I have a different approach!

What makes you unique should be something so central to your value proposition that you MUST know what that is. This concept does not just apply to fresh graduates, but to everyone who is managing their career or life, in this job market or not! If you do not know (and this is the norm) what your uniqueness is, then you must discover what that is, own it, and learn how to verbalize it in a compelling way on your résumé with supreme confidence. So, how do you find out your unique gifts and how do you build a credible value proposition that is the centerpiece of your résumé?

Our uniqueness stems from our innate gifts that allow us to do things in ways that clearly differentiate us from others. I call those gifts our genius. The dictionary definition of genius is, the tutelary or attendant spirit in classical pagan belief allotted to every person at birth, or to a place, institution, etc. that gives it special powers and protection. So, there is both, good genius (A Picasso) and evil genius (A Charles Manson) as either of the two mutually opposed spirits or angels supposed to attend each person. Hence, genius is a person or thing that powerfully influences another with the power of this spirit. Talent, on the other hand, is something that evolves from applying efforts to grow in a particular way (musical talent, artistic talent, etc.).

In this blog we are going to explore how to discover your genius and how to verbalize it in your message to differentiate yourself in a crowded market. I call it your verbal brand. Since your genius is a tutelary spirit that is always present to protect you, it allows you to create outcomes that have an immediate Aha! to it. It is this Aha! that gives us the window to discover our own genius.

So, how do we uncover our genius, given this genius and its Aha! connection?

One way is to reflect back in your various past efforts that have resulted in outcomes that created those Aha!s. You do not need to ask others what they were, but you know within yourself that when you worked on something and created an outcome that there was that inescapable Aha! Once you are able to see these episodes clearly, then you can classify them in different categories and find a way to verbalize them. This is how you verbalize your genius. Your genius is thus a cluster of a few unique skills that are crisply verbalized to appeal to the reader.

When these unique skills are showcased on your résumé, they must be packaged to align with your intended job pursuits. So, having a way to artfully verbalize these unique skills, torqued in the direction of the job’s needs is the important first step in building a strongly branded résumé. The reader of your résumé can now relate to how you create value in the context that they are looking for, because now it becomes manifestly obvious to this reader. All of this can sound simple, but it is not easy!

Why?

We live with our genius every day. So, to step back and to look at how we create those Aha!s in our everyday pursuits is something that needs special effort to objectify it in ways that becomes easily owned and communicated. One way is to write stories of our accomplishments in a detailed format. In one of my previous blogs I talked about your leadership narrative (So, What is Your Leadership Narrative, blog of July 18). We must learn how to narrate our story of a leadership success. Once that story is verbalized it is much easier to extract your genius from that story so that you can own it. This is the hard part of the entire process. Because we live with our genius every day it is hard for us to see it. It is these stories or leadership narratives that allow us to peek into that window to give us the insights we need about verbalizing our genius.

Most spend a few hours crafting their résumé to look pretty and to capture their stints, sometimes even their accomplishments. Many often seek the help of a professional résumé writer to make their résumé more presentable. No amount of money you can pay to such a writer will get you that insight about your own genius unless you do your own story telling and go through this trouble to extracting your genius as we discussed here. Writing a genius-based résumé is much harder and takes much longer. But, once this process is conquered your verbal branding will be much stronger and highly differentiated. Once you own this outcome you do not have to rely on others, including your mother, to tell you what your genius is!

Good luck!

This blog upends that admonition and makes a case for you to be happy where you are, but to be impatient about the change that you want to make, first starting with yourself!

In this context one of my clients recently came to see me and to tell me how bad her manager was and how there was no growth opportunity in her group. She also surmised that despite being a part of a high-visibility group at this blockbuster company, there was no place to grow. Her company had broken every sales record in the past decade and its stock had taken an over twenty-fold hike in the same period.

After exploring further we both quickly realized that the change that she was seeking was not needed from the outside (a promotion, a new assignment, new co-workers), but from within her own self. This is where one of the Gandhi’s famous quotes about change hits home, Be the change in the world that you wish to see!

Within the span of our session we both realized that, yes, she was getting bored with her routine at work and not having any challenges to conquer in the way her work was structured. Her boss, who was a strict command-and-control micro-manager, further compounded this. So, she started losing patience and was increasingly feeling unhappy about her job and about her overall situation. She was beginning to question her career choice.

After some discussion we agreed that if she now made a change to her external environment (new job, new assignment, new boss) then she is likely to repeat this pattern after that new environment became a routine once again, just as the current one did. Without changing her basic view of how she deals with her environment and reframing it, we both agreed that there was no sense in making a change in her external environment. So, we agreed to the following plan, which was both practical and was driven by her own desire to change, not by some outside agent that would want her to be patient to see that change. The strategy was to create and find happiness within her own environment by making a change, but to make the necessary change on her own terms, not someone else’s:

1. Identify top three development needs that she could pursue on her own to improve her overall effectiveness as a professional, who is getting ready for a higher leadership responsibility. She identified those three areas as: Better communication, improving her own work environment, and connecting with new people.
   • For improving her communication she agreed to join the local Toastmasters club and actively participate to learn good communication skills.
   • For improving her work environment, she agreed to make a list of special projects that would help those working in her group to improve their productivity and output. She was confident that once her manager saw that list that he would suggest the priorities in which she should prosecute those projects and support her pursuits. Since this was work beyond her assigned duties, she could pace it as time allowed and as her own interests drove the effort.
   • Since she felt stagnant with the friends that surrounded her, she agreed to make new friends by frequently visiting the company cafeteria during lunch, instead of eating alone every day at her desk. She also agreed to be open to connecting with those attending her Toastmasters group to expand her circle of friends.
2. Start writing stories of her accomplishments for her résumé to realize how much she had contributed to the success of her team and her organization. Her current résumé showed many bullets in a very dry, factual, and transactional way. They lacked any juicy story that excited and intrigued its reader. By moving the focus from writing a one-line bullet for each task, to writing a short story (3-4 lines of leadership narrative) would create a new energy around her message. Having such a résumé would invigorate her to undertake even bigger tasks to pursue what is listed in #1b, above. These tasks would now also provide further ammunition for her résumé, making it even more powerful.
3. Change the mode of working on a task in her current role from mere order taking to proactively seeking the assignments that added value to her organization. This was going to require more insight and initiative, but she agreed to this mode of taking on new tasks.
4. Provide mentoring and guidance to those in her group that would benefit from it. Even though she had no one reporting to her, her natural inclination was to share her expertise and to make things better; the very reason she came to seek my advice. Taking that a step further, if she could mentor more junior members in her team her role would become more valuable to the manager, the team, and the organization.
5. Send emails to the manager reporting the progress on special projects and seeking his guidance in critical areas. This would keep her both visible to her manager and on a growth track.

We often surrender our plight to many external forces as this client did. If she had changed her job or transferred to another group or company, without making the changes to her own style of working, in just a few years, we could have had another conversation, very similar to the one that started this chain, because nothing fundamentally was changed. When you start the change from within, the change you really seek comes naturally and a lot sooner than you realize. Here, now, you are in charge!

So, find happiness where you are and be impatient with the rate of change, by first starting the change within yourself.

Good luck!

When an individual contributor is promoted to become a first-level manager that change signifies a profound shift in how one needs to manage their work from then on!

Why?

An individual contributor is acknowledged for excellence in their work by promoting them to a first-level manager. The company’s management is granting this rare reward because it sees the individual contributor’s value and their management potential. The person getting this promotion is not entirely sure of what that entails other than knowing that suddenly they will be responsible for managing the work output of those reporting to them, a first experience that is not grounded in any preparation other than perhaps remotely watching their own manager and others around them as to what is expected of them as managers. Most newly promoted first-level managers are under the misapprehension that since they have been promoted for their great individual contributions they must do more of the same to be seen as doing well as a manager in their new role. Since no one has told them what the functions of a manager are they assume that other than directing their subordinates on how they should do their work there is nothing different about doing management work to do well in that role!

They are dead wrong!

For starters, there is no correlation between management work and the work of someone as an individual contributor. A manager is expected to perform four functions of management:

Lead,

Organize,

Plan, and

Set up Controls.

Each of these functions, in turn, has a number of activities that fall under them. For example, Lead subsumes under it: recruiting and developing new talent, communicating, initiating change, motivating people under you, making decisions, among others. Other three also have their own tasks that, together, make an articulate and inseparable system.

The only place where an individual contributor’s technical work is relevant in a manager’s role is in making the right work assignment (the “what” and the “who”) and evaluating the work done by their subordinates (using Controls and objectively measuring their output). This does not require that the manager re-do the work already done by their subordinates so that it looks like what the manager might have done as an individual contributor, but to check for its accuracy and quality, providing constructive feedback to improve the skill levels of those who report to them. Not knowing this, many first-level managers often roundly pan the work done by their subordinates and then spend wasteful time redoing it the way they might have done it; all of this without adding any value to the process! In fact by so doing, they suck the very oxygen from the process that grows the team and to create an environment of positive leadership. Since a first-level manager is responsible for several individual contributors the amount of time they need to spend to re-do everyone’s work (unnecessarily) is inestimably large. Also, in the process of doing this they have not only alienated their team, but have also created a morale problem.

What a manager should do, instead, is set parameters around the work their subordinates do (Lead, set up Controls) and create clear expectations about how that work will be evaluated (Plan, Organize), holding them accountable and giving them feedback to improve their skills (Set up Controls, Lead). Shifting one’s mindset to apply your energies in new direction (from an individual contributor to a manager expected to perform these four management functions) requires a disciplined mind and shifted perspective, which is not always easy to come for someone who has never done this before. Herein lies the rub for most first-level manager’s leadership growth: How does one quickly shift their outlook from doing hands-on work to setting up ways to get this work done by others without your having to redo it? How do you inspire others to do better than they would do on their own, without redoing what they do? This is at the heart of what a first-level (or any level) manager must do.

