Does It Matter That Lance Armstrong Didn’t Tell The Truth?

Written by The Career Success Doctor

I enjoy watching sport, and I loved my day out at the London Paralympics, but I’m not a real sports fan. Nevertheless, I have been following the Lance Armstrong story with some interest.

I’m fairly cynical about reports of doping in the sporting world. I tend to accept the ‘no smoke without fire’ view of things. Yet when Lance Armstrong was first accused of doping, I totally believed his declarations of innocence.

I WANTED Lance Armstrong to be honest, to be telling the truth. Here was a man who had overcome testicular cancer and was going out there and showing everyone what was possible, even if you’d had cancer. It was such a great, heart-warming story

I was also impressed by his apparent congruence. From where I sat, he was totally believable and trustworthy.

And now the truth is out. Lance has admitted, on Oprah, that he was guilty of taking banned substances.

So why does it matter if Lance Armstrong lied?

Firstly, Armstrong sued people for libel when they accused him of doping, and won. Apparently he now apologies for that. Secondly, he is now saying that he doesn’t deserve a lifetime ban from world-class professional cycling which, to him, is like a ‘death sentence’. Thirdly, Armstrong wasn’t just a champion, he was captain of his team, a role model.

Studies into leadership show clearly that people care deeply about the authenticity and trustworthiness of their leaders. As a leader, Armstrong let down his team mates with his dishonesty and – judging by the Oprah interview – by bullying them into doing as he did. Dishonest, AND he encouraged others to behave likewise.

But the piece that gives me the biggest pause is that he doesn’t seem to ‘get’ that lying and cheating your way to the top in international sport is not acceptable. (It shouldn’t be acceptable in business either, but there are business leaders and democratically elected politicians who seem to have successfully risen to positions of leadership without anyone objecting too much).

I am a great believe in forgiveness, but the ‘offender’ has to recognise what they have done and genuinely be contrite. Lance Armstrong’s contrition seems hollow at this stage. As an international sporting champion, he is a role model. Whether he likes it or not, he is, or has been, a leader.

It seems to me that Armstrong’s problem was that anything less that 1st place was failure in his eyes, and failure was unacceptable. To avoid failure he knowingly broke the rules of his sport, and then deliberately lied about it. And now that he has opened his heart up on national TV, he expects to be let back in.

Apart from the message that this sends out to other sportsmen and women – that it’s OK to cheat and then to lie – it also says something about our views on failure. Somehow it’s OK to lie, but not OK to fail. How sick is that?

Personally I’d rather have a leader who did their best and failed, than someone who broke the rules, lied, fell from grace, and then discovered honesty as part of a strategy to be reinstated.

Many of the most successful business leaders have had their share of failures: Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Colonel Saunders, and Walt Disney have all failed along the way. And all learned from their mistakes and persevered. I’m just not sure how much Lance armstrong has learned from his mistakes yet.

And I do wonder whether his cancer was related to taking performance-enhancing testosterone in the first place.

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How To Write A Winning CV

Written by The Career Success Doctor

In general, my focus for my clients is how to get a career success mind set. However, I am often asked about how to write a winning CV, so I’ve been doing a bit of research.

There are several different schools of thought about this, and an infinite variety of books on the subject – many of which are rather prescriptive. The truth is that there’s very little good quality research on the subject. The research that is available indicates there is no set format that you ‘must’ follow. Success lies in other directions.

Your CV Is A Sales Document – Personalisation And Size Matter

Like it or not, your CV is a sales document. You are trying to sell your particular blend of skills and experience to the best buyer. For this reason, you increase your chances of success if you tailor your CV to the job you are applying for, and the organisation you are sending it to. I’m not sure that there ever was a time when generic CVs really worked, but in today’s world, a generic CV is less likely to get you an interview than one where you have clearly thought about what your audience wants to hear. At the very least, it’s essential you customise your covering letter, so it’s obvious to the reader that you have written it specifically with them in mind.

Think of it this way. How do you feel when you get some piece of mail through your letter-box which starts ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ and has clearly been sent to all the people in your neighbourhood? Do you bother to read beyond the first line? And if they haven’t put your name on the envelope, do you even bother to open it?

If your CV is too long, the reader will probably give up on you. A two-pager is ideal. Three pages will probably be acceptable. At four pages, your CV is already way too long. Busy people don’t have time to read waffle, so a good CV conveys all the information it needs to clearly and concisely.

