The positive growth turned in by the American economy in the third quarter of this year suggests that maybe, just maybe this Great Recession is now in our rear view mirror.  As it fades away, of course, the tales will begin about what we did during this terrible time.  While recounting those legends is surely important, so too is sharing the insights we’ve acquired from our experience.

Cataclysmic events often alter our perceptions of the world around us.  That was true during the Great Depression, and it will be true as we emerge from this Great Recession, as well.  Some of these new views are opinions about what happened and why, but others are actually lessons that we’ve learned about how best to survive and prosper.  They’re the things we wish we had known before the event occurred because that knowledge would have undoubtedly enabled us to fare better than we did.

I think the sharing of this wisdom is good for us—it’s cathartic to acknowledge that we’ve earned an advanced degree in the school of hard knocks—but it’s even more helpful for our kids and grandkids.  In a very real sense, we are giving them a gift, a roadmap for the future that may help them avoid the dead ends and dangerous potholes they are sure to encounter.

Each of us has our own view of the lessons we should pass along.  For me, the following four insights are among the most important.  They are realizations everyone must have in order to chart a successful and fulfilling career in the 21^st Century world of work.

Seeking job security makes you vulnerable.  In today’s turbulent economy, employers have no idea what will happen tomorrow or the day after.  They may promise you job security, but they can’t deliver it.  So, counting on it is likely to put you out for the count.  A far better objective is career security—the ability to stay employed in a job of your choosing regardless of the condition of any single employer or the economy as a whole.  Unlike job security, career security is a state you create for yourself.  You don’t have to rely on the good will of some employer.  You anticipate the changes in your career—the timing of a move from one boss or organization to another, the refocusing or reskilling that’s necessary to accommodate shifts in your industry or profession—and then you plan and execute those changes so they benefit you.

Recognition is something you give yourself.  Most managers and supervisors mean well, but if you wait for them to recognize your accomplishments at work, you’re likely to be disappointed.  Some have the social skills of a brick and others are too worried about their own security to take care of yours.  That’s why it’s important for you to keep track of your own “career victories.”  Sure, it takes a little effort to maintain a contemporaneous record of what you’ve done and how well you’ve done it, but that account will give you more satisfaction than most managers ever will.  Don’t just write it out, however; also review it regularly.  Take the time to remember what you’ve done and pat yourself on the back when you deserve it or give yourself a little counseling if you’ve let yourself down.

Working tirelessly is a sure way to get tired.  Sadly, many people in today’s world of work find themselves wired up with no place to go.  They’ve learned the hard way that staying continuously in contact with the office doesn’t protect you.  It exhausts you.  We’re all worried about the H1N1 flu becoming a pandemic, but workaholism already is.  If you have any doubt about that, look left and right the next time you’re lying on the beach.  Every other person will be glued to their Blackberry or iPhone checking their email.  The impact of such behavior on both individual performance and wellbeing is already acute and likely to get worse.  In a knowledge-based economy, your worth is measured not by your connectivity, but by your contribution.  And, your contribution suffers when you don’t give your mind and body a chance to rest.

Taking care of your career is the best way to take care of you.  The conventional approach to career self-management has been to get an annual checkup and leave it at that.  Historically, we paid attention to our career just once each year—during our performance appraisal and salary review.  That approach was dangerous then; today, it’s a sure-fire way to induce career cardiac arrest or what most of us call unemployment.  The only safe course in a workplace as turbulent as the one we now have is to develop career fitness the same way you develop physical fitness.  You have to commit yourself to building up the strength, endurance and reach of your career every single day.  Yes, that’s a lot of work, but it’s also a smart investment.  You spend one-third or more of your day in your profession, craft or trade, and you deserve an experience during that time that is every bit as good as the rest of your life.

We have acquired many insights from our experience over the past two years, but these four maxims are the key lessons we have learned.  They are the things we wish we had known so they are now the things we want others to know.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

A lot of us have been unemployed for a very long time. The conventional explanation for this situation is that layoffs have forced more workers to compete for fewer positions. While that’s true, it is not the only reason—nor the most important one—that so many people remain out of work for so long.

The other and primary cause of long term unemployment is a change in employers’ expectations. They are no longer content to hire qualified workers. That’s the reason so many job seekers get no response, no interview, no call back, nada even when their application clearly indicates they meet one hundred percent of an opening’s stated requirements. Employers may say that’s what they’re looking for in a new hire, but in reality, they expect more.

