Many of my clients, who come to me, complain about stagnation in their jobs, or even their careers. In many cases I find that they have stayed in one place or job and have not ventured out beyond what they acquired as their original educational discipline or skills.

Education plays a big role in one’s getting ready for their life’s challenges. It is, though, often a double-edged sword: on the one hand it molds your mind to deal with new challenges by equipping you with the academic discipline, knowledge, and tools—learning how to learn; but on the other, it limits your perspective with what you have learned and how you have learned it as you educate yourself in a particular discipline. To vivify your career cross-discipline engagements and activities are key to both, your personal development and your ongoing success.

So, what is the message for those who feel fettered by their education or being in one job too long to pursue new avenues to channel their creativity? Here are some avenues:

1. If you are a student diversify your coursework with topics that are way outside your main pursuit or core coursework to get a different perspective and to learn how a very different academic discipline provides a new insight. This will open your mind to new possibilities, even as you graduate, and will prepare you to do this as an adult.
2. If you are already in a career and headed towards stagnation take some courses that will not just advance your skill, but that will also open your mind to new possibilities.
3. In your professional life, venture out and take on new challenges that require you to learn new skills and to attack problems outside your comfort zone. Taking on new challenges expands your mind and gives you the confidence to tackle even greater challenges. Most people grossly underestimate their potential.
4. In one of my earlier blogs I emphasized that if you are in one job too long (without advancement for more than three years, or in one company for more than six), you must consider making a major change by taking some risk and by seeking some guidance. In today’s workplace there are so many business challenges that merely looking at job boards is not enough to consider another job. Prospectively explore how you can leverage your special and unique skills in an entirely new direction, both within your company and outside.
5. Talk to your customers and find new ways to create exciting experiences for them. Bring that knowledge into your workplace and propose changes to how things are routinely done.
6. Learn how your competitors are addressing new challenges in the market and find avenues to surpass your competitors.
7. Network with others who typically do not belong in your professional circle. Go out of the way to tap people who made a name for themselves in an entirely different field and observe how they think and tackle their challenges.
8. Find mentors in different areas of expertise and those who have accomplished something worthwhile. If you are taking on a new challenge in a venturesome direction their guidance and inspiration can help you achieve your goals.
9. Do not be afraid to fail. It is the fear of failure that holds people back from trying new things. Also, each failure—more than a success—teaches a new lesson, which helps us grow. So, congratulate yourself every time you have a setback and learn how to overcome it.

10.  While you are pursuing new avenues to grow do not lose sight of your expected mission in your job and deliver excellence wherever you are.

Getting comfortable at one station in your life is the source of one’s stagnation. So, go and venture out to seek new paths and surprise yourself!

Good luck!

I often find that during job search the anxiety to get an offer heightens as my clients find that they are losing valuable time in the “long” selection process. It also heightens when there is much activity on different fronts, but without a solid offer from anyone. The level of anxiety is high for those, who have been out of work for a while. So, they often call me with a sheepish tone in their voice to check with me if they can precipitate action by either misleading their potential employer (I just got an offer from another company I was pursuing, but your company is my preferred choice) or by jumping the gun and discounting themselves (I am willing to consider a lower position) to panic them into action.

In all the cases I have witnessed these shenanigans rarely work. In fact, they often backfire (“In that case I suggest that you go ahead and accept that offer.”)

Why is that?

I think that the main reason for this reaction to a misleading statement is two-fold: when the employer is not ready to move forward it is difficult to “blackmail” them into action, no matter how ready you feel that they should be to make you that offer; and, secondly—and more importantly—no matter how clever you think that you are at concealing the reality of your situation there is often a telltale odor to that lie, which they can smell. Either way it is game-over for you! And, the worst part of this outcome is that you will spend countless nights lying awake wondering if you might have handled this differently to create an outcome you really wanted.