Keep a folder of CVs on your computer or a memory stick, clearly labeled, so that you can pull something out at short notice if an opportunity comes your way. I still have a range of CVs that I use for cutting and pasting if I am asked to tender for a project at short notice.

Pay Attention To The Little Things

Many CVs fail to hit the spot because the candidates haven’t paid attention to the bleedin’ obvious. For example, research cited on the University of Kent site indicated that applicants sending CVs and letters (and, presumably, application forms) without typos or spelling mistakes are 61% more likely to get a reply, and 26% more likely to get an interview. There really is no excuse these days. If you know you have difficulty with this, then get someone who is good at grammar and spelling to check it for you.

Two useful tools used by copywriters and authors are a dictionary and a thesaurus. If you’re using an on-line dictionary, or a word processing spell checker, make sure it uses relevant spelling protocol. For example, if you’re applying for a job in the UK, use a UK dictionary. The thesaurus will give you ideas for different words, so you don’t sound repetitive. Most good word processing tools have a thesaurus tool, and there are plenty available on-line.

Another statistic from the same research suggests that 60% of CVs are mailed to the wrong person. The solution to this one is to do your research properly. If you are sending off an unsolicited CV to an organisation, you will increase your chances of success if you send it to the person who is actually going to be interested.

Again, there is no excuse for getting this wrong these days. The internet is a fabulous resource for finding out about companies. The starting point is Google (or other search engines), but you can do Facebook searches, LinkedIn research, and searches on the Companies House database (for UK registered companies). If you live in or near a city with a good business reference library, there are excellent resources to be found there. Business libraries, professional or trade organisations, and academic institutions often have access to online directories which aren’t available to the general public.

Be Honest – But Don’t Underplay Your Talents

Women are awfully good at underplaying their talents. When I rewrite a CV for my career coaching clients their reaction is almost always: ‘Wow, that’s not me you’re talking about, this is a really impressive CV’, or, ‘Have I really done all that?’ Yet all I have done is taken what they have told me and structured it to highlight their achievements and skills. Most of us have accomplished much more than we think.

Even though I review and write CVs for others, I am still amazed when someone looks at my CV and tells me how impressive it is. I have simply told the truth, and I don’t see my own accomplishments as being particularly out-of-the ordinary. From this I have learned that what we think is ordinary about ourselves is extraordinary to others.

According to research conducted in 1994 http://coachingincareers.blogspot.co.uk (I did say there isn’t that much research available on this subject!), employers don’t necessarily base their recruitment decisions on skills and experience, even though they think they do.

This study found that they actually decided on the basis of ‘extra-curricular activities’ – i.e. hobbies and interests. The decision-making process tends to be more subjective where the recruiter only has a CV and covering letter to look at, which is one reason why HR departments in large organisations often favour the competence-based application form.

Format and Organisation

As the University of Kent careers site says, ‘If your CV is written backwards on pink polkadot paper and it gives you regular interviews, it’s a good CV! The bottom line is that if it’s producing results don’t change it too much but if it’s not, keep changing it until it does’. (University of Kent site:)

A recent YouTube hit was the video of Matthew Epstein, a young guy who wanted to get a job with Google. He created a video about himself, which he thought would appeal. Professionally shot, it used lots of video ‘tricks’, and was both clever and entertaining. It also got over 1 million hitsand a lot of job offers (although not, apparently from Google).

If you’re not going down Matthew Epstein’s route, then here are a few formatting tips for a conventional CV. Firstly, use a legible typeface: in general, avoid Chalkduster or Comic Sans or other fonts that look like handwriting. Verdana, Times New Roman, Tahoma and Arial all work. 12 point is a good size, and with Verdana you can easily go down to 11 point, or even 10 point, because it is so clear and easy to read.

If you are sending your CV out electronically, for example as a pdf attachment to an email, then be aware that you need to present your information differently if it is likely to be read on screen. Paragraphs need to be short and punchy, and it helps to break the text up with bullets and sub-headings.

Start with a your key contact details. As a minimum, your name, phone number, email address and postal address. You could also include your nationality, particularly if it gives you working status in the country where you want to work. Employers will generally favour candidates who have the right to work, so if you have that right you may as well put it up there at the top of the CV.

