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FranklinCovey Blog | November, 2009
Great Work, Great Career Q&A – part 1
Q: We had a lot of questions on the Great Work, Great Career webcast about having a personal brand. Some asked for more information. Others wanted to know how the idea of branding yourself works in our interdependent reality and how it aligns with collaboration and teamwork.
A: A “brand” is being known for something. You might be known in your organization or to a small group in your industry, or more broadly, to the websphere. As you know from a product focus, the most important thing to strive for in a product brand is trust in the brand. I believe the same is true for personal brand. There are many reasons this concept of personal branding has grown in importance. In the knowledge age, I can’t rely on your job title to tell me what problems you can solve, you have to tell me or build a reputation (brand). In order to gain any mindshare, you must be able to succinctly represent yourself because the rate of information has accelerated. Also, while face-to-face networking will never go away, I would suggest social networking gains in importance every year and without the nonverbal cues from face-to-face, who you are needs to be very clear on the web or your network will get confused.
Of course, individual brand is an independent concept. It is what “I” am known for. And I am suggested that your brand is in NO WAY a manipulative spin on who you are. It is, instead, communicating who you are. It does no good to your career if you have deep technical skills and have led projects resulting in cost savings and increases in employee loyalty if no one knows about it. In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Covey explains how interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. This is really important: Only by knowing myself—my talents, passions, and vision—and by taking responsibility for my choices regardless of the difficulty of the situation—only then am I capable of building win-win relationships and collaborating to resolve difficult challenges. The confidence in self, my deeply rooted worth, allows me to be open and curious on the surface of my life. I don’t have to be right all the time because my self-worth isn’t tied to being right or “winning.” I’m much more curious, knowing that I don’t know everything about anything.
If you get stuck in independence and don’t progress to interdependence, you might be effective in building a career, but you won’t be highly effective.
How do you use social networking to grow your personal brand?
What steps have you take to progress to interdependence?
We would love to hear from you.
Author: Jennifer Colosimo, Chief Learning Officer at FranklinCovey
Time Management: Getting Back to the Basics
On November 18, 2009, Sue Shellenbarger, Work and Family Columnist with The Wall Street Journal, featured FranklinCovey’s time management workshop, FOCUS: Achieving Your Highest Priorities in her column entitled, “No Time to Read This, Read This.”
She said “FOCUS . . . helps users jettison busywork and wasted time and devote themselves to their most valued pursuits.” She said she found she was spending one-third of her time on unimportant stuff. To fix that, she spent a half-hour in a planning session to identify her values, roles in life and associated goals – those things most important to her. She blocked out time in advance to pursue them and entered tasks day-by-day on her calendar, prioritizing them based on importance. › Continue reading
Building Trust
I was in a meeting earlier this week with 20 people from around the world and the strangest feeling came over me. I trusted everyone in the room—their intent, their integrity, and their ability to deliver.
Maybe this happens to you all the time. Maybe if I were quicker to extend trust it would happen more often to me. But as it currently stands, sometimes I feel like I don’t know enough about a person—their character and competence—to trust. Sometimes a person has behaved in ways that have broken trust. Regardless, it is rare for me to trust an entire room full of people. And it felt great! You’ll laugh, but I felt tears spring to my eyes when I thought about it. It didn’t mean I agreed with them on everything or that the meeting was easy, but things were easier to achieve because I assumed good intent.
I had worked with everyone in that room for at least three years and with some for over a decade. I trusted them because they had kept commitments, they had talked to me straight, and they all delivered results. Does this happen to you often? Or never? What else builds trust for Executive Mamas?
Author: Jennifer Colosimo, Chief Learning Officer at FranklinCovey
Great Work Great Career – Complimentary Webcast
When we say that a person has had a great career, what do we mean? That he or she made a lot of money? Moved spectacularly up the corporate ladder? Became famous or renowned in their profession?
And what about you? Are you looking forward to a great career? Would you describe your current career as “great”?
How do you create a great career for yourself? Can you have a great career and still have a great life at the same time, keeping the things you love – family, friends, work, and play – all in balance?
The answer is, “It depends.” It depends on how you want to contribute and how you define balance.
Based on content featured in the soon to be released book Great Work, Great Career, by Dr. Stephen R. Covey and Jennifer Colosimo, in this webcast Jennifer will share critical, insightful principles and practices to help you discover your great career by discovering what your contribution will be and how you will make it.
Specifically in this free webcast you will learn:
- How to begin identify your strengths, as summed up by your talents, passion, and conscience.
- Tips on how to craft a Contribution Statement.
- How to use your resourcefulness and initiative to get the job you want and overcome obstacles to making your contribution.
- How to create a network of supporters, both co-workers and clients—who can help you achieve your career goals.
When: Friday, November 20, 2009
Time: 1:00 p.m. ET/12:00 p.m. CT/11:00 a.m. MT/10:00 a.m. PT
Cost: Complimentary
Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/198135273
Source Code: GCCB
Please join us, we would love to have you attend.
Doing More with Less
Does this sound familiar…
“I work at a Fortune 500 company. Each year we have layoffs so more work is given to each of us; no pay increase. This additional work adds 5-10 hours per week. Last year I averaged 60-70 per week and am working more this year.”
“I have worked in Manufacturing for nearly 30 years. Our plant had 4000 employees when I started. Today we have 187 people left, 72 of them are on the executive team. We are expected to come to work an hour early, work through lunch and stay two hours late everyday.”
“I work as a Web Producer for a publishing company. Over the past 6mo. they’ve laid off 50% of our staff. . . . So, now we’re stuck with a limited staff, each one doing 2-3 times as much work, most of which we’re not qualified or experienced in.”
These actual postings from www.cnn.money illustrate one of the key hazards of these unpredictable times: Trying to do more with less. Of course, the concept is a virtuous one—everyone wants to get more return from fewer resources. That’s what productivity is all about.
But real people are paying a real price for unintelligent application of this principle.
The problem is too many companies lay people off and then expect the survivors to pick up the slack, doing two or three jobs at once. The obvious downside is spikes in stress, burnout, quality problems, and disengagement. You can’t expect overwhelmed people to do quality work or to get engaged in what they’re doing.
Everyone wants to do more with less. But the real question is “more of what”? More of the same? Or more of the kind of work that your customers really value?
In our recent book we focus hard on this question. The turmoil we live in is displacing workers in unprecedented ways, and companies are paying a heavy price for mindlessly shedding numbers without re-thinking the business model. Service levels drop, quality plummets, and revenues slide.
On an airliner, serving peanuts to everyone might be in the flight attendant’s job description. But in turbulent air, you really don’t care if the flight attendant does that job. It’s not as important as caring for the safety and well-being of the passengers. Maybe you can do without serving peanuts for a while.
Isn’t it time to stop asking people to do the impossible by trying to work two or three jobs at once? Isn’t it time to push the re-set button and ask what work really adds value and forget the rest?
We’d like to hear from you. Are you trying to do “more with less”? Are you like the people we’ve quoted above? Or are you doing more of what really matters and less of what doesn’t?