So, here is my prescription for new first-level managers and their bosses to become effective managers:

1. Understand the difference between management work and technical work
2. Understand the four functions of management and what their breakdown tasks are
3. Find the balance between the technical and management work you must do at your level. The balance shifts in the direction of more management work as you move up the chain.
4. Do the work that only you can do and delegate all other work
5. Shift your focus from “right,” “wrong,” to understanding the context and from shepherding technical minutia to managing relationships.
6. Understand how to manage upwards and maintain a good balance between managing upwards and downwards
7. Hold people clearly accountable. Those who consistently fall short must be removed from your team (even terminated) to keep the team morale high.
8. Seek feedback from those around you (360 degrees) and learn how to become an effective leader. Not all managers are effective leaders. Management is not merely barking orders and punishing people. If you understand the four functions of management you are half-way there!
9. Get help from others who are seen as good managers and see if you can develop your own management style.
10. Understand the difference between leadership and management and keep working at being an effective manger until you get it!

Good luck!

Most prospects and some clients often approach me and ask why they are not able to get any upward movement in their careers. Those out of work think that it is the job market, those stuck in their careers think that it is the internal politics, and others simply wait for their manager to promote them when the timing is right! In the last instance, frequently, their manager goes away in a year or so and that cycle begins all over again, often thwarted by the new manager’s bringing their own protégé with them!

In most cases the simple reason for this cycle of hard work, promises of advancement, and new manager (or being suddenly laid-off) continues and many professionals surrender to this reality by blaming everything external to their plight: bad economy, cutbacks, bad manager, too much politics, and bad timing! Although some of their reasoning has merit, most get sidelined for reasons entirely created by their own handling of their career and how they project their message of leadership through their work, résumé, and their everyday behaviors at work.

Let me explain:

As an employee of your company you have an obligation to create value for your company and grow in the process. This growth, in turn, creates greater value for your company, creating a virtuous cycle. This does not mean that you must get increasingly more challenging tasks or greater responsibility to demonstrate your potential. What it does mean, however, is that you show initiative in understanding your own mission for continually creating greater value for your group, department, the organization, and ultimately, your company. This requires that you not merely take orders from your manager to comply with each order, but that you show initiative to descry what is not happening around you and find avenues to make that happen. This undone or ignored work must connect to improving the customer experience, making things better in your own organization, or advancing the state of knowledge in your area of work. This is what leadership is and this is what one is expected to do; not just do the work from your Job Description!

Now, once you are able to change your mindset to understand your responsibility to create greater value for your organization, that accomplishment must be presented in a narrative that captures your leadership and shows how you think, how you find opportunities, and how you deliver value above and beyond your mission. This, now, becomes your leadership narrative. Without this leadership narrative, you are just a cog in the wheel and are there at your place of work for a paycheck!  Looking at the above definition of “narrative,”  having this story with a constant thread of insightful actions stemming from how you see your work, not as merely following orders your manager gives, but as an endless mission of creating increasingly greater value to please the customer (or to please yourself if you do not have a direct customer connection).

So, what are some of the behaviors you must embrace to be able to showcase your leadership narrative in your own everyday work? Here are some suggestions:

1. Understand what business your company is in and how that translates into the work that your immediate work group does. Find out how what you can do makes a difference to the end user or customer. The answer to this question may not always come as doing more work faster, but as doing different work differently! Find a greater purpose in your own area of work.
2. Look at what you do and find out new avenues to do that work. Look at the workflow and see how the input and the output from where you sit affect those at the two ends of the mini-supply chain. Reach out on both sides and see if you can optimize that loop.
3. See what your group is struggling with in everyday work. If it requires a new process, take it on as an assignment; if it entails approaching someone higher-up to get them to rethink what has already been decided, then learn how to get your point across and influence their thinking to make a change; if it is miscommunication between groups find out ways to create a better communication process. The opportunities are endless!
4. When looking for opportunities for improvement start with the ones that affect what you do the most. That way you can claim a bullet about that in your résumé. A bullet that reads, Discovering that analyzing field failure data took too long to incorporate that into the ongoing design improvements for the next product release, decided to go to the source and gave Field Engineers an online method of capturing data, eliminating the paper entries, and making each entry available in real-time, will put a shine on your otherwise dull résumé! Similar bullets with such stories will now make up for a strong leadership narrative.
5. One way to motivate your actions is to foreordain a bullet on your résumé and then take on that task to honor your commitment to yourself.
6. Frequently meet with your manager and review your “above-and-beyond” contributions, so that they are aware of your value. Also, send out an email to those that matter touting your accomplishments. If such emails are written in recognition of the work others did to support your cause it becomes politically more acceptable and those who helped you will get due credit in the management’s eyes. Remember, the real hero here is YOU!
7. Compare your résumé with those of your peers (especially those seen as stars) and see how your narrative compares with theirs. If you cannot compete with their formidable, raw talent and the depth of their technical contribution, trump them with your perspicacious business outlook and value added to it by improving how things happen! If you do not have access to their résumé, looking up their LinkedIn Profile can be an acceptable proxy to this. Always keep your LinkedIn Profile current.
8. Look for the job description for next level of promotion and try to bring that language in your résumé as you do your current job. It is much easier for your manager to champion you if you are already performing at a level where the opening lies or can be created to accommodate your desire to get promoted.
9. Always keep yourself marketable and become a passive candidate. Manage your LinkedIn Profile and spruce it up with strong Recommendations from those that matter.
10. Do not get too attached to your own job. If you follow this approach you’ll become highly marketable as you do your everyday work, without even having to look for another job to get yourself promoted!

Good luck!