It’s a good idea to make the first paragraph a summary or personal statement. Personally I prefer a summary, but that’s all it is, a personal preference. Your summary is an excellent place to tailor your CV to your audience, even if you don’t change anything else. Make the summary relevant and interesting: it may be the only part of your CV the employer bothers to read.

There are a number of different ways you can organise the information. Typically, people present the information chronologically. If you choose this approach, start with your most recent job first. You can also group your experiences to highlight different skills sets. For example, my CV has headings like ‘Coaching Experience’, ‘HR Consultancy’, ‘Training and Research’, ‘Sales and Marketing’ and ‘Management and Project Management’.

In general, put your qualifications after your experience. Research has shown that employers are much less interested in qualifications than they are in experience. In fact some research suggests that there is an inverse relationship between number and level of qualifications and the likelihood of getting invited to interview: the more qualifications you have, the less likely it is that you will be invited to interview!

The older you get, and the more qualified and experienced you become, the less important your school grades. Now I’m in my 50s with 5 degrees, I don’t bother to mention my GCSE O level and A level subject and grades. However, if the ability to speak Spanish was important for a job, I would probably mention that I have GCSE Spanish as evidence that I have some command of the language.

All the CV-writing experts agree that it’s important to avoid general statements like ‘I am good with people’, unless you have clear evidence to support your assertions. If you are putting general statements into your Summary, you either need to rephrase them so they are not run-of-the-mill clichés, and/or give an example to prove your claims.

Persistence Pays Off

Research by Forum 3 suggested that there is a direct link between the number of CVs a person sends out (so the number of applications they make) and the number of interviews they get. On average it can take as many as 25 application letters to get an interview.

Graduates can expect to send out about 70 letters when looking for their first graduate job to get about 7 responses. That’s a 10% response rate, which most marketers would say was good. Of those 7, only 3 or 4 are likely to offer an interview or further contact.

So the bottom line is, you need to be persistent and patient.

You might also consider using the services of a recruitment agent. Most recruitment agents charge the employer, not the job-hunter, and a good recruitment agent will give you good advice, and check your CV over.

Choose a recruitment consultant who has a good track record in your chosen field. If you don’t yet have a chosen field or a clear career direction, then a recruitment consultant may not be the best person to help you.

If you need help with finding your career direction, then contact The Career Success Doctor for a Career Quickstart Conversation.

What To Do When a Lack of Financial Skills Holds Back Your Career

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Last week I attended a really excellent conference in London called Opportunities For Women. It’s a career development event aimed at ‘bridgers’: talented mid-level women actively seeking a bridge upwards. (You can check out the Opportunities for Women site for the full list of speakers).

The conference covered a lot of ground, but one recurring theme was the challenge of getting women into the Board room. In Women on Boards 2011, a report from an enquiry headed by Lord Davies, there is a telling quote:

‘At the current rate of change it will take over 70 years to achieve gender-balanced boardrooms in the UK’.

Think about it. 70 years. That’s an entire lifetime. [Read more…]

Creating Your Own Talent Management Strategy Is Key To Career Success.

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Talent Management

Over the last few years ‘Talent Management‘ has become a buzzword on the lips of HR professionals in large organizations – but how is it relevant to the individual? And what happens if your organization doesn’t have a talent management program (some times known as a ‘Fast-Stream’), or if you can’t get into it? How can you manage your own talent to ensure your career success?

Let’s start with the what and the why.

What Is A Talent Management Program?

In an article on how it feels to be talent-managed, the UK’s CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) describes talent management as follows:

‘Talent management is the systematic attraction, identification, development, engagement, retention and deployment of those individuals who are of particular value to an organization, either in view of their ‘high potential’ for the future or because they are fulfilling business/operation-critical roles.’

Phew! Generally a talent management program is something that larger organizations create to develop their high performers, or people who they have identified as having ‘high potential’. They are designed to fast-track career progression, and they use a mixture of training courses, coaching programs, action learning sets or mastermind groups, mentoring programs, job shadowing, secondments and other ‘learning interventions’ (to use the HR jargon) to move the individual swiftly forward in the organization.

If the organization is being clever, it ties its talent management program into long term succession-planning, so it can groom the senior managers and directors of the future. These days, however, people are mobile, and may not stick around long enough to make it to Director level, so talent management programs offer a mutually beneficial way of encouraging them to stay.

Why Is Talent Management Relevant To You?