Employers today are battered by turbulence. They face new and escalating competition in both their local and overseas markets. They must satisfy an increasingly cost-conscious consumer who is also becoming more fickle about products and services. And, they are continuously pressured to keep up with the unceasing introduction of new technology and better practices.

To survive let alone prosper in such an unsettled environment, employers need workers who have two traits:
• they must be expert in their profession, craft or trade
and
• they must be committed to maintaining that expertise.
The first trait defines a qualified person. The second indicates they are also a “career activist.”

A career activist is a person who recognizes the fleeting nature of their ability to contribute on-the-job and therefore takes proactive steps to ensure their qualifications are always at the state-of-the-art. Why is that important? Because a qualified person can do a job today, but may and probably will not be able to do so tomorrow. In the unsettled environment of the global economy, every job is constantly in flux, and only a career activist has the capacity to adapt.

How do you become a career activist and, no less important, how do you prove to employers that you have?

Transforming Yourself

Becoming a career activist begins with acceptance. You must acknowledge that the “come as you are” workplace of the 20th Century no longer exists. The turbulence of the 21st Century economy means that nothing is settled any more. In effect, you must get comfortable with the one thing we humans hate most: change. You must be willing to expect it, plan for it and put it to work for you.

Then, you have to back up that acceptance with action. In the 20th Century, you could get away with paying attention to your career once a year—during your annual performance appraisal and salary review. In today’s workplace, you have to work on increasing the strength, endurance and reach of your career every single day. In short, you now go to work to do your job and to do all of the things that will ensure you can continue to do so.

Proving Your Activism to Employers

Once you’ve adopted that kind self-improvement philosophy and made it an integral part of your workday, you will start to develop a record that employers will appreciate. It will demonstrate your ongoing acquisition of skills and knowledge in both your primary field and in ancillary areas that will enable you to use that expertise in a broader range of workplace situations. It will also reflect your ever greater visibility and stature among a continuously expanding network of professional contacts. And, it will underscore your commitment to working on challenging assignments with top flight organizations and high performing peers.

Those are all the hallmarks of a career activist’s record. It is comprehensive in scope and, ironically, it will make you look incomplete. It will portray you as a person who is never satisfied with where you are, but always seeking to be more of what you can be. If you’re in a job search, for example, it will detail a course of instruction or a training program in which you are enrolled by noting the fact on your resume with the term: “ongoing.” That one word is an employer’s proof positive that you are, in fact, a career activist.

The long term unemployment that so many people are enduring today has its roots in the structural problems of the American economy. Its tap root, however, is a significant and permanent shift in what employers expect in their new hires. Unlike in the past, they are no longer content with qualified workers. They want (and need) to employ qualified workers who are also career activists.

Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Most of us go into a job search thinking we may be a little rusty, but confident that, basically, we know what to do. Then you do it, and the galling indifference and humiliating rejection begin. Employers don’t acknowledge your resume submissions, executive search and staffing firms don’t return your calls, and recruiters act as if you are damaged goods. It’s hard not to feel as if you’re a failure.

And yet, you’re not. Let me say that again: You are not a failure. You are not a loser or a deadbeat or a flop. Your belief that you are (or your concern that may be) is based on two misconceptions. You think your career should unfold in a straight line. And, you believe that today’s job market is just like those of the past, only tougher.

Those views are widely held, and they are completely wrong. They may have been correct in the 20th Century, but today, they’re as accurate as a stock broker’s predictions. So when you buy into them, you throw yourself into a well of defeat that leaves you believing that you’ve done something wrong. Or, that you haven’t done something right. Whichever it is, the conclusion you draw is the same: you’ve let yourself and your family down.

It’s a terrible self-indictment, and you don’t deserve it. Let me say that again: You are not a failure. Only you can get rid of that feeling, however, and there’s only one way to do it. You have to clear up those misperceptions. You have to view the job market and the workplace as they actually are. Not as they used to be or you wished they were. Do that, see today’s world of work for what it really is, and you will turn what used to be called failure into what is now genuine success.

Correcting the Misperception of a Straight Line Career

You have probably never thought about it much, but if you’re like most of us in the workforce, you assume that a career will unfold today just as it did in the last century. Your progress in the workplace will trace a straight line. You’ll begin at point A and if you do well, you will move up to point B and from there, you will advance to point C and so on. Ever onward and ever upward.

The image of this traditional kind of movement, of course, was the career ladder. It prescribed one way up and you either kept moving along the rungs or you fell off, got pushed off or retired. The dynamic was Darwinian, but at least you always knew where you stood.