So, regardless of your current status what are some of the mistakes to avoid in conducting a productive job search? Here is a list that I have compiled directly from my experience working with clients during the past year. Not all clients sought my advice from the get-go; many experiences came out of their frustration from being out of work too long, or for getting stuck in a particular stage of the hiring process—many interviews but no offer!

1. A Generalized Résumé: Many take the easy way out by creating a generalized message for various job categories that they can pursue. Each category of jobs must have a unique résumé that showcases your value in the strongest way you can articulate. Do not insert factitious words in the Keywords section of your résumé just to get past the screening. It is best to have the Keywords as a part of your narrative throughout your résumé. Also, use variants of the same words to get through this screening process: Project Management, Program Management, and Project Lead, as an example.
2. A Mundane Cover Letter: I strongly recommend writing a cover letter when applying for an “A” job or company. The most common mistake applicants make is to repeat what is in their résumé and the job description to make it easier to submit the cover letter. A cover letter must show some deep and studied insights about the job, the company, and the challenge it faces in today’s environment. This takes time and is not always easy.
3. A Shotgun Campaign: This is where you respond to any job that remotely corresponds to what you do with a generic résumé, hoping someone will call you. Your campaign must be well designed with a clear understanding of who the “A,” “B,” and “C” targets are.
4. Not Following-up: If you are responding to an “A” target with a great message (résumé and cover letter) find ways to get your message in front of the hiring manager through some clever means. Find a friend or someone (do they get a referral bonus?) who can do that for you and then get the hiring manager’s name to call for a follow-up. I have written extensively in my blogs (and YouTube postings) about how to follow-up without coming across as a stalker. Use these methods.
5. Unprepared Interviews: Most go through these interviews only occasionally in their careers. So, do not assume that you can finesse them without good practice and some coaching. Find someone to video record you doing an interview and catch your own mistakes as you watch yourself on the screen.
6. Acting Anxious/Desperate: Being out of work is difficult, so any chance to face an interview is a tempting opportunity to hurry-up the process and to get to the offer stage. Ease-up and show your confidence in how you come across. It is quite easy to sense the anxiety and desperation even though you may do your best to stifle it. Certain degree of being nervous is normal, but do not let that translate into any other behavior that will not serve you!
7. Discussing Salary/Title Prematurely: If the interview train is gathering speed, do not rush to discuss salary or title until they are ready to do so. Here again, do not throw out a number to show them your confidence or value (as you see it). Once the interview screening is coming to an end the question of salary will come up. This also means that they are ready to move to an offer stage. Here it is best to first find out what role (title) you would be playing in the new job. Then asking about the range for that job is a good start. DO NOT ever lie about your current salary, but negotiate what you want in the new job, based on the value you create.
8. Not Sending Thank-you Notes: Sending these notes (email or otherwise) allows you an opportunity to clear up any misapprehension that may come out of the interview discussion. Also, very few people know how to write impactful notes, so if you can write a good thank-you note, it is one more arrow in your quiver!
9. Abandoning Your Campaign: This is the most detrimental step to concluding your campaign successfully. The best strategy is to organize your campaign so that you have three-four targets where you are interviewing during your final stages of the campaign. With this approach you can easily parlay the advanced stage of one target into generating action with others. Without this strategy you are at the mercy of their timeline. I cannot tell you how many times clients abandoned all other efforts, once one target moved rapidly through the interview process and then nothing happened for a long time. This is where you can leverage the action you have on other fronts into where you want to get your job offer. Repeatedly calling the hiring manager/recruiter rapidly erodes your desirability as a candidate and makes you look that much more desperate.
10. Not Negotiating the Package: When you have managed your campaign well, you should have action on multiple fronts and several offers in a short window. You must learn how to negotiate to get what you want regardless of the economy. It never hurts to ask if there is any room for negotiation. Not doing so will compromise your own value in the minds of your prospect employer.

It is not easy being out and looking for a job in any job market. Even if you have a job and are looking for a better opportunity the suggestions above apply equally!

Good luck!

Rev-1: June 21, 2010

Recently, I wrote an article about the seven points of inflection through one’s career lifecycle (my May 20th Blog).  As a career coach I often get asked if I also mentor my clients. When I ask them to explain what that means, the most common answer I get is a bit curious: “I have been told and I read often that for one to advance their career they must have a mentor. I never had one, so would you be my mentor, please?”

This article is about my perspective on the various resources that are available as one navigates through different phases of their career and what role a mentor can play in one’s career. This article is also about other types of help available and what their roles are in different parts of one’s career.

So, when someone approaches me to be their mentor, in response, I ask them what particular challenge they are facing in their career. What I get, in turn, is typically their immediate challenge to overcome a particular career obstacle, such as getting that next promotion or getting that assignment that will make their résumé bloom. What they fail to realize is that although a mentor can provide that guidance, a career coach can be much more effective in providing that immediate answer that is actionable. A mentor may be able to provide some guidance, but is not always expected to give them an action plan that will take them there. Although I provide both sets of expertise, I want my clients to be clear about the kind of help that is appropriate for their specific needs.