Of course, talent management is relevant to the organizations that offer it. They wouldn’t bother unless they could make a clear business case for the benefits, because talent management programs don’t come cheap. Consequently, most of the literature on Talent Management looks at it from the employers’ point of view.

However, it’s also important from an individual’s point of view. Firstly, follow-up interviews of people in talent management programs have shown that the activities they find most valuable are personal development activities, like coaching and mentoring, rather than formal study. So if you are looking to develop your personal talent without the benefit of a formal talent management program, those are probably the activities that are going to give you most leverage, notwithstanding your preferred learning style.

Secondly, if you’re not in a Talent Management program – either because your organization doesn’t have one, or because you can’t get into the program your employers run – how are you going to complete with people who are benefiting from the membership of a Talent Management program? I have worked with clients who applied unsuccessfully to join their employers’ program. Some of them felt excluded, because such programs often include some form of network, forum or mastermind group. Some felt that they somehow fell short, or had no future with their employer, because their employer didn’t consider them ‘good enough’ to join the program. And others figured out ways of developing themselves anyway.

How Can You Create Your Own Talent Management Program

Without the support of your employer, there are some options that are more difficult to put in place, but there is still plenty that you could do on your own.

The first step is to identify your own career aspirations. Assuming you want a career in the industry you are in, then how high do you want to rise? When I work with a Talent Management group, almost the first question I ask is, ‘how much do you want promotion, and how far do you want to be promoted?’ I have worked with many clients who realized they wanted to rise to the top. Equally I have worked with others who have realized, through coaching, that they weren’t interested in taking on more responsibility, or that their values where not in total alignment with those of the organization, or that self-employment was a better option for them.

Typically, people will focus on senior managers and directors in their own organization to see how they need to develop. This is fine as a tactic, but it’s not very strategic. Industries and organizations change over time. The skills, knowledge and experience that are essential now may be redundant in five or ten years time. For example, in the early ’90s, companies were still focusing on IQ, or intellectual, mental intelligence, based on logical reasoning and similar skills. By the late ’90s, Emotional Intelligence had come into play. While intellect was still important, the world had woken up to the fact that the best leaders can relate to other people, not just ideas.

So what new skills and attitudes will you need to develop to stay ahead of the game?

It’s also important to consider how the wider business environment might change, both in your industry and beyond. The UK telecoms company, BT, used to have a team of people whose job was to read science fiction to help them identify the sorts of technology they needed to develop in the future. They may still have such a team. While I’m not suggesting you work you way through Amazon’s Sci-Fi and games section, how can you become a futurologist in your sphere?

How Do You Learn Best?

We all learn in different ways. Some people are more hands on, and learn by doing. A business-mentor friend of mine told me she hates instructional videos, because they move too slowly for her, but she loves learning through reading. She loves audio-learning, which I hate because there’s nothing to look at, and I am easily distracted.

Research with children has shown they learn better when they work in pairs or small groups, rather than on their own. Hence the success of Action Learning Sets and Mastermind Groups for adults.

So how do you learn best, and how much time and money are you willing to invest in your learning? Or, to put it another way, what is your learning worth to you?

What Other Ways Can You Develop Your Talent?

One of the tricks to developing your own personal Talent Management program is to find more unusual learning opportunities. One client I coached realized that she needed to develop her financial knowledge and budgeting skills in order to progress in her organization. Unfortunately, she could only get a job or secondment in the finance department if she had the financial skills, so she found herself in a chicken and egg situation. We looked at what she could bring from her life outside work. As it happened, she was heavily involved with her local church, and the Treasurer was always complaining that he was over-burdened with mundane financial activities.

She spotted the opportunity, and offered to take on some of the data-juggling activities in return for the chance to work alongside him on the more strategic aspects of his role.

Take Control With Your Own Talent Management Strategy

If you don’t take control, then either you will drift along, or someone else will take control. The business guru, Rich Schefren, talks about the difference between business opportunity seekers and strategic entrepreneurs. Business opportunity seekers are never as successful as they would like to be, while strategic entrepreneurs are far more likely to exceed their own expectations.

The same analogy applies when planning for your career success. You can be an opportunity seeker, drifting along, catching opportunities as they come up. Alternatively, you can take a strategic view, identifying your talents and aspirations and the career path which will honor both, planning out the steps along that path, and selecting only the opportunities that take you in the direction of your choice.

Creating your own talent management strategy is the road to career success.