So, what have I learned from these experiences from hundreds of clients who have suffered this fate? Well, here is my summary:

1. When you are job searching create a planned pipeline of prospects and manage that pipeline in a strategic way. At any given time you must have 3-5 targets in line for action at or near the same level of activity (initial screening, second interview rounds, etc.).
2. You must learn how to leverage the momentum from one front onto another (“I just got a second-round interview call from Google, and they seem to be moving faster than I expected”). I have found that this often works well unless of course, here, too, you are prevaricating!
3. As these interviews and the selection process steps are ratcheting up to conclusion, keep in touch with each target that you are pursuing. Find a champion at each target and keep in touch with them with honesty and openness. I find that these champions can often help you finesse the final action that would be hard for you to do on your own. Do not ever lie to these people, because if you do, again, it is game-over for you!
4. When you send thank-you notes explicitly state why you are so interested in their company and in joining their team. Simple pleas like, I sincerely hope that you’ll consider bringing me on board as a key member of your program team, and seeing the difference I will make in how projects will be released on time, carry far more weight than any call you make under the pretext of action on another front.
5. Always remember that hiring someone is rarely a priority for most companies. Everyone is too busy fighting the daily fires. Many hiring managers consider hiring someone as a major imposition, despite the relief they get when onboarding a new person on their team. Also, if you are out of work and trying to get back in, your perception of elapsed time is highly warped (one week gone may seem like a month to you); exactly the opposite it true at the other end (I thought we just saw you last week, and not last month!). So, be patient.
6. Being honest also applies for all matters related to your job search: salary, title, responsibilities, and duration. With the open LinkedIn Profiles it is much harder to hide the reality of your past. Even salary can be checked indirectly. In fact, many companies retain a third-party background investigator, who may ask you for your W-2s. Here if you are caught in a lie then it is much harder to explain that lie. You do not want to blow your chances at this advanced a stage of the selection process.
7. Do not hold your past salary, title, and responsibilities hostage to your next job. It is not that difficult to provide a clear statement of your value in the job you are seeking and then anchoring the salary, title, and other parameters to that discussion. This way you do not need to exaggerate your past; you merely promise what you can do and then deliver on that promise—a much more practicable approach to getting what you want.
8. Do not overreach during the selection or interview process. You may turn off the hiring manager by your boastful manner; under promise and over deliver.
9. Learn how to negotiate when you get multiple offers. Do not merely focus on the compensation as your final selection criterion. Look at how the new job will help you gather some career momentum in the right direction.

10.  Once you make the final selection be gracious about declining the other offers. Treat them as though you would be interested in joining them at some other time.

Good luck!