Well, that career ladder is now gone. It’s been tossed out by employers that can no longer support the human resource management infrastructure to manage your career for you (and everyone else). The straight line approach has, as a result, been replaced by the zigzag career. Ever forward, but not necessarily always up.

The image of this new kind of movement is the career jungle gym. As you may recall from your schoolyard days, the jungle gym had two alluring qualities. First, you got to pick your own way forward—there was no teacher and today there is no employer telling you where to go. And second, sometimes you might move straight up, but occasionally you would move from side-to-side and even down and around to get where you were going. There was no discredit, disgrace or dishonor in the path you picked, because (a) everyone got to pick their own way and (b) if you kept your eye on your goal, you would eventually get there. The same is true with your career.

Correcting the Misperception of a Normal Job Market

It would be reassuring, I guess, to believe that today’s job market is just like the ones of yore, only tougher. If that were true, we would at least know the rules of the game. Unfortunately, however, it’s not. The rules have changed, and we must adapt if we want to succeed.

Historically, we had a “come as you are” job market. In other words, the skill set you had in your last job was sufficient to find a new job. All you had to do, therefore, was update your resume, send it out to a bunch of employers, do a little networking around the edges and bitta-bang, bitta-boom, you would land a job that was as good as or better than the one you had before.

Today, the opposite is true. If you are in transition, the skills you had to be effective in your last job are not sufficient to find a new one. If you have any doubt about that, consider this: given a choice between two equally qualified candidates, one who is employed and the other who is in transition, recruiters will select the employed candidate 99.9 percent of the time. Why? Because, whether it’s true or not, they believe the employed person is more capable and therefore more likely to make a valuable contribution to their organization.

How can you overcome such a disadvantage? You have to reinvent yourself even as you are looking for a job. Update your skill set or add a new skill that will enable you to apply what you can already do in a broader set of circumstances. Enroll in an academic or training program or take a course from your professional association, and then, add that fact to your resume. Such a notation demonstrates that (a) you understand the importance of always getting better in today’s workplace and (b) you take personal responsibility for doing so. Those two attributes will help to set you apart in the job market and restart your career.

Looking for a job in the current environment is definitely frustrating and often discouraging. It does not, however, make you a failure. Let me say that again: You are not a failure. What’s happening today is simply proof positive that the rules of the game have changed. If you change with them—if you correct the way you look at the job market—you’ll have what it takes to turn what used to be called failure into the modern definition of success.

Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 Billions of words have been written about job search tools and tactics in this job market of our discontent.  Job board dos and don’ts.  Twitter.  Facebook.  Building a personal brand.  Improving your “findability.”  It’s all good advice, but none of it will work if your career is sick.  To put it in another and admittedly blunter way, don’t bother looking for a job if you have a wimpy career.

You see, that’s what’s different about today’s job market.  Come as you are has been replaced by come as you need to be.  The good old days of searching for employment with stand pat qualifications are gone.  If you’re out of work, your career needs resuscitation.

It doesn’t matter that you got superior ratings on performance appraisals in your last job.  It makes no difference that you have a track record of being loyal, dependable, and hard working.  And, it is totally irrelevant that your employer went out of business, was acquired or for whatever other reason was the cause of your unemployment.

The plain, hard truth is that employers view people in transition as damaged goods.  It’s not fair.  It’s certainly not true.  And it stinks.  But it is reality.  You won’t find many recruiters who will admit it.  And in most cases, they work hard to avoid the appearance of such a bias.  But deep down inside, it’s there.  An everyday event confirms it: when presented with a choice between two equally qualified candidates, one employed and the other not, the offer will almost always go to the person who already has a job.  It’s the job market version of Catch 22.

So, what can you do?

Reinvent yourself.  It doesn’t matter how well educated, trained or senior you are in your field, change your image in the job market.

How?  By fixing your career.  By building up its strength, its fitness.  There are many techniques involved in doing that, but perhaps the most important is pumping up its cardiovascular health.  The heart of your career is your professional expertise, so go back to school.  Right now.  Even as you are looking for a job.