One factor that is critical to a better understanding of a mutual relationship is that a mentor-mentee bond must be built over time with their interactions typically less transactional than they would be with their career coach. Mentors have the knowledge and the wisdom to understand and to deal with their mentee’s situation, but they often lack the delivery skill and the process that make their knowledge and wisdom actionable in ways that the mentee can benefit. Without that express skill and the mentee’s savvy to internalize that guidance in a specific situation, the advice, applied in a misguided way can backfire; mentees often lack the skills to translate the inputs they get from the mentor to make them usable in an effective way. They need more hand holding than that is available in a typical mentor-mentee relationship. So, if you have a burning career issue and you need quick guidance, a career coach, not a mentor, is your best option.

As I reflect on my initial conversations with my prospects and my clients, I am compelled to ponder the basic question: How many people really know the difference between the various resources that are available to career professionals in advancing their career and in getting the right guidance?

There are five different resources that can guide a person through their life/career needs: therapist, career counselor, career coach, life coach, and mentor. Although there can be considerable overlap in different resources, their mainstay function is what is relevant in seeking the right help. So, each one has a unique role in how they can help:

Therapist: A therapist is a licensed professional, who is most effective when one is stuck in their past. If we are looking at two categories of people, one dysfunctional and the other, functional, then a therapist can help a dysfunctional person become whole with therapy. Sometimes, the dysfunction does not always come from unresolved issues, but it is a dysfunction stemming from lack of basic skills. In such a case some basic training and education can be a good start. Therapy has mostly to do with unresolved issues that a person is not able to get past and move ahead as a fully functional being. So, if what happened in your past life remains unresolved and you must move past that, a therapist can be the right person. Seeing a career coach without seeing a therapist in some cases can be counterproductive, even harmful. So, to summarize, a therapist can help you with your Yesterday!

Career counselor: A career counselor is a degreed professional (a degree in career counseling, often followed by a license or a state certificate) who helps their clients in career selection. Typically, high-school or college students meet a career counselor, where they go through a battery of standard tests to help the counselor understand their aptitudes and learning preferences in how they can apply their knowledge and skills in a given profession. This is, of course, not an exact science, so a counselor’s assessment cannot be taken as a definitive guidance in choosing a lifelong career. You must insert your own judgment into the process to make this useful. Career counselors deal with the “here and now.” They usually cannot predict how a given profession is going to continue over a person’s life span, nor can they predict how economic forces will morph the need for that profession.

The US Department of Labor publishes its Occupational Outlook Handbook that compiles projections of different job categories and their future landscape and their earning potential, including demand/supply projections over time. Working with a career counselor, reading the OOH, and then talking to a few professionals engaged in the career of your interest can be a good combination for gathering useful information for you to decide how to move forward. The final choice must be yours and not anyone else’s, including those of your parents and relatives!

In other countries resources available to understand similar projections are unknown to me, so if any of my international readers are willing to share what they know I’d be happy to include that in the blog. Please use the Comments section to provide that input.

Career Coach: In general coaching refers to the activity of a coach in developing the abilities of their clients. Metaphorically, a coach takes their client from where they are now to their desired destination (a carriage or a horse-drawn coach is just that!), including a short jaunt. Coaching tends to focus on the achievement by clients of a goal or a specific skill. Methodologies for coaching are positioned away from the directive or the facilitative and rest on accompanying clients within a dialog that will allow emerging patterns and solutions to surface. If the coach also has the expertise needed to analyze the different possibilities the client uncovers as they dialog, the coaching process can be even more effective in guiding the client to a specific course of action by their avoiding trial and error. Coaching belongs on the scale between mentoring and training on the one end, and psychotherapy and counseling on the other.

There are many applications of coaching ranging from sport, to business, to niches such as divorce or motivational speaking. Sessions may be either one-on-one or in a group setting, in-person, or over the telephone, or by electronic means.

Today, coaching is a recognized discipline used by many professionals engaged in human development focused on achieving results. Although there are certifications in specific areas of coaching by accredited institutions, most coaching professionals operate in an unregulated environment.

Career coaching is one aspect of this profession to be discussed in this article.

A career coach is an experienced professional, who has the pulse of the current job market and who understands how to work with a client and translate what they need to change to move in the right direction with minimum trial and error. A career coach can provide valuable guidance during a career transition (as from a job loss), navigating through one’s career challenges (stuck career, dealing with a bad boss, etc), and selecting a right course of action when there are alternate choices that are confusing. Although some career coaches provide assessments and show clients what their options might be in moving forward, sessions that result from using such tools are usually not valuable to the client in decisively moving forward. They are also often a waste of time and money! A good career coach is quickly able to grasp your immediate career challenge and to provide help to move ahead with confidence. In summary, a career coach helps you with your Today!

Mentor: A mentor is an accomplished professional who has interest in sharing their wisdom gained from their years of experience in dealing with situations in both their personal and professional lives. Good mentors also have a broad view of how to deal with personal and professional challenges and can guide their mentees (although mentee is the preferred term, an alternate term is protégé) in navigating through some of these challenges. Mentors often lack the detailed knowledge of how their mentees can use what they are recommending or suggesting so that the mentees can utilize their wisdom in advancing their career or in solving a particular problem they are dealing with. One reason for this limitation is that a typical mentor has just one or two mentees that they are helping at any time.

A career coach, on the other hand, has a much richer experience with different clients (often, thousands) to know what specific action plans can work in each situation. Because a career coach’s effectiveness lies in how they codify their varied experience with many clients in formulating an action plan for their clients and then delivering it in a customized way, they often spend much time and effort in making their knowledge and practice principles easy to understand and implement for their clients. A mentor does not always share this obligation.