1. Be Clear: The most common success element in those, who have achieved good career momentum is developing clarity of what they wanted. This also means de-cluttering your mind with what you also do not want. Before developing this clarity some were conflicted about the path they should take. For example, some individual contributors were not sure about whether they should take the management route or pursue the technical ladder. Dispelling some misperceptions about each path helped them develop the clarity they needed, which increased their focus to pursue what was important.
2. Have a Plan: Even with the clarity of purpose, having a detailed career road map helps develop an action plan that can be developed for accelerated growth. Most professionals work in the state of “unconscious incompetence,” working in the trial-and-error mode. This is wasteful, and the lost time in such experimentation can never be recovered. Knowing key waypoints in your career growth and what resources are needed at each step of that growth plan to go to the next level are important elements for staying on track.
3. Be Curious: In my Client Intake Questionnaire one of the items they respond to is to write down percentage breakdown on three items, which define how they work: Order taker, Influencer, or Following their Vision. I am often surprised by how many senior executives put their work as mostly (> 50%) “ Order taking,” which is disheartening. This shows that even at senior levels these people have little control over how their work gets defined. Being curious forces you to look for things that your company must do to stay ahead of your competition. This, in turn, provides you an opportunity to take on tasks that are “outside” the scope of your role. This is a great way to grow and to put a shine on your résumé.
4. Foreordain Your Résumé: I find that successful professionals write their résumé bullets even before they embark on their tasks. If they want to move up in a certain direction they look for the job descriptions for that position and start taking on assignments that will give them the bullets they need on their résumé that allow them to claim accomplishments as if they are already functioning at that level. Yet another behavior I see in successful professionals is that when they run into obstacles they do not run away from them, but learn how to deal with them.
5. Start Networking: Build your professional network, not just to reflect your current interests, but those that are on your career growth plan. For example, if you want to move in a certain direction three years from now, start bringing thought leaders from that area of work into your LinkedIn (or other) network. This habit will force you to constantly seek out those professionals, who can help you in the direction you want to move.
6. Have a Champion: Develop a relationship (or two) with someone well placed within your company to guide you on an ongoing basis, not just in troubled times. Companies are fraught with political intrigue. Don’t just assume that if you do good work that you will be rewarded. You must work this angle into your overall plan and understand how to work within the system that will help you go where you need to go.
7. Acknowledge Others: When someone does something great, make a point of acknowledging their success in a public way. You could be an individual contributor, and still you can send out an email to those that matter about someone’s (who can be at a higher level than where you are) accomplishment in an open way. This simple (and free) act makes you get noticed, and you can become an influencer if you do this judiciously.
8. Market Yourself: Constantly update your LinkedIn Profile and keep yourself marketable. Keep your résumé up-to-date with your latest accomplishments, even with some foreordained bullets I mentioned above.
9. Learn a New Skill: Even if you are at the top of your field—and you must learn how to do that—always look at the skills you must acquire to grow and to keep yourself marketable. Many clients often come to me asking if they should pursue an MBA to get on the management track. There is never a clear answer for this, but some simple inquiries can allow you to answer this question to develop the clarity you need. Anyone who is on a constant learning path never becomes irrelevant.

10.  Mentor Someone: This is yet another habit of successful professionals. No matter what their station is in life, they find some way to mentor by empowering themselves. We all have the power to listen to others and to guide them in their pursuits by asking them the right questions. You do not need specialized expertise to mentor someone, but just a good listening ear and an ability to ask the right questions. Most clients tell me that this simple act of mentoring others has helped them in their own growth!

When I look at those who take their career seriously, I am often reminded of a billboard I once saw many years ago on one of the Silicon-Valley highways: “There are those that make it happen; there are those that watch it happen; and then there are those that wonder what happened!” Then it went on with a plea to join the company that put up that billboard inviting prospective employees to join its employee ranks who “make it happen.”

Now, no matter where you’re working, Make it happen!

1. A brand is a promise of value provided in a consistent, holistic, and impactful way
2. Brand equity is the user inertia that helps or hurts the brand
3. A strong brand attracts AND repels
4. Building brand takes focus, time, and effort; it is life’s work!
5. Destroying a brand takes just one thoughtless act!
6. Developing your own brand begins with a soulful look at yourself
7. Your résumé is one verbal representation of your brand; it is not your brand
8. Spend time and effort aligning your résumé with your brand
9. Build your LinkedIn Profile consistent with that branding statement

10.  Make your Facebook and Twitter accounts also align with that brand

11.  Be very focused in how you package your message; a tagline is not your brand

12.  Be confident in your message (age, setbacks, gaps), by dealing with them head-on.

13.  Run a short pilot before you broadcast your message to everyone

14.  Keep tweaking your message until “they” get it

15.  Learn how to project your message that resonates with all your “collateral.”

16.  Ask those close to you to read your “collateral,” such as your résumé, LinkedIn Profile, Facebook page, YouTube postings, or anything that you have out there representing you, and to tell you if what’s out there is how they see you. If they are not sure, find out why and then create the needed alignment. Seek professional help if you are not sure about their honesty or openness.

17.  Be honest to your brand

18.  When in doubt, tell the truth!

19.  Under promise and over deliver

20.  Do an occasional sanity check; listen to your own inner voice, not experts’!

21.  Be prepared to change your message, but not your brand

22.  Tough times provide the best test for your brand’s integrity!

23.  Your brand is a total experience you create in the eyes of your “customers.” So, be mindful of anything that touches your brand: your voice-mail greeting, your email signature (with your phone #), your thank-you notes, how you exit a company, and how you respond to your friends’ requests for referrals.