Build Career Fitness

Revitalizing your career in the middle of a job search involves two important steps:

• Step 1: Begin acquiring a new skill or refreshing one you already have.  You might, for example, take a course in a second language at a local community college or attend a new certification program offered by your professional or trade association.  You can choose almost any topic just as long as it will clearly and meaningfully enhance your ability to contribute on-the-job.

and

• Step 2: Add the fact that you’re back in school to your resume.  Note it in the Summary at the beginning of that document and, in its Education section, provide the name of the course you’re taking, the institution or organization that’s offering it, the formal outcome if there will be one (e.g., the certificate or degree you will earn) and the term “On-going.”

Those two simple steps will instantaneously transform you into a new person.  First, they will enhance your skill set, making you a potentially more valuable employee.  Second, taking a course of instruction or training program even as you are searching for a job demonstrates attributes all employers want but find it hard to identify in a candidate: resolve, fortitude, and determination.

Most importantly, this course of action will set you apart from other candidates by demonstrating that you have two very special attributes: you understand that in today’s rapidly evolving world of work, staying competent in your field is an ever-moving target AND you take personal responsibility for keeping yourself at the state-of-the-art.  You recognize the responsibility and accept it.

Become that person, make that transformation, and the playing field will level.  You may be in transition, but you will no longer be at a disadvantage when compared to employed candidates.  You will have reinvented yourself as a career activist, a person who is committed to continuous self-improvement no matter how senior or experienced they may be.  An individual who has the right stuff—the skills and the attributes to be a champion at work.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

We’re all familiar with bubbles.  There was the dot.com bubble in the 1990s and the housing bubble in the early years of this century.  They were overheated investments that ultimately fell flat.  In our careers, however, we’ve done exactly the opposite.  Most of us have invested little or nothing in our careers, and the resulting vacuum is strangling our future.  That sucking sound we hear is our future imploding.

The notion that we could have everything for nothing in ours career seems to have emerged with the rise of no-cost content on the Web.  Consciously or otherwise, legions of us have come to the conclusion that we can find everything we need to manage our careers successfully among the free pages posted online.  It was inevitable, therefore, that for the first time in modern history, the 2001 recession saw sales of career and job search books actually decline during an economic downturn.

This free lunch investment strategy is undoubtedly alluring, but alas, it’s also completely irrational.  Think about it.  As scary as it may be in today’s environment, most of us accept that investing is the only legitimate way to secure and improve our life.  We invest to (hopefully) put money away for retirement.  We invest in buying a house with the dream that it will become a home and, eventually, an asset we can leave to our kids.  We even invest in gym memberships to improve our physical fitness and in health insurance just in case we need more intensive care.

We make all of those investments, but we act as skinflints when it comes to the one-third of our lives we spend in the workplace.  Oh sure, we open our wallets when we first start out.  Lots of us invest in getting an education, in college or a trade school, so we have a proper foundation in the world of work.  And while our parents may help us in that endeavor, we recognize and accept the importance of doing so.  But after that, we act as if the Bill of Rights guarantees us free job search assistance and career counseling and coaching.  In fact, asking a person in transition to invest in his or her career is often viewed as a vile effort to take advantage of them.

And ironically, nothing could be further from the truth.  Indeed, not asking us to invest in ourselves and our future is a startling denial of our own capacity to succeed.  Setting us apart as some sort of protected class, while well meaning, inevitably has two perverse impacts:

• It creates a dependency that subliminally signals to each and every one of us that we don’t have what it takes to mend our own situation and take care of ourselves; and
• It forges a sense of false entitlement that actually handicaps us and prevents us from taking the necessary action to help ourselves.

Setting Us Up for Even Harder Times

Equally as important, when we’re told that we need not invest in ourselves in tough times, many of us conclude that the same is true in good times, as well.  That perspective, more than any other, is probably what’s behind the deteriorating skills and knowledge we bring to work each day.  We’re falling behind the rest of the world in research, productivity and value creation because the conventional wisdom is that it’s not our job to keep up.  Whether we’re a Boomer, GenY or a Millennial, we’ve been taught that we bear no personal responsibility for staying at the state-of-the-art in our field or for acquiring the expertise to manage our own career.

The most telling evidence of this situation can be found at a local “job club.”  Every meeting, these days, attracts hundreds of well educated, middle-aged professionals who have never before been unemployed.  Now that they are, however, they lack the tools to get reemployed.   They worked hard at their jobs, they were loyal to their employers, but neither of those attributes protected them from a pink slip and neither can put them back to work.  The structure and dynamic of the workplace has changed, and they haven’t.  They were misled by the free lunch crowd, so they haven’t invested in upgrading themselves or in directing their career path toward a secure employment situation.  For them, the sucking sound is almost deafening.

