Control Your Own Destiny Because No One Else Will

Is it really possible to have any control over your own career’s direction given all the variables affecting your professional choices? Your career is, for the most part, the sum of your own choices. We make choices and decisions every day that impact the future of our careers. But often there are also events outside of our own direct control that influence the choices we make.

In our youth, we probably considered the careers or professions of those close to us by evaluating their success and wealth. Our environment played an important role in forming our first ideas about careers and sest the wheels in motion as we began our journey on own career path. But even with all of the preparation in selecting a university or a study program, we weren’t necessarily sure we would make the right choices to lead us to the promised land of career happiness.

What often happens is that one’s career path includes the selection of traditional courses such as Business Administration, Economics, Accounting or Marketing, and is then influenced by many other factors, such as friends and teachers, internships, political and social environment, and economic trends. Given so many varied circumstances – outside of our own direct control – were we really directing our career “destiny” or just going along for the ride?

When you accepted a new job with “X” company, you made a choice that impacted your life's journey. When you joined a professional association, you made a choice. When you accepted a new assignment in your role, you made a choice. When you decided to play it safe, you made a choice. The present is the sum of our choices, driving us toward the future.

We have to give up the position that we are victims with little or no control over our future. There are events and circumstances that are out of our control, but we all have the ability to make wise choices. Your professional life belongs to you. Your future depends on you. Don’t yield control to external forces.

Are you fit for the team?

Research reported on the ERE tells us that nearly one-in-two new hires are classified as failures within 18 months. How do you know if a candidate will be a good cultural fit with your team? The question of “fit” when interviewing candidates is one of the most critical components in making a hiring decision.

The key is to ask questions at relate directly to their experience in other positions or situations. Use questions to learn more about how a person responds under stress, interacts with others and handles change. The goal centers on getting concrete data to validate your hiring decision.

The candidate should be talking about 80% of the interview time. Try not to prompt the candidate with the answers you would like to hear. If you learn something that concerns you, ask for more details and examples. If possible, have more than one person interview the candidate to get another perspective.

Some sample questions include:

--What are three things you like about the companies you have worked for in the past? And what three things didn’t you like?
--Who was your best boss? Why? Who was your worst boss? Why?
--Tell me about the accomplishment you are most proud of in a recent job. Describe the kind of work environment that helped you be successful.
--Describe a problem situation with a co-worker that you experienced. How did the situation get resolved?
--Describe an example of when you were part of a team that reached its goal. What role did you play and why was the team successful?
--If I talked to your peers from your last position, what would they would say are your strengths or areas for development?

There are numerous examples on Monty Python or The Office for lessons on what NOT to do during interviews.

And as a final word of advice, always interview your final list of candidates a second time; you can probe concerns and avoid decisions made on first impressions.

Looking through the window

Managing one’s brand these days can have the fragility and transparency of glass. The combination of technological revolutions, the growth in individual employees having greater power to exercise personal choice, and rising customer sophistication have resulted in such innovations as Glassdoor and Vault. Employees can comment on company and leadership performance and put it out there for the world to see. CEOs can view their own approval ratings based on employee comments and votes.

Such websites are putting pressure on leaders to be more active in managing their own brand – both their personal brand and also their organization’s brand. Individual communication that may have once been regarded as private one-to-one conversations can now be regarded as essentially public if you factor in the transparency of communications on such social media sites as LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook.

Entrepreneur magazine forecast that the number one marketing trend for 2010 would be transparency and trust. Well, the same applies for leaders.

The ubiquitous nature of technology means that it is always on and inviting participation. It is changing how, where, when and by whom work gets done. It’s about coordination, collaboration and transparency. Leaders need be in tune with the feedback available on these new channels and be proactive with personal and professional brand management. It’s not just about listening to what's being said, but also about actively participating in the discussions.

Use the transparency tools available today to track the sentiment of employees and match these against your own company engagement scores. Assess the feedback on your culture, identify challenges and opportunities and invest in your own leadership development.

With brand transparency what it is today, you never know who may be looking through your window.

Playing Nice in the Sandbox

Although we were told to “play nice” as children, it appears that “niceness” at work has become a misnomer.

So often leaders look externally to bring someone in to fix their organization. But it really starts at the individual level. It can’t be any simpler: be nice! How often do we treat co-workers as adversaries, fighting for limited resources or fighting for professional stature? Or perhaps withholding information, rather than openly sharing. So the question on the table: Is “nice” at work a goal worth pursuing?

Communication is the source for creating a positive and productive work culture. How we communicate, what we say and do, and how others communicate with us, provides the essence for what shapes organizational culture. In these leaner times when everyone is pushed to capacity, sometimes the fundamentals of respectful, supportive and effective communication begin to slip. As a leader, it’s up to you to lead by example and explore if your culture is one where people could be nicer to each other.

In Wendy Ulrich’s new book, The Why of Work, she suggests that leaders revisit some communication fundamentals. It takes personal responsibility to put effort into building happy and healthy co-worker relationships. Remember, you’re leading a larger team of people who are all working to achieve a common goal. Foster camaraderie. Have fun. We seem to have lost “fun” and “nice” in the pursuit of cut-throat competitiveness to produce results. They are not mutually exclusive. Check out 13 Ways to Have Fun at Work.

To do this requires conversations. Not one, but many. And genuine, open, authentic conversations. Where kindness and respect is mutual. Be nice. Say thank you. Acknowledge the good work of others. Buy some donuts. Enjoy! After all, you probably spend more time with your co-workers than your family.

Fostering good working relationships is really no different from fostering good personal relationships. It doesn’t cost anything to be nice to people.

Looking Beyond the Obvious

As the talent mismatch widens, employer’s need new mindsets for sourcing candidates. Look beyond the obvious supplies of talent and consider hiring candidates who fit with your culture and train for specific skills that are teachable to fulfill the requirements of the role.

To fill large and systemic talent gaps, expand the pool of available candidates and consider:

Internal role changes
The best source of new talent may already reside in your organization. Redeploy existing talent to new roles and locations. People are willing to move geographies yet employers are still learning how to capitalize on this trend. Consider redeploying existing talent before laying them off. As many as 18% of outplaced candidates are rehired by their past employer.

Consider skills transfers
Some industries are cutting their workforces, while others are growing faster than the talent supply. Consider the talent available in low-growth industries that can migrate to new fields. Review the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2008-2018 to see where the growth is and where the shrinkage is to come from. Some of these people may have highly valued skills – such as those in sales, finance and management – that can easily be transferred to a new industry. Be opportunistic in response to significant changes in local labor markets, such as businesses closing or relocating and leaving capable people behind. According to Human Capital Management, nearly half (47%) of jobseekers change industries to land a new role.

You can’t change what is happening relative to external trends or today’s economic reality. But you can change your workforce strategies in order to respond to those trends and position your company to effectively meet these challenges and beat the competition.