunteer for high profile projects and tasks.
6. Support others
This means everyone, the boss, your peers and your team. Bring managers solutions not problems and if your job involves management, support your team, give them credit where credit is due and take responsibility when things do go wrong. It’ll earn you respect.
7. Helicopter - Act like an outsider
Imagine you are a client or a colleague who doesn’t know you and you are looking at yourself for the first time. In your mind’s eye, run a movie of you in your normal work setting. What do you see? What are you doing? What are you saying? What do you feel when you look at yourself? What would be your first impression of you? What advice would you give yourself if you wanted to become even more successful in your job? Take this imaginary advice and act on it.
8. Be prepared and be ready to embrace change
Plan for every eventuality and think of alternatives – what is your plan if the worst happened tomorrow? Change can bring positives and keeping an open mind and welcoming change can only help you to progress.
“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery”. Harold Wilson.
9. Be upbeat and positive during the hard times
Highly successful people tend to be optimists. Everyone prefers to be around and be associated with the positive. And when things do go wrong ask yourself what you have learnt. Think about what you will do differently and how this will make you stronger. In any difficult situation think of the best possible outcome and strive to achieve it.
10. Be true to yourself and be nice to others
Be aware of what makes you tick. You know when you are at your most energized in a day and when you’re not. Choose appropriate things to do at these times to make the most of your natural highs. Remember to balance your life. Make sure it’s not all work, work, work. You need a balance of family, friends and interests too.
And finally, be nice to everyone around you, you never know, that receptionist you blanked on the way in could be the CEO one day!
If you would like to talk about people development training or leadership training contact john @you-unltd.co.uk or call: him on +44(0) 20 3202 0001.
Good luck!
Making Time. Here's one we made earlier.
Andy Davies shows Altius, the Independent Business Intelligence consultants, the art of effective time management.
Recently one of our training experts Andy Davies visited Altius Consulting to help make the most of the time available to the business both professionally and personally.
Altius is one of the UK’s leading and fastest growing independent Business Intelligence consulting companies. With over 14 years of experience, expansion has been rapid. The business started out with a handful of consultants and now has a team of 40. All consultants have high pressure roles with large demands on their time and the nature of their roles means they don’t spend much of this limited time together.
Team focus is extremely important. Everyone at Altius has a training and development plan that is reviewed and set every six months. Each year MD, John Gateley, arranges for the consultants to spend a couple of days together to network and team build. This year we supported Altius’ training and development programme by delivering our Time Management Training as well as our Stress Management Training during their annual event.
What did we do?
Our time management workshop highlights that time really is the most valuable commodity we have. The more self aware you are about how you approach tasks and activities, the better use you can make of your time both professionally and personally. The workshop is designed to give each participant an individual focus so they can better plan for the future.
The workshop provides tips and guidance but primarily aims to shake up participants’ thinking by challenging them to ask themselves – am I wasting my time? Making learning real can involve a bit of provocation.
How did we do it?
Are you wasting your time?
We kick-started the session by inviting participants to think about areas of their lives where they would like more control over how they spend their time, and to think about the level of satisfaction they have with the time committed to each area. We then asked participants to think about all the tasks currently on their to-do list.
Your focus of attention
This part of the workshop aims to really focus participants’ attention on the issues that are important professionally by looking at strategy and goals at departmental and at team level, any objectives that were set at their last appraisal, the main responsibilities of their role and the projects and assignments they are currently working on.
The High Performance Triangle
The high performance triangle examines the link between high performance and tasks which are enjoyable and those which are challenging and involve an element of learning.
Getting the balance right
Next we looked at which of their responsibilities and projects have the biggest impact, which have the greatest potential to advance career/main goals in life and, if time was sliced in half, what would they really focus on? What are the real priorities and how do these relate to the tasks on their to-do list?
My Experience – poor time management, excellent time management
This part of the workshop challenges participants to think about examples of when their time management was both poor and excellent and what impact this had on them and the people they work with.
Time robbers and attitudes to planning
Everyone is distracted by something and we often distract ourselves. We asked - What is it that distracts you? And from the other perspective, what energises you? What is your ideal working environment for achieving results? Next, we examined attitudes to planning – are you more organised or more spontaneous? What’s important about how you organise your life and what impact does the way you organise your life have on those you work with?
Saying “No”
Saying “no” positively is an art and can be very challenging for some, but learning to say “no” and giving yourself the permission to do so can really save you time and help you to deal with your priority tasks so you are not distracted by other people’s agendas.
What I choose to spend my time on and making well formed choices
Next we revisited the priorities list compiled at the beginning of the session and noted what had changed as a result of applying the tools and techniques delivered in the workshop. We then looked at who else these changes might affect and if these changes would be acceptable to them. What resources are needed to maintain the changes? Who will help? And how will investment in this new time management pay off?
Proven tactics and strategies of excellent time managers
At this stage we shared our 10 point check list of the proven tactics and strategies of excellent time managers. We already revealed these to you back in our April communication.
Buddies
Finally and as with all our workshops we encouraged attendees to partner with a “buddy” who they arrange to meet 4 weeks after the workshop. Setting up this simple support structure with a pre arranged meeting time to ask questions and swap experiences promotes action and helps to embed the learning. Check out our typical training programme format.
If you would like to talk about time management training contact john@you-unltd.co.uk or call: him on +44(0) 20 3202 0001.
And finally ... get noticed and rewarded.
Our do's and don'ts on how to get noticed, stay noticed and raise your value.
Here we regularly reveal some of our top tips for better performance at work.
This month we’ve shared our do’s and don’ts to help you raise your value and your visibility at work.
Do’s and Don’ts
Do find a mentor. Take your career as seriously as the Chief Executive. Get the support you need
Do show an interest in the business and enthuse about what you do. The fact is people like being around people who are positive and steer clear of the moaners
Do see people face to face instead of being a faceless email junky
Don’t assume your boss is too busy to discuss your career. If you are happy in your job and you have a positive profile in the organisation it reflects well on your boss too
Don’t make assumptions about what you can/can’t do. Remember the story of the goldfish in a tank. A glass panel was put down the centre and the fish soon learned not to bump into it and steered well clear. When the glass panel was taken away, the fish assumed it was still there and didn’t venture to the other side, even though there was nothing now to prevent them from doing so
Don’t say “It was nothing” when someone tells you that you’ve done a good job. Simply thank them.
Until next month,
You:unlimited
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