24.  Be vigilant, and frequently Google yourself. Don’t be surprised by anything you see from what you’ve done in the past that has now come back to bite you!

25. If you want something from someone, be forthright, not sneaky! If you err, immediately own the mistake and apologize. Then move on!

Good luck!

Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone’s finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair? -Walker Percy, author (1916-1990)

Clients often come to me smiling and victorious after answering all the questions when they are invited to an in-person interview, but are surprised when they are not able to get that job offer. They are also puzzled by this rejection and wonder what they might have done differently to ace that interview.

There are three factors critical to success in an interview: Chemistry, Compatibility, and Competency; the three Cs. Answering all the questions correctly is the final of these three Cs. That part has to do with your intellect (IQ), ability to think in stressful times to come up with the right answers, and to deliver that response in an articulate way. Chemistry and Compatibility are related to your emotional intelligence or EQ.

Much of the emotional intelligence stems from your ability to understand the interviewer’s personality and what they are really looking for, besides the right and studied answers to the questions they pose during an interview. EQ is an earned skill, unlike the IQ, which is innate. So, how do you master this art of showing compatibility and chemistry?

Body language plays a major part in the chemistry/compatibility calculus during an interview. This body language is a two-way street: displaying the correct—and authentic—body language without dissembling, and reading the signals provided by the interviewer during an interview. Since you are going for an interview you have an edge because you are going in fully prepared to deal with this body-language thing. The interviewer is, on the other hand, most likely to be less prepared and aware in this dimension of interviewing, giving you a better chance to observe their body language in an open and more “readable” way. So, here are some suggestions I offer to make the most of the body language during an interview:

1. Be relaxed and breathe deeply before beginning an interview. Some nervousness actually helps you be energized for a good interview. Use this energy to your advantage. Deep breathing also dispels any feeling of fear or apprehension you may have during this process
2. Shake hands firmly and make eye contact with the interviewer. Smile and keep smiling as they start their conversation. Do not look bewildered or puzzled as they talk to you. During my video practice interview session most clients are surprised when they see themselves on the screen looking anxious, bewildered, and tense. A simple smile and a confident look dispel this energy.
3. Once you settle down, take another deep breath—without sighing—and keep a faint smile on your face and continue that as long as you can. When a question is asked, before responding, pause for a second or two and then formulate your answer in a thoughtful way. In most cases you must have a crisp 30-second answer to the dreaded Tell me about yourself question.
4. When responding keep looking at the interviewer without staring at them. Use eye contact to connect with the interviewer without making them feel uncomfortable. You know this by their looking away as you look at them.
5. Use both hands and respond without being voluble, or displaying exaggerated gestures. Use of the overall body in an appropriate way amplifies your message if done correctly. Incorrect body language that is not in synch with your verbal message can confuse the person and limit your ability to make an impact. So, practice how to use the body language in synch with your words you deliver. This requires some practice, but is an easily learned skill. Watch TV commercial spots and observe how the characters deliver the short message with the right body language.
6. Engage in a dialog, not an interrogation. If you jump in and start asking good questions right from the get-go you have a much better chance of engaging in a dialog than in an interrogation. I often use the machine gun/tennis racket metaphor. Most go with a “machine gun” firing away their answers to the questions asked. A tennis racked allows you to play tennis in a back-and-forth exchange. This also reduces your “air time” by half. A good thing!
7. Observe the body language of the interviewer and if you spot them shooting signals that do not synch up with their words, call on them with a question or clarification: “It seems that what I just told you about this project has puzzled you somewhat, let me explain what I am talking about here.” You make this comment after observing their furrowed brow. Often, people are impressed by your ability to read their body language and by your calling them on it. Be confident when you do this. Smiling here will further help you.
8. Take charge of the interview by asking questions that are important to you and for you to make the decision about working there. Often, candidates just surrender to the interview process and let the interviewer drive the process. Remember, the interviewer is often as anxious and nervous as you are. So, use that to your advantage!
9. Before concluding the interview ask what the next steps are. Repeat what you heard so that you can get clarity on the timeline and their take on what just happened in the interview. If they are positive and enthusiastic then assertively drive to a close by saying, I really would like to be a part of your team and am interested in joining you as a Project Manager. I hope that you choose me to come on board. There is something compelling about asking them to hire you this way!