So, although a mentor brings rich knowledge in the mentor-mentee relationship, it is up to the mentee to translate that exchange into terms that become actionable and useful in the mentee’s context. This is not always easy because mentees lack the experience that the mentors have in making the advice practicable. In most cases, a mentee is operating in their state of “unconscious incompetence,”(they do not know what they don’t  know) so, when their mentor suggests a course of action that is obvious, for the mentee making that workable can be a challenge.   Yet, despite this ostensible limitation mentors are good at showing long-term vision to their mentees and in giving guidance about how to deal with some of the challenges that they are likely to encounter in the future. In summary, a mentor helps with your Tomorrow!

It is important to appreciate the differences between instructing, coaching, and mentoring. Instructing deals largely with the dissemination of knowledge. While coaching deals primarily with skill building, a mentor is one who helps shape the outlook or attitude of the individual for a better tomorrow! A mentor often inspires with new possibilities, whereas a career coach can show you how to seize the ones that appeal to you the most. If you carry the previous metaphor of the coach as a physical carriage, then the mentor illuminates the path that you are using to go where the coach is taking you! Mentoring is thus providing a lighted path to the mentee for their future success. A coach would help out with work and career related issues, providing specific tools and guidance to help their client navigate through today’s challenges. A mentor, on the other hand, would focus on issues pertaining to career and life, mostly helping their mentee avoid some of the obstacles that the mentor has conquered or has recognized as their own learning evolved. Mentoring can also potentially promote spiritual development, without injecting their personal religious beliefs.

There are two main mentoring relationships: formal and informal. Informal relationships develop on their own between partners. Formal mentoring, on the other hand, refers to a structured process supported by the organization and addressed to target audiences. Youth mentoring programs assist at-risk children or youth who lack role models and sponsors. In business, formal mentoring is part of talent management addressed to populations such as key employees, newly hired graduates, high potentials, and future leaders (this is where the appropriate noun is protégé). In formal mentoring, matching of mentor and mentee is done by each choosing the partner in order to avoid creating a forced and inauthentic relationship.

There are formal mentoring programs that are values-oriented, while social mentoring and other types can also focus specifically on career development. Some mentorship programs provide both social and vocational support. In well-designed formal mentoring programs, there are program goals, schedules, training (for both mentors and mentees), and evaluation.

There are many kinds of mentoring relationships from school or community-based relationships to e-mentoring relationships. These mentoring relationships vary and can be influenced by the type of mentoring relationship that is in effect. Mentoring relationships can develop under a cloning model, nurturing model, friendship model, and apprenticeship model. The cloning model is about the mentor trying to “produce their duplicate copy.” The nurturing model takes more of a parent figure, creating a safe, open environment in which mentee can both learn and try things for on their own. The friendship model is more based on a peer relationship rather than being involved in a hierarchical relationship. Lastly, the apprenticeship model is about less personal or social aspects and the professional relationship is the sole focus (here, again, the correct usage is protégé).

It is not unusual for one professional to have several mentors at any given time. Each relationship provides specific guidance (career advancement, professional expertise, general counsel, and just wisdom from having lived a varied and rich life!). It is, however, rare for one to have more than one career coach at the same time.

Life Coach: Life coaching is a practice with the aim of helping clients determine and achieve personal goals (these may not include career or professional goals). Life coaches select from among several methods to help clients set and reach personal goals. Life coaches are neither therapists nor consultants; psychological intervention and business analysis are outside the scope of their engagement. Life coaching has its roots in executive coaching, which drew on techniques developed in leadership training. Often, a Life Coach is a cheerleader, inspiring their clients with frequent doses of motivation to keep their spirits up and to keep their focus on the goal at hand. The coach may apply mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification, behavior modeling, goal setting, and other techniques, including the use of their own tools that they have developed as a repertoire in their profession, in helping their clients. Since life coaching can be viewed as an intervention sought to improve quality of life and for increasing the effectiveness of available resources to the client, it is also seen as something that helps their client in their today for a better tomorrow! More importantly, a good life-coaching intervention can take a person to higher levels of personal actualization than is possible on their own.

Good help, as one needs it in different phases of their life and career, is difficult to get. But, having the clarity on the type of help one most needs can be a good start in avoiding the ones that are less likely to be useful and a waste of time and money!

This blog is about overconfidence, one symptom of which can be a temptation to oversell, but also where you have an inflated sense of your abilities to manage a situation. A certain amount of swagger is good when you are selling yourself, but when done out of complacency, a sense of superiority, or ignorance, it is tantamount to overconfidence!

This is a sure way of turning others off about your ability to sell yourself and to work with them! What works, instead, is understated competence, fortified by your leadership stories carefully delivered to resonate with the interviewer’s pain or their desire to conquer their vision! If you are able to provide a narrative of your leadership accomplishments that showcase your competence then what shines through is your ability to reach the heart of the interviewer through their head. An air of overconfidence, on the other hand, can raise doubts about the interviewer’s willingness to give you the benefit of the doubt! If your record speaks for itself then do not amp it up by embellishing it or by disparaging the pain that is expressed by the interviewer.

