Have you ever felt discriminated over your peers in your early career? Do you feel that you have fewer abilities than your peers who get mentorship from their managers? Don't you have plans to build your career on strong foundations? Do your colleagues and teammates still show mistrust and do not recognize your efforts?
In this article, all these questions are addressed in the light of a book written by Micheal C. Hyter the Founder and CEO of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC). The Power of Choice: Embracing Efficacy to Drive Your Career provides straightforward pieces of advice for navigating the challenges facing professionals who are underrepresented in the leadership of today’s organizations.
Let's begin.
By-Pass the Low Expectations
Suppose you are a fresh graduate who is attending office for the first time. You notice that you are among the peers from a minority background and a few days later your other peers get an invitation for lunch from the executives. And you are only left with little or no mentorship and coaching at work, unlike the others. Consequently, you start feeling left out. Further, if you miss a deadline, your manager rebukes you in front of everyone. You feel dejected, struggling, and begin thinking to quit.
Is it really so? Or are you caught in the downward spiral of low expectations?
To avoid being caught each time, in the lower expectations of others, you must focus on what you can control. The outcomes of your efforts are determined by the responses you make not the actions you take. The responses must focus on embracing the responsibility of your career development and expanding your vision of what you can achieve.
Consider Failure as Feedback
Think of failure as feedback on how to get better, not as a lack of ability.
Andres Ericsson, a psychologist, has noticed a pattern in the world's elite soccer players during his studies. They were born in the first three months of the year. He explained that the cutoff birthdate of youth leagues is usually December, 31. So these players are a year older than their peers born late in the year. The advantage of being born earlier, gave them physical maturity and time to learn more skills and to practice more to enhance their possibility to be selected in the most competitive teams. It concludes that even if something is a function of natural talent, is also driven by practice and effort.
Have you ever tried something new or different and failed during your initial attempts? And these failures encouraged a thought in your mind that you are not for this. This is an example of a fixed-capacity mindset - a belief of inherited limitations arising from the events of failure. This mindset inhibits our efforts to learn and grow and destroys confidence.
On the contrary, to build confidence and put your all efforts to learn and grow professionally and personally, we need another belief, a capacity-building mindset. That is to see failure as feedback on how to improve not as an indication of your potential. This mindset is absolutely critical for long-term growth and career development.
Think the Outcome First
For most of us, it is easy to confuse working hard with working effectively. While focused efforts are critically important in career development, these must also be effective. That is, every effort you put in your career should be an investment in the growth of your skills and abilities that drive your career.
Imagine that you drive your car without any destination in mind. During the whole journey, you will remain anxious and turn your vehicle on each turn on the road, thus ending up nowhere. Similarly, it will be hard to be strategic in shaping your career and garnering help from others if you do not know what do you want to achieve. So, you must have a clear idea in your mind where you want to end up in any task or your career.
Take time to form your vision on what matters to you and how would you like to spend your time. Think about your work and meetings you attend and find out what parts are satisfying to you and what parts are rewarding you in your career excellence. The more precisely you are aware of your short and long-term goals, the more clearly you would take steps to achieve those goals no matter what are the hurdles in the way.
Build Relationship Professionally
Let's imagine a situation in which you are promoted and posted in an utterly stranger city. The culture of this city is a bit different from that in your previous city where you have enjoyed life-long friendships and support. Your colleagues are still reserved even after six months, and some of your new teammates mistrust you.
What would you do? No idea! The best advice for you is that when your colleagues are not accommodating, you should reach out to them. You will have to endure the discomfort of making the first move to introduce yourself to them. It is worth taking a step to build relationships with your new team and colleagues who have different backgrounds from yours. No matter how hard you work, your colleagues must enjoy working with you if you want to be an integral part of your organization.
You can prepare the introduction in advance. You should prepare about your qualifications, experiences, the value you can add to the organization, your career interest, and personal attributes. No matter what is position of other people you are going to introduce, people mostly tend to meet interesting people. By preparing for your first impression, you can make most of the opportunities that will be available to you in the new place.
Find Common Grounds with others
To maximize the impact of relationship-building efforts, you have to be strategic. First, find the common grounds between yourself and the other person or colleague with whom you want to build a working partnership. These common grounds, apart from personal attributes, should be based on the question of why do you both need each other and what support you can offer to the other interested party.
For example, you can arrange a meeting with your manager to find out what are her expectation from you regarding the deliverables of your project. You should ask her if she is interested in the details of your project, the problem you are facing in the project, or just want the bottom line. The better you understand her working style and expectations in the project, the better will be your working relationship with her.
In a similar manner, you can connect with your colleagues. You do not have to like everything about each other. When you encounter differences you just try to reserve your judgment and focus on finding ways to connect. Trust takes time to build so keep practicing building relationships on solid and common foundations.
Participate and Voice your Opinion
The important pillar of professional development is the ability to influence. That starts with the choice to exert influence - and often, making this choice is the most difficult step especially for those who are comfortable working in the background and relying on others' ability to take decisions.
In order to take more control and to accept the responsibility of leadership, you have to work harder than your peers or fight to get heard in the first place. But if you do not speak, people will stop seeking your opinions and you start becoming invisible in your organization. To voice your opinion, study how things get done in your organization. How do effective leaders create commitment among their teams? How do they present their ideas in a way that gets approval or invites cooperation? How do they handle opposition or rejection?
Moreover, you can take your manager aside and give your opinion, offer to take over a small project, or share your point of view more regularly in meetings. Success or agreement is never guaranteed, but the power of choice is about focusing on the possibilities.
Summary
The following suggestion should be adhered to flourish in professional life either at the beginning or in the middle stage.
- Bypass the downward spiral of low expectations of your manager as it only goes down like the water slide.
- Failure is only the feedback on how to learn from it and to work more effectively than before. It is not an indicator of your limited abilities. You can enhance your skills with dedication, commitment, and consistent efforts.
- Before you want to wish for a successful career, you must think about the outcomes of the efforts you put in to attain your dream position. This will help you focus on the effectiveness of your hard work.
- The first impression is significant in your career advancement. You should be prepared for it to grab opportunities that working partnerships can bring. The important clue in this suggestion is finding the common needs that connect you with other professionals.
- The difficult part of all pieces of advice is to raise your voice and be heard despite the failures. Learn from seasoned leaders and participate in the meetings to provide your suggestions on the problems.
Share your thought with me in the comments and let me know how effective these pieces of advice have you found in your career.
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