10.  Send a great Thank-you note and briefly explain any points that need further clarity and ask to be hired the same way you expressed in #9.

Good luck!

Many of my clients, who come to me, face some common problems in how they handle their career. The most common problem is excessive workload and the stress that results from it. It also creates a problem in balancing their personal and family needs with the demands of the workplace.

Now, why does this happen?

After working with many clients with such issues, one common factor I note in their situation is that they are not as authentic in their everyday interactions as they can be and must be. They are trying to please almost everyone around them, and, in the process, making themselves miserable. The price they pay to please everyone around them is high! In the end they end up hating themselves for it!

So, how does authenticity play into this? “Authentic” means real, actual, genuine. What are some of the traits of an authentic employee? They have a brand that they have established and everyone around them knows what that brand stands for. If you are wishy-washy in how you accept assignments and in how you work in a team, then you do not have a strong brand and people around you, especially the lazy, less-than-competent ones, or the ones that want to take credit for the work that you do to get noticed, will hijack your work, your time, and your dignity. This happens often and people let it slide for the fear of being disliked, or for being marginalized in their team.

Don’t get me wrong, teamwork is critical for both your success and the success of the team, but there must be clear assignments, and team members must carry out their assignments. But, to protect the team’s image, the delivery milestones, or some other obligation, some go out of their way to accommodate team members that are less than doing their part—and the people involved on both sides of this barter are usually the same. This is what creates the extra workload, and, soon, it becomes a norm.

An additional source of generating extra work for yourself is saying yes to any ad hoc work that your manager wants to get done, even though that work does not belong in your responsibility. Employees often do this to please their boss and, soon it becomes expected that you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with, and the extra work becomes the norm, yet again.

So, what does being authentic have to do with all of this? Here is my take on it:

1. Be clear about your role, responsibility, and the value you create in your work and in your team. That way if you constantly have to do the work that others slough-off, then you are covering for them, just so that people, like you as a good team player. Actually, a team, as a unit, performs much more effectively when everyone is carrying a workload commensurate with their abilities and if it’s shared equitably. Weak teams stem from just a few weak team members. Find out a way to remedy this situation by alerting the Team Lead and by being vigilant about duties of everyone in the team. A well-balanced team that shares workloads equitably is able to deliver much more than a team with a just few strong members.
2. Establish a clear relationship with your boss about how your work is assigned to you. If you occasionally get asked to do something that is important, do it with alacrity. But, do not keep accepting work because, either no one is doing it, or that your manager does not want to deal with Sally’s performance issues and gives you her tasks, instead. Hold your manager accountable to her duties, too!
3. If you have slipped into a work pattern that has made you growingly more “popular” in getting work assignments because you always come through, have a serious meeting with your boss and re-calibrate your workload. In such a meeting do not suddenly change your stance about workload assignments, but ask the manager in an assertive way: Help me understand, John, how this workload is distributed among the team members. Then give some facts to make your case. You’d be surprised how your manager will quietly assign that to someone else.
4. If you routinely do extra work or the work that needs to be redone because someone did it poorly, make sure that you get that documented to reflect in your annual review. Do not suddenly bring up during your review, but keep a trail of emails that you send to your Team Lead or to your manager on an ongoing basis for such extra work. If they do not counter these emails, it means that you prevail.
5. Learn how to communicate your no answer to someone without offending them or without shutting down open communication. Assertive communication is at the heart of a healthy relationship with others and they will also appreciate it.

Being authentic takes serious work, but it is the work that has a high pay-off for you: less work, more respect for what you do, and getting to do the work that you really want to do!

Good luck!

