Career Success Archives - The Career Success Doctor

Career Success And Your Area Of Expertise

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Nicola Cairncross for her podcast ‘The Business Success Factory, which you can listen to here. Nicola is an outstanding example of someone who uses podcasting (and other social media) to expand her authority as an expert.

Whether your aim is to get to the top of your profession, or to get out and start your own business, having a reputation as an authority, an expert, or the ‘go-to’ person on a particular subject is SO important. I have two areas: career success and spiritually minded business leadership. Peresonal authority, expertise and reputation is something I’m looking forward to interviewing Dan Priestley about for our upcoming Career Sizzle Summit.

Dan is a master of the art of creating that go-to presence: something he calls becoming a ‘Key Person Of Influence’.

His approach is highly structured, but if you want to start the quick and dirty way, the first step is to decide what your chosen area of expertise is. It may already be glaringly obvious, but if it isn’t, then it’s time to look inside yourself, and find out what it is. The Strengths and Weaknesses exercise in my free download, ‘How To Get The Success And Recognition You Deserve’ is an excellent starting point.

Once you have your area of expertise, it’s time to decide how to bottle it, package it, and let people know about it, and you. As women we’re terribly good at hiding our light under a bushel, but from a career perspective this doesn’t actually serve us.

Time to get started!

45 Pieces Of Advice For Career Success

Written by Natalia

Career success is the number one goal for most professionals. Whether they are lower-level employees, members of the C-suite, or even entrepreneurs, what they want –what we all want actually- is to be successful at what we do.

That could mean earn that promotion we’re after, a pay raise, increase our sales, generate more leads… and the list goes on.

Sometimes, when we have to make choices or just need help to stay focused, a piece of advice can be truly beneficial.

What about a few more pieces? These nice folks on ‘The Daily Muse’ have compiled a list of 45 pieces of advice for achieving career success. Organised in 5 categories, you will find quotes of many successful people who are sharing their wisdom. There is always something new to learn!

“When it comes to your career, sometimes it feels like you could use all the advice you can get. From picking the “right” career to actually excelling in it, there’s certainly a lot to learn.

And that’s why we’ve gathered our all-time best career advice. From starting out at the bottom of the totem pole to advancing to a more senior position to—who knows?—maybe even branching out to open your own business, we’ve collected 45 of the best tips for whatever stage you’re at in your career.”

Read the whole article here “45 Pieces of Career Advice That Will Get You to the Top”

Who am I to be compared to Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Michelle Bruno, Kathleen Tierney or any other professional in this list… but, if I were to add a piece of my own, that would be these two words: “Under-promise, Over-deliver”.

What was the best piece of career advice you have ever received? If someone asked for your advice on achieving career success, what would that be?

Today’s Professional Woman Report: Career Success Is A Moving Target

Written by Natalia

Yesterday, Citi and LinkedIn released the results of their fourth annual survey “Today’s Professional Woman Report“.

This year’s survey was conducted among a sample of more than 1000 professional women and men, and -like every year- it was inspired by discussions on Citi’s LinkedIn Group “Connect: Professional Women’s Network“.

The results indicate that career satisfaction is a moving target and the definition of career success is changing. See the infographic below for details.

The key finding of this study is that career success doesn’t necessarily mean happiness, as most professionals believe that their career will peak in the next 2 to 20 years (depending on their current age), but the happiest point in their career was several years ago.

On the question about when they think their career will peak, most professional women replied at the age of 53, while men expect to reach the peak at the age of 55.

Grouping by generation, Millennials expect to reach the top at the age of 43 and their happiest point was at the age of 28. Baby Boomers on the other hand, believe their career peak will be at 62, while their happiest moment was at 49.

Here’s what Linda Descano, CFA®, President and CEO of Women & Co., said about these results: “The survey illustrates that career satisfaction and success are not just end goals – they’re both moving targets.”

On another note, while only a 17% defined career progress as a salary increase, 58% of men and 52% of women equal career satisfaction with a “good salary”. – For women it was equally important to doing what they love and being challenged.

Furthermore, women were asked a series of questions about their financial and career concerns. The good news is that financial issues are less of a concern for women this year. Compared to Today’s Professional Woman Report of 2013, the number of women who were concerned with paying off student loans has dropped from 46% to 35%, with saving for retirement from 56% to 46%, and with paying off credit card debt from 35% to 30%.

When they were asked what the most significant indicator of women’s progress in the workplace would be, 1/3 said “elimination of the gender wage gap”. Men replied “the end of the need for the ‘women in the workplace’ conversation”, and 31% of women agreed.