Overconfidence can be apparent through a variety of behaviors during an interview: petulance as displayed by a know-it-all attitude or by insolence through speech; finishing the sentences of the interviewer; interruption; assuming what the interviewer is going to ask; etc. Although many of these behaviors could be a sign of insecurity, anxiety, or eagerness to please, their impact on the interviewer is quite the opposite.

What are some of the manifest behaviors when one is overconfident (real or ersatz)? Here are some sample responses (most of the Qs below are from an interviewer):

Q: Tell me about yourself.

A: What specifically do you want to know? I have already given you my résumé!

Here the appropriate response is, I am an experienced project manager, who always delivers her commitments on time and delights the customer. Try not to respond to a question with another question, especially when the icebreaker is thrown at you. Unless you want some clarification, try answering the original question.

Q: What is your current salary?

A: “That is confidential!” Or if you are unemployed, “Zero!”

Here it is best if you decide where in the interview this question is being asked. If asked very early it is best to give a range for your salary and if they further press you for the salary you are looking for, it is best to say that until the job is fully defined it would be hard for you to place a number that shows your expected salary.

Q: The job entails doing the following: Here the interviewer gives their take on what the job really entails (beyond what is described in the job description)

A: That really does not interest me. I worked at that level over 10 years ago!

Here the appropriate response is to dig deeper and see what the real job is. If you are in front of a hiring manager (or recruiter) chances are good that they have calibrated your value from how you have presented yourself to match the job at hand. This is why packaging your résumé correctly is important. The best strategy is to decline the offer if the final job turns out be a menial job, but only after going through the process.

Q: The job entails (whatever the interviewer says). Does this interest you?

A: What else do you have? Or if I do this who is going to do that (whatever that is)?

Here the appropriate response is to understand fully how the job needs to be done and how you could add even greater value by what you bring to the job. Let the interviewer salivate over your enthusiasm to do the job at hand. You can then turn it down when the offer is made or re-negotiate the level at which the job needs to be done.

Q: A car is going at 500 MPH. What is its speed in Kilometers per hour?

A: No car goes that fast!

The appropriate response is: 800 KPH! Just answer the question. Do not make a fool out of the interviewer.

It is difficult to generalize this overconfidence malaise, but the above vignettes provide some insight. It is best to relax, be yourself, and authentically lay out your leadership plan to do a great job in the open position. Even though your anxiety and eagerness to please during the interview may be temporary, the interviewer does not know that. So, be yourself; always!

Good luck!

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.

That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?

The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.” I wrote: “Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it.”

Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply and factually said that the sign’s holder was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky not to be blind.

Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

The reason that it was effective and got different results because that change in message moved passers-by to act from their hearts and not from their brains. Facts merely appeal to the brain as to their veracity. Most decisions come from the heart!

Moral:

Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. Appeal to people’s hearts through their minds!

As a career coach I see the same mindset that professionals carry when they create their marketing message. It is steeped in factual data about their accomplishments and about how great they are at what they do. What they fail to see is how what they are stating as facts affects the reader, a decision maker, in how they respond to their message.

In the above story the change in the direction of the message, from “me” to “you,” made all the difference in the outcome. Not only that, it made passers-by even feel good about their generosity!

The same is true about any message you create about yourself that you want to result in some benefit to you. To achieve that goal you must first see the benefit others get from what you are offering. So, in the case of your résumé if you move the message from “me centric” to “reader centric” by finding their pain and then their gain by their engaging you, you will have a response very similar to what that blind boy experienced at the end of that fateful day!

Enjoy this beautiful day!

There are two forces at play here: One, of course, is your own assessment of your capabilities that apply to the challenges at hand, as they appear to you during the interview; the other is lack of full knowledge of the factors that define the situation where you have to deliver on that promise!

As someone so aptly said, Confidence is what you have when you really do not understand a situation! In an attempt to impress the interviewer and to move it to the next stage towards its conclusion, one is tempted to oversell their abilities. This often stems from oversimplification of what is presented and an anxiety to come across as a quick thinker! The outcome of this stance can be one of two possibilities: The interviewer spots your overreach and does not move to making you an offer; or, worse, they believe you and offer you the job! In the latter case you probably will end up looking for yet another job before your first year at the new job is over!

So, how does one avoid the temptation to oversell in an interview? Here are some suggestions:

1. Research not just the company you are going after for that job, but also find out something about the hiring manager and the open position. Why is that position open will shed much light on what is expected of you: If the incumbent was let go, what was the reason; if this is a new opening, what is expected of someone new in that position, etc.
2. During the presentation of your accomplishments make sure that you communicate the entire context of your accomplishments, not just the juicy parts. If an accomplishment is truly stellar, tamp it down by saying that many chipped in at helping you and admit to the luck factor. That shows humility, not hubris.
3. Ask what the challenge is in the area where they want your expertise. Ask also what the driving and constraining factors are. Often, political factors create such headwinds for any change initiative that it is very difficult to get organizational support to further one’s agenda. Often, too, these factors do not fully manifest until after you are ensconced in the new job; too late to do anything about what you committed to in the interview!
4. Ask the interviewer what they see as some of the factors that will militate against the success of the initiative and what can be done to deal with them.
5. Explore what would happen if the initiative failed to take root and got delayed or downright failed. This will force the interviewer to share with you some of the apprehensions they have about its success. You can then make an intelligent decision about how to proceed.
6. Ask the interviewer about the key success factors that would make the initiative take root in the organization. Their answer will tell you much about what aspects of your skill set will play a major part in that success. If those factors are not your strong suits then you are likely being set up for failure.
7. Tactfully, ask the interviewer about factors that they have NOT told you about in this discussion. This will put them on notice and force them to divulge things that they may not otherwise.
8. If the discussion goes far enough in the interview, see if you can manage the expectations so that you come across as someone who under promises and over delivers; always a safe bet. This is a good position for you, especially at the start of a new job.
9. If you take the job, sniff out all the factors that will drive the success of that initiative and present a plan of action (PoA) to your manager within the first 90 days with your realistic assessment and contingencies. More than anything else, if this is a solid plan, you may not get that ax if the plan does not succeed when your first-year review comes due! Because, now you manager had signed-off on your plan.