But, it doesn’t have to stay that way.  It is possible to turn our fortunes around.  The solution is admittedly easy to offer and more difficult to implement.  It has the merit, however, of being absolutely right for the times.  The key to survival and prosperity in the 21^st Century world of work is continuous self-investment.

If you’re in transition, go back to school in your field even as you look for a new opportunity.  If you’re lucky enough to be employed, get some training that will add to your ability to contribute on-the-job.  And regardless of your situation, make sure that you get smarter on how best to manage your own career.  Such investments will never produce a bubble; they will, in contrast, quiet the deafening din by filling the vacuum with opportunity.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

A recent poll of U.S. workers found that the one thing we most want from our employers is job security.  While that’s completely understandable in today’s crazy world of work, I’m afraid we’re more likely to get a visit from our fairy godmother.

The global economy is now more interconnected and interdependent than at any other time in history.  If government economic policies change in China, U.S. producers are affected.  If consumer tastes change in Europe, American businesses feel the impact.  If a South American company goes bankrupt, the people working in its plant in Tennessee will be hurt.

It is a highly turbulent and unpredictable environment.  And that uncertainty makes it all but impossible for our employers—whether they are American or foreign-based organizations—to predict what kinds of talent they will need tomorrow or the day after, let alone six months from now.  As a result, they might promise us job security, but they can’t deliver it.

If you don’t believe me, consider this.  The average tenure of a CEO in their job is now down to less than four years.  If that insecurity can happen in the corner office, it can (and will) happen everywhere else in the organization.

But, you know what?  I’m delighted that job security has joined the gold watch and buggy whip.  Think about it.  Job security was something only employers could provide, and they did so only when it suited their financial interests.  We had no control over the situation, so we stood around hat-in-hand, hoping for a little something we could count on from organizations that were more interested in counting their profits.

What’s the alternative?

Career security.  It’s the ability to stay employed in jobs of our choosing, regardless of the economic situation in any country or the financial condition of any one employer.  Career security is something we create for ourselves, so we control what happens to us in the workplace.  We become the master of our career, rather than its victim.

Instead of hoping that our employer will hang onto us when its business turns down, we monitor the employer’s status and if it starts to weaken, we take the initiative and move to a new workplace opportunity.  Instead of wishing upon a star when our employer gets bought, moved to a new location or reorganized, we line up options with other organizations to ensure our star keeps rising.

Now, some employers will say that such behavior is disloyal.  It’s not.  There are always two parties in the expression of loyalty, and loyalty only makes sense when there’s reciprocity between them.  In other words, if we are loyal to our employers, they should offer their loyalty to us in return.  The death of job security, however, has destroyed that reciprocity.  Employers can no longer be loyal to us, so we must be loyal to ourselves.  And, career security is the way we do so.

How is career security achieved?  I think it involves three steps.

First, we have to get to know ourselves.  We have to figure out what we love to do and do best.  That’s not our passion; it’s our talent.  Everyone is born with a natural capability or talent, but only those who take care of it—those who never stop developing its range and depth—can achieve career security.  And to make such a commitment, we have to know what our talent is.

Second, we have to take our talent to work.  We have to arrive with all of our talent each day and use it to do our best work every day.  Employers are desperate for such high performing employees.  In fact, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, 70% are now paying bonuses to hire talented contributors, and 65% are paying above market salaries to hang onto them.

Third, we must keep our career strong.  We can only work at our talent and use it to do our best work if you are employed by the right organizations and in the right jobs.  Career self-management by hoping for the best (or waiting for our employers to deliver it) is a sure-fire formula for career cardiac arrest or what most of us call unemployment.  Proactively reaching for opportunities where we can excel, in contrast, is the single best way to increase both the paycheck and the satisfaction we bring home from work.

Job security is definitely an attractive idea, but it’s an idea whose time has passed.  Career security, on the other hand, is a concept fit for the turbulent world of work in the 21st Century.  It has the power and the promise to position us for enduring success.  And, it is acquired from the only source we can really count on—ourselves.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at WEDDLEs.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including Recognizing Richard Rabbit, a fable of self-discovery for working adults, and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

Job security has joined the pay phone and carbon paper.  It’s no longer a part of the world of work.  Employers may promise it, but they can’t deliver it.  The global marketplace is just too dynamic, too unpredictable.

