The Career Success Doctor

The Career Success Doctor guides talented professional women to career success

Keys to Career Success: Mastermind Groups

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One of the challenges in creating success in anything in life, including your career, is the pain of doing it on your own.  It can be hard to stay focused, motivated and self-disciplined.  It can also be very lonely.  One solution is to create a Mastermind Group – a mutual support group of people who come together from time to time to help one another achieve their dreams.

The idea goes back to Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich.  Bill George, the Authentic Leadership man, talks about a group that he has been in for years.  The great things nowadays is that you can meet your mastermind buddies virtually – you don’t have to all be in the same city at the same time.

Different people run their groups in different ways.  I was a member of a Mastermind Group for a number of years.  (We called it an Action Learning Set, but to be honest the purpose is the same).  It was so helpful for me in developing my coaching business, particularly the way I think about what I do, how to deal with challenging issues, and how to market my business.  In this case all the members of the group were coaches, but we could have had a mix of small business people.

Here’s a really excellent article I came across which cover the topic in some depth.   How To Run a Mastermind Group  Says it all, really.

Why You Should Keep Your Knowledge Up-to-Date

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When you are applying for a new job, it’s really important that you can demonstrate that you keep your knowledge up-to-date.  With some professions, it’s mandatory.  Most professional bodies make annual training a condition of membership, and offer a range of courses to help you.

But what if you aren’t a member of a professional membership organisation?  Why should you bother?  Isn’t that your employer’s responsibility?

Well, firstly, it’s your employer’s responsibility to ensure you have the knowledge you need to do the job you are doing.  Usually they do this by sending you on training courses, or giving you a mentor, or getting you to work alongside someone who knows what they are doing.  They may have you do the work, which someone then checks until they feel you are fully competent (often known as ‘on-the-job training’).  It’s in the employer’s interests that you have the skills and knowledge you need in order to do your job well.

Many employers understand the benefit of expanding the skills and knowledge of their employees, so they will invest in career development, whether it’s sending you on a training course, or paying for a course you want to go on, or allowing you to ‘shadow’ someone doing a more senior job, or a different job from yours.

The problem comes when you want to get promoted, or to find a new job some where else, and you don’t have the skills and knowledge required.  In the case of promotion within the organisation, your boss might be persuaded to provide the training you need.  If you are looking outside the organisation, then it is down to you.

The most successful people tend to be those who are willing to pay for their own career development if they can’t get help from their employer.  It’s one of the keys to landing your dream job or dream career.  They may pay with time – for instance taking on a volunteer role where they can develop a missing skill-set.  One client of mine wanted to develop her finance skills, so, after reading some books on the subject, she volunteered to help the treasurer at her local church to give her some practical experience.

Other people pay with money. For example, when I knew I wanted to have my own business, I took holiday and paid for my own NLP training.  It wasn’t cheap, but it certainly paid off over the long term.  Most of my private clients pay for coaching out of their own pocket, because they understand how it can help them get where they want to be more quickly.

If you’re about to go job-hunting, look at the adverts to see what skills and knowledge employers are wanting in the field you are interested in.  Take some time to assess yourself honestly.  If you haven’t got the right mix of skills and knowledge, or they are out-of-date, think about how you can upgrade them.  Be willing to be really creative in thinking about how you can get access to the training and/or experience you need.

Does a shorter working week make for sustainability?

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There’s a lot of talk going on in UK just now about the shorter working week, and whether it might contribute to sustainability.  It’s partly down to a report produced by the think-tank, nef (new economics foundation – trendy in lower letters!). The Independent Newspaper  kindly boils the report down to half a page.

The general argument is that in the UK we work harder than many of our European colleagues. Not as hard as folks in the US, but hard. Harder than we were 30 years ago, apparently.  The nef thinks that a move down to a 21-hour working week would be a Good Thing For The Planet.  By earning less, we would consume less, which must be good for the planet.

In my role as an executive coach, I meet many high flying executives who work very long hours.  I also meet some who don’t.  Yet the ones who work shorter hours are just as ‘successful’ (depending on how you define success) as those who work longer hours.

Among successful executives, some work hard because they feel they ‘should’.  The organisation expects it of them.  Some work hard because they love what they do.  And for some, work is a better alternative than going home to a lonely house/an angry partner/howling kids or some other unwanted alternative.  And a few work hard because they or they families are rampant consumers.

My own take on this is that if people are loving what they do, then why shouldn’t they do it?  The problems arise when people are forced to work long hours, or they think they should for fear of losing their job or of failing or of falling down the economic pan.  For those who stay at work because it is better than the alternative, the brutal answer is ‘sort your life out’, because come retirement day there’s a risk life really will lose all meaning.

Tim Ferris’ excellent book ‘The Four Hour Working Week’ really turns the idea of the 40 hour working week on its head.  Even if you don’t subscribe to his thinking, it’s worth a read to see what is possible.

Of course, it’s very easy to talk about the need to return to a shorter working week if you can still earn enough to feed your family.  But even in London, where some of the richest people in the world hang out, there are a huge number of people who are living on the poverty line.  Those who are working struggle to find anything that pays a living wage.  Under 16 hours a week and you can claim income support ( of course, I’m grossly simplifying the rules of a complex system).

But there are plenty of people who have gone from poverty to riches, from working all their waking hours to a 16-20 hour week or even less.  And a lot of them have done it by becoming internet marketers.