Gary Speed, stress, depression and career success

Written by The Career Success Doctor

Many of us were shocked and saddened to hear of the suicide of the manager of the Welsh national football team, Gary Speed. He was 42, he’d seemed well, happy and enthusiastic about his family, his career success and the Welsh team, and yet something must have been very wrong for him. People drew parallels between his death and that of the German goalkeeper, Robert Enke.

But something positive seems to have come out of his death, too. It is reported that several top footballers have sought help for their depression in the days following his death. And it has put the question of mental health back on the agenda.

One of the questions people ask is, how can highly paid, successful sports stars, who have it all, become so miserable. I think one of the answers lies in the relationship between depression and stress.

Top competitors can be as stressed in their career as anyone. They put themselves through demanding training regimes, and many of them sacrifice their family life to the requirements of the sport as the pursue their career success. The satisfaction you can achieve when you are that focused on one thing and one thing only can be enormous. But that level of success is not always enough, and many sports people find it difficult to cope with the consequences of failure, or a dwindling career.

I have a number of friends who are musicians. Some of them have enjoyed fame and fortune in the past, then lost it. Some handle it well, while others turn to drink or drugs and become depressed because they feel as if their identity is lost, and they can’t find alternatives that fill their time or their life in the way performing to thousand of people did.

So what’s this got to do with those of us who are running the 9 to 5, then?

A lot.

Stress and career success

Stress is a complex business. We all need some level of stress to function, otherwise we wouldn’t accomplish anything, but there are good levels of stress, which keep us motivated and interested, and bad levels of stress where we go into overwhelm – the famous flight or fight response. Fight or flight is a survival mechanism: faced by a sabre toothed tiger you can fight it or run away. But the modern equivalents of sabre toothed tigers often seem inescapable, whether it is the threat of eviction because you can’t pay the rent, or the threat from the gang on the corner, or the hideously noisy neighbours, or your own health, or that of a family member. These are all things that can lead us towards depression,

And work can be a huge source of stress, as can lack of it. For many of us, when we have a job, we have an identity, a role, a structure to our lives. If we are really lucky we have work friends and a sense of doing something worthwhile. It gives us money too. One of the big challenges of redundancy or losing your job is the loss of all that. People’s confidence often takes a tumble, they don’t feel they are contributing and their lives can become lacking in structure. It’s strange, because most of us want more time for ourselves when we are working, but when we get that time we haven’t the desire to use it productively. It’s not just the economy that suffers when people lose their jobs. Their mental and physical health may deteriorate too.

And when people are made redundant and becoming depressed, that can have a huge impact on their families. Other family members may have to work extra hours to pick up the financial stress, kids get used to seeing Mum or Dad hanging around, doing very little, looking miserable, even diminishing before their eyes. Some people become angry, and either turn the anger in on themselves, or out against their family or society.

Meanwhile, those who have kept their jobs are working harder. We’ve all heard tales of people working 60 hours weeks and having no time for friends or family, of incompetent managers who don’t know how to allocate work fairly, of work-place bullying, or of an culture that manages to erode individual self-confidence without even realising it. Even people who are extremely successful in an office-based job can suffer profound stress and/or depression.

New attitudes to depression

At least there is a growing willingness to talk about depression. For example, I heard a radio programme recently where comedienne Ruby Wax was talking about a new venture she is involved in, along with the mental health charity, Sane. It’s called black dog tribe: a space where people who have been or are depressed can come together. Ruby has been working to publicise the problem for a number of years. She was involved in the BBC’s headroom project, which has just ended. Although the site says it ran for 21/2 years, I was involved in it some years before that. At one time she was something of a voice crying in the wilderness. I hope she is becoming more mainstream.

As someone who has managed to work through depression, triggered in part by workplace stress (bullying), I know the importance of talking to others and getting help. It maybe that coaching can help you. That’s particularly true if the problem is stress, rather than depression. But if you are suffering from depression, if you find yourself wondering what the point of it all is, or you’re drinking/doing drugs more than before, or you can’t stop crying, or you can’t get out of bed in the morning, or you’ve lost all hope, then get help. Black Dog Tribe launches in the New Year. They currently have a Black Dog test site up, and plan to go fully live in January. is Mental health charities like Sane, or Mind, or the Mental Health Foundation can give you information and may be able to help you find support and treatment. There is no shame in depression. It is a mental health problem, and it is as real as a broken leg.

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