Does that mean there is no security in the workplace?  Absolutely not.  The kind of security you can achieve, however, is unlike that historically promised by your employers.  If you want to be secure at work—and who doesn’t—you need “career security.”  It’s the ability to stay employed in a job of your choice, regardless of the state of the economy.

As many of us have painfully learned in today’s recession, job security is controlled by employers.  It is provided at their discretion and only when it serves their bottom line.  Career security, in contrast, is something you create.  It is a protective shield that you erect by taking two important steps.

First, you must become a career activist.  That’s a person who throws off their passivity and takes charge of their career.  They don’t wait around for their employer, their boss or their mentor to do it.  They don’t hunker down and hang on, hoping that someone will sprinkle pixie dust on them.  A career activist decides that they would rather be the master of their career than its victim, so they climb in the driver’s seat and set its course.

Second, you must keep your career moving.  You are a living organism which means either you’re growing or you’re dead.  The same is true of your career.  Either you’re extending the strength, reach and endurance of your career or you’re in the throes of career cardiac arrest … or what we all know as unemployment.

How do you keep your career in motion?  By setting and working continuously toward 3 goals:

Your Achievement Goal is something you can accomplish in the next six-to-twelve months.  It identifies an outcome you can achieve in your current job, such as a step-up in your performance, the completion of a special project, the solution to an especially tough problem or the resolution of an issue that has degraded your work.  It enables you to give your employer a fulsome return on its investment in you and to give yourself a “career victory” that is meaningful and useful for you.

Your Advancement Goal is an objective you can reach in the next three-to-five years.  It identifies the next job you want to hold or the next level of work you want to be able to perform.  It may involve your current employer or it may require that you move to another wok situation, but it will always represent a major leap forward in your capability and contribution in the workplace.  Your advancement goal should stretch you beyond your current level of performance, but also be a realistic challenge.  It is a brass ring, but one that you have a reasonable chance of grabbing.

Your Development Goal is the bridge between your achievement goal and your advancement goal.  It enables you to build on the success you accomplish in the near term by adding the supplemental skills and knowledge that prepare you to conquer each of the challenges you identify for the longer term in your career.  Your development goal transforms you from a stationary state to one in motion, from operating as a worker-in-place to the continual growth of a worker-in-progress.

A career activist doesn’t have crystal ball.  They have no better insight than others about which path the economy will take.  They are certain, however, of one thing: a stationary target is much easier to hit than a moving one.  That’s why they actively manage their careers and keep them moving forward all of the time.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including his latest, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System.

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

For many people, work is an onerous, often frustrating and even demeaning experience.  It is something they do in order to enjoy the rest of their life.  If you find that hard to believe, consider this: According to research, an astonishing 88% of all Americans daydream at work about quitting their job to do something else.

Why are so many people unhappy with their employment?

They are doing unNatural work.  They have an inherent talent—every human being does—but they find themselves employed in a career that ignores or, worse, tramples on that capability.

I call this talent your Natural because it is as integral a part of who you are as your personality.  It is an essential element of your individual definition.  Of what makes you a unique and special person.

Your Natural is something you love to do and do well.  The doing of it comes naturally to you—it is a ready-made talent—and excelling at it gives you an extraordinary sense of satisfaction—a feeling of fulfillment.

Your Natural is not a position title or an occupation.  You do not work at your Natural as a senior project manager or a doctor, a lawyer or an Indian chief.  You do so by engaging in an activity that is central to success in the performance of those roles.

For example, Lance Armstrong is a champion cyclist.  His Natural, however, is not professional cycling.  It is his talent for agility, endurance and stamina.  He chose to apply his Natural to the sport of cycling, but he could have been just as successful and just as fulfilled in another occupation if excellence in that occupation depended on agility, endurance and stamina—his natural talent.

What does that mean for the rest of us in the world of work?

First, we are all super stars-in-waiting.  Every single one of us has a Lance Armstrong, a Susan Boyle, a Sully Sullenberger inside us.  We can realize that champion in our career—we can express and experience our ready-made talent on-the-job—but only if we are working in an occupation that requires our Natural to be successful.

Second, using our Natural is a key element of what makes us a unique person.  The Human Genome Project proved that, as different as we may seem on the outside, we are only 3% different on the inside.  Putting our Natural to work is one of the ways we achieve that 3% and establish ourselves as distinguishable and distinguished individuals.