10. Good luck!

These two case studies will inspire you to do what Sally and Jim did to get what they wanted, even though the chances might have appeared dim from the get-go:

On the day she walked into my office a few months back, if someone were to look at her resume they would have concluded quickly that Sally stood no chance of getting into the fast-paced world of consumer web. Anyone would have dismissed her in getting to where she wanted go. But, despite all odds, Sally persevered. Here’s her story:

Sally is 50 and had spent most of her career doing various jobs (a general factotum!), which included working for a city government in its IT department; at a major retail chain as a wardrobe consultant; at an enterprise software company, cleaning up some databases left over from a recently-abandoned venture. She had also started her catering business many years back that closed in a downturn. Sally was out of work, but was willing to wait to get what she wanted!

In late 2009 Sally decided to enter a well-positioned consumer-web company. With zero experience in this highly competitive industry dominated by Gen-Yers (30-year olds), anyone would have predicted her near-zero chance of landing a job in this yeasty field. Undaunted, Sally systematically identified many companies that interested her. From that list she focused on one, which was in the social gaming business and was exploding because of its success in the marketplace. In fact, it was the number-one company for the past few years and surging ahead of its competitors, at an exploding pace!

Sally wanted to get a well-positioned, customer-facing job in this company. After realizing that she had no experience in the social-media, electronic gaming, and in the consumer-web space, she proceeded to find out on which non-profits the company’s top executives served. After identifying one prominent non-profit, which had two of the gaming company’s principals serving on its Board, she decided to volunteer at this non-profit and quickly insinuated herself into its insider circle through hard work, charm, and persistence.

Next, Sally was successful in taking charge of a job that dealt with the social media for this organization. With no previous experience she quickly learned how to get the organization’s information on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. She also started regularly blogging for this organization, where her blog was picked up by other syndicated bloggers. She also feverishly learned how to play the new and popular games that the company routinely churned out and got familiar with them to speak with some knowledge as she was getting the non-profit the much-needed exposure through the social media.  Within just four months Sally was now able to drive the organization’s public face through her volunteer work and simultaneously learn all there was to learn about the social media’s power and about how the gaming company’s new games were being touted on these media. Within just months she was not only an expert in handling social media, but also had worked some impressive bullets on her resume to boot!

When the right job opened up at the gaming company for Sally, she prepared her resume with all the language that was now aligned with the job’s requirements and approached the non-profit’s pooh-bah with a request to introduce her to the gaming company’s CEO, who served on the organization’s Board. The non-profit’s Executive Director wrote a glowing letter of introduction, recognizing Sally’s work at the organization, which impressed the gaming company’s CEO. He then passed down that letter with Sally’s new resume to the hiring manager, who had the opening. Sally has already passed the telephone interviews and is being invited to do a series of in-person interviews with the hiring manger and others this week. I expect Sally to ace these interviews and to get what she is striving for.

The second case involves Jim, who was a software development manager at a financial services company. Despite his stellar record and his MBA he was not able to pursue the Product Management positions in his own company. Each time during the past two years someone took the open positions from the inside with relevant experience or someone from the outside in the financial services space. Tough job market made this hard for Jim!

So, Jim decided to look for a Product Management role at an outside company in that space, where a new product was emerging and where his deep development and customer-facing experience would trump his lack of product management experience. Jim re-did his resume to showcase the right experience that headlined how he would deal with the typical challenges that product managers face with a nascent product.

Jim was successful in getting an interview after finding one such company in the right stage of its product evolution. He agreed to be hired as a contract product manager to get the product launched and marketed. Within less than a year Jim was able to leverage his product development and customer-facing experience to launch the company’s brand-new product with much success and media coverage. This gave him the language, missing from his resume to claim a Product Manager job at his previous company.

When Jim’s previous company posted yet another opening for a Product Manager position, this time Jim was fully prepared to compete with all other contestants for that job, despite a tough job market. After a few rounds of interviews Jim was selected and offered the job at a higher level than when he left the company a year ago because of his stellar success launching a new product as a Product Manager (albeit as a contractor). If Jim had been transferred from within his own company previously, this would not have been achievable; most companies only transfer qualified internal employees at the same level, without giving them a promotion!

Jim starts his new job in two weeks!

By: Dilip G Saraf, Career & Life Coach, Career Transitions Unlimited (www.diliparaf.com)