On achieving goals, 37% of women said they achieved their professional goals this year and 84% of the ones who asked for a raise last year, received it.

What do you value most to feel satisfied with your career?

Today’s Professional Woman Report Infographic:

Today's Professional Woman Report, June 2014

Infographic source: Women & Co. blog
Data source: Press Release

Self-Deceit : How To Sabotage your Career Success and Happiness

Written by The Career Success Doctor

If you read the biographies of successful women from Sheryl Sandberg to Karren Brady, there are various common themes that emerge. The one I’m interested in here is the sense of feeling a fraud. These ares seriously successful women who questioned whether they deserved to be in the positions they have achieved, because they have learned to tell themselves a story that women don’t deserve to be taken seriously or to reach the highest level.

For years I used to deceive myself about who I was and what I wanted out of my life. I had some great stories I told myself about all the things I couldn’t do, particularly because I was a woman. And it was less than empowering! I totally believed them, and they shaped my identity. The classic one was to tell myself I didn’t have enough qualifications. It’s only now, with 5 degrees including a PhD that I realise it was never about the qualifications!

Men do it too; it’s not the preserve of women. However, women are notoriously bad at asking for a pay rise or a promotion, and their confidence levels in the workplace tend to be lower than those of men.

What these stories do for us is to protect us. We keep ourselves safe by keeping ourselves small. We tell ourselves our stories over and over again, so making them true. The problem then is that we don’t step out our comfort zone, and we don’t achieve the real greatness we are capable of. We don’t achieve the happiness we want, let alone the career success.

I just watched an excellent TEDx talk from Cortney Warren on this very subject. She’s a psychologist who has researched extensively into the subject of self-deceit, and the video makes for a very enlightening 15 minutes’ viewing.

What are the stories you have used to protect yourself and hold yourself back? Leave a comment in the box below.

And if your stories are still keeping your life smaller than you wantl, and you’d like to change them, please get in touch.

Success And Happiness: What Is The Connection? Which Comes First?

Written by Natalia

If you have attended our free webinar “How To Have A Career That Really Works For You”, you already know the truth about success and happiness and how they are connected.

The fact is that it doesn’t apply to career success only, but in every aspect of your life, as well.

So, what’s the connection between success and happiness? Which comes first?

We all have heard phrases like “If only I could get a raise! Then I would be happy”. Chances are we have all made similar thoughts.

We are raised to believe that if we succeed, then we will be happy. And every time we achieve our goal, we make a new one. And we convince ourselves that once we achieve that one too, then happiness is ours! And this goes on and on forever.

But that’s a myth! The truth is exactly the opposite: Happiness leads to success! You will be successful, if you have joy and positivity in your life. You might achieve success when you are unhappy, but it won’t last. Sustainable success comes from happiness.

Lenka Lutonska in her article in ‘Advantage Woman’, discusses the same topic and provides some facts based on scientific studies about how happiness drives success in every part of our lives.

– Journals from a convent of 180 nuns showed that the nuns who shared joyful content lived nearly 10 years longer than the nuns whose entries were negative or neutral
– Unhappy employees take 1.25 sick days per month or 15 extra sick days per year
– Happy people make 37% more sales
– Happiness increases productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%.

When we are happy, our brain becomes more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, healthier, resilient and productive. We attract effortlessly good things, people and circumstances into our lives, and achieve our goals – big or small – with ease.

Read the whole article here: “Success or Happiness – Which Comes First?”

Shawn Achor, the CEO of Good Think Inc. and the author of two best-sellers -“Happiness Advantage” and “Before Happiness”-, spent over a decade researching and lecturing at Harvard University on positive psychology and the connection between success and happiness.

According to Shawn, happiness leads to long-term quantifiable positive change. In his article for CNN, “Is happiness the secret of success?” he states:

“Scientifically, happiness is a choice. It is a choice about where your single processor brain will devote its finite resources as you process the world. If you scan for the negative first, your brain literally has no resources left over to see the things you are grateful for or the meaning embedded in your work. But if you scan the world for the positive, you start to reap an amazing advantage.”

To find out more about this research, I encourage you to watch his popular TED Talk “The happy secret to better work” on the video below.

If 75% of job successes are predicted by our optimism levels and our brain at positive performs significantly better, then the first thing we should do in order to be successful, is to get our state of mind right.

As the psychologist says, “your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we’ve found is that every single business outcome improves”.

Now that we’ve learnt how happiness and success are connected, and that happiness actually fuels success, the next step is to change our mindset.

.
If you need any help on what to do to change your mindset, claim your spot on our free webinar.