Third, our Natural is a raw talent that needs nurturing.  It’s up to us to discover it and to refine it.  We must continuously stretch its capacity and our ability to apply it in our work.  Captain Sullenberger didn’t perform a heroic feat of flying by simply climbing in the cockpit each day and going through the motions.  He practiced regularly and rigorously to build up his ability to use his Natural to its fullest, and he needed every bit of that skill to land his place safely and achieve the “miracle on t he Hudson.”

Fourth, when we ignore your Natural at work, we waste our shot at becoming the person of our dreams.  Almost nine out of ten Americans can imagine the superstar inside them, but for one reason or another, they fail to bring that person to work.  Yet it’s our work, more than any other human endeavor, that provides the kind of challenges that can draw out the best we can be.  It alone gives us a chance to experience the champion inside us.

And when we fail to take advantage of that opportunity—when we accept employment in an occupation or a job that does not put our Natural to work—it feels toxic.  Because it is.  Doing unNatural work prevents us from performing at our peak, and the resulting substandard performance harms us in two ways:

·         It jeopardizes our employment.  Doing anything less than our best work in today’s demanding workplace is a guaranteed seat on the fast train to early termination.

·         It prevents us from feeling the profound sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing we have been tested in a fair way—one that challenges the best of ourselves—and measured up.

You will spend one third or more of your life on-the-job.  Don’t sell that time short.  Fill it with work that comes naturally to you so you can express and experience your personal champion.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at CareerFitness.com

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

You are destined to be nothing special, so you might as well accept it.  That was the message from a prominent career counselor writing in a major news magazine this week.  As he blithely put it, “Failures may help you realize you are average; not everyone can be a star.”  And then, just to smack you down a little further, he adds the following obtusely patronizing observation: “But plain folk are worthy too.”  Thanks for the reassurance, pal.

This view that a special few of us are the chosen ones and everyone else is a dim wit is so 20^th Century.  It’s the career analogue to the hubristic self-indulgence that brought us the Great Recession.  For years, the sycophants of business school capitalism crowed that the wizards of Wall Street and the CEOs of corporate America were so much smarter than the rest of us ordinary folk … only now, we know they weren’t (and aren’t).  They were Masters of Stupidity, which is a talent, I suppose, but not one that makes you a star.

If there is a silver lining to this terrible economic time, it is the dawning realization that those who were supposedly our “betters” actually aren’t.  That doesn’t mean, however, that we should be satisfied with mediocrity.  Bringing down the so-called elite a peg or two doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t move ourselves up an equal distance or more.  Despite what that career pundit would have you believe, you are not the prisoner of some drab average existence … unless you permit yourself to be.

You and every other person on this planet have an extraordinary being living inside you, waiting for a chance to perform.  If you don’t believe that, think about Susan Boyle.  She was a less than attractive Scottish spinster until she strode out on the stage of a British television show and wowed the world with her voice.  That talent has always been there, but she had never had the courage or the opportunity to express it.

And sadly, that experience is the way many of us live our careers, only unlike Susan Boyle, we retire without giving our special talent a stage.  We leave it unrecognized and unused because we lack either the self-confidence or the opportunity to expose it to the light of day.

·         We don’t think our talent is worthy enough for others—especially our family and friends—to respect it as a career.

·         Or, we don’t see our talent as valuable enough to be a career because it won’t enable us to keep up with the Madoffs.

·         Or, worse, we buy into the nonsense of that condescending career counselor and accept the notion that we are simply beasts of burden with a vocabulary—average beings in heels and loafers.

So, what should you do?

I urge you to participate in a new workplace event.  You’ve undoubtedly heard of Take Your Child to Work Day and its analog for those without children, Take Your Pet to Work Day.  Well, I propose that you indulge yourself in a similarly special activity.  I call it Take Your Talent to Work Day.

Take Your Talent to Work Day is an event open to you and everyone else.  Here’s how it works.

First (and this is the hardest part), give yourself permission to take the time and make the effort to solve one of the great mysteries of life: what is it that you particularly enjoy doing and do particularly well.

I call it your Natural, because it is a gift that comes naturally to you.  We all have such a talent but many, maybe even most of us hide it away in a hobby or passion we pursue outside of work.  Ironically, however, when we use our Natural, we unlock the handcuffs of drab work that makes us average.  We unleash the world class performer—the Susan Boyle—who lives within every single one of us.

Second (and this is only a little less hard), give yourself permission to explore all of the possibilities so you can make one of the great discoveries of life: which occupation will enable you to put your special talent to work on-the-job.

The key to success in such a search is to put aside self-imposed constraints (e.g., I can’t make enough money doing it) and the biases, however well meaning, of friends and family (e.g., You have so much more to give than that.).  You have an inalienable right to pursue happiness at work.  That is the essence of the American Dream and, no less important, it’s a form of compensation that is every bit as valuable as the money you earn.

You spend one-third or more of your life at work, so shouldn’t that time be as rewarding an experience as every other facet of your life?  Of course, it should.  So, show yourself what you can do: Take Your Talent to Work today, tomorrow and for the rest of your career.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Follow me on Twitter @PeterWeddle

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.

We Americans have any number of attributes that uniquely define our culture.  That’s true in society at large and in the workplace.  Normally, these characteristics are healthy and helpful.  Sometimes, however, habits that were once benign can suddenly become foolhardy and even harmful.  We love our cars, for example, and although many of us have long driven them to work, that easy, comfortable way of doing things now threatens our wallets as well as our environment.

This good-to-bad transformation also applies to our careers.  Historically, if you put 100 Americans in a room and asked how many of them set goals for their career and then direct their employment toward the accomplishment of those goals, fewer than ten would raise their hands … if they were answering the question truthfully.  The reality has always been and remains to this day that we don’t do careers in the U.S. of A.

You can, of course, put a positive spin on that habit.  You could say that we have ignored our careers because we were focused on our employers.  Since the 1920s, when President Calvin Coolidge first articulated the notion, most of us have believed that The business of America is business.  What was good for General Motors was good for America.  And, if we helped make GM or Lehman Brothers or Enron or MCI or any other American employer successful, we would be successful too.

No less important, there are only so many hours in the day.  Every minute we spend on ourselves is a minute we take away from our employer, so being a loyal, heads-down, hard-at-work employee is simply a part of the way we earn our paycheck.  We put our job ahead of our career because we are sure that our employers care about our well being and, therefore, we can do no less than reciprocate.

Now, I’m all for positive thinking, but that view clearly doesn’t correlate with our present day reality.  In the past, you could treat your career as an afterthought because the world of work just wasn’t very dangerous.  Stick with that habit today, however, and you’ll likely find yourself stuck in place as the world passes you by.  The American workplace is no longer filled with numerous, sturdy career ladders held up by our employers.  It has morphed, instead, into a single, huge jungle gym on which there is no prescribed path to success.  If you want to survive—let alone prosper—in this vastly more dynamic and demanding environment, you have to do careers.  More specifically, you have to do your own career.  If you don’t, it will do you.

How do You Do a Career?

The hardest habit to break in doing a career is getting yourself to stop putting your career second.  In today’s workplace, you and your career must come first.  Why?  Because what your employer deserves in return for its paycheck is not a lifetime of loyalty, an 85 hour workweek, or 24/7 connectivity via your Blackberry.  While those metrics have, unfortunately, come to be seen as our modern measures of individual performance, they are not what your employer (or any employer) needs or even wants.

What best serves your employer isn’t harder work or more work; it’s your best contribution.  And you can’t make your best contribution if your career is weak.  To put it another way, you can’t take care of your employer unless you take care of yourself—and your career—first.  Unless you devote the time and attention required to make your career strong.

What does a strong career look like?

As I explain in my book, Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System, a strong career is one with seven attributes.  It’s a career where:

·         you refresh and expand your expertise in your field of work so that you are always able to perform at the state-of-the-art;

·         you extend and nurture your network of contacts in your field and industry so you are always top of mind when opportunities come up;

·         you add ancillary skills (e.g., a second language, the ability to use a new software program) so that you are able to extend the contribution you make with your primary area of expertise:

·         you push out the limits of your comfort zone so you can work in the widest possible range of situations and circumstances;

·         you work with those individuals and organizations that will support and advance your career so you are always in an environment where you can succeed;

·         you volunteer your talent to community, social service or environmental groups so you can contribute to others’ future as well as your own; and

·         you pace yourself with appropriate downtime and vacations so you preserve and reinforce your enthusiasm and commitment to doing your best work on-the-job.

If that sounds like a lot of work, it is—at least in comparison to the effort we expend when we don’t do careers.  As onerous as such a commitment may seem, however, it begins to make some sense if you remember the Golden Rule.  With a slight modification, it holds all the justification you should need to invest more time and priority in your career.  In the treacherous and demanding world of work that is now our present and our future, Do your career as you would like your career to do for you.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

Visit me at CareerFitness.com

© Copyright 2009 WEDDLE’s LLC.  All Rights Reserved.