Although I get no resistance from them in providing help in packaging their message and in marketing it, when it comes to getting ready for an interview many balk at having to go through an interview coaching process. Most grumble that as senior executives, making presentations is their stock in trade and they got where they are because of their exceptional presentation skills. Since interviewing is much like a presentation exercise, they speciously reason, they do not need to waste their time and money getting coached on that skill!

Wrong!

The most recent and vivid example happened with a client, who as an executive at a company lost his position when a much bigger competitor acquired his company. He came seeking my guidance, after which we went through his résumé building, setting up his LinkedIn Profile, and even working on his campaign. When he got calls from companies that were interested in him, I strongly suggested to him that we do an interview practice session, where I video record a session with my client and walk them through the body-language traps, messaging follies, and the interaction dynamic. He not only declined my proposal, but made some invidious comment about his esteem with me and how wrong I was about his abilities to interview well! I did not argue his point, and I waited.

Several months later he came back and said that he went through a few interviews, but was not able to land an offer, despite “good interviews.” At that point I asked him if he would take a short test with me to explore where he might be misfiring. When he agreed, I asked the dreaded interview icebreaker, Tell me about yourself!

His response was rambling, incoherent, and long. It took him nearly five minutes to get his answer out, and at the end of that I was confused, despite helping him with his résumé earlier. Despite the fact that we had been working on this verbally in his résumé and LinkedIn Profile exercise, we did not practice it as an oral exercise, because of his refusal to accept that need. So, bluntly I told him that his problem was not his résumé, marketing, or his ability to network to get action, but his problem was his interviewing skills. He was mortified, especially because now he realized that perhaps it was his inability to ace an interview that he did not get an offer after the myriad interviews during the past six months. He was too proud to accept that possibility, especially after what he had told me earlier—and he remembered it!

After his recent defeats my client was now ready to show me that his interviewing skills were NOT the problem in his securing any offers from the companies that interviewed him. While pleading his case I realized that he was merely protesting, but, at the core, he knew what was really needed to move forward. When he finally agreed, and after we did the video interview simulation, I was appalled at his lack of basic interviewing skills. Even though I could see him as a great presenter of information, he needed much help in creating a strong interview presence and in finessing an interview.

Here is what I found in that session:

1.     His “I am a …” statement was too long and confusing (instead of being about 30 seconds long, it was almost five minutes)

2.     His responses to my specific questions were general and vague

3.     Some of his answers were not on point

4.     He merely answered my questions; did NOT ask me any

5.     He appeared stiff and uncomfortable

6.     He did not tell me ANY story

7.     He often used “we,” not “I,” leaving me confused about what he really did and who was this “we”?

8.     He often mumbled

9.     He talked as if he was in a hurry to get out

10.  His body language–physical vocabulary–did not inspire confidence in me; he was clasping or wringing his hands throughout.

So, at the end of our simulation, which lasted about 25 minutes I asked him, as I ask all my clients, how well did he think he did (on a score of 10). I was surprised when he said that he did a “7.”

Once the interview was over, I showed him the video on a large screen and walked him through each misstep. He was not aware of most of them. Once he owned his mistakes, I asked him to score his performance again, and I felt vindicated when he re-scored himself at a “2” or a “3.” I am sure that this exercise was a wake-up call to him to understand that interviews are very different from run-on-the-mill presentations using PowerPoint and speaking to an audience in a “one-way-street.” Besides, when one is giving a stand-up presentation it is because they have already mastered their topic and are there to woo the crowd, and not get questioned much.

Interviewing skills are critical to getting a job offer. One does not interview as often as one does presentations, so keeping the interviewing skills well honed is important if you want to translate an interview opportunity into a job offer!

Good luck!

This blog is about what I have learned over the years and is about sharing with my readers what works and what does not when it comes to career planning:

1.     One of the common myths about career plans is that such a plan requires you to anticipate how the future is going to bring changes to technology, economy, business, and the world. Change is constant, and so is the pattern of how such change must be used to leverage your future. So, do not be overwhelmed by the speed with which you are seeing the current flux of change.

2.     A career plan is based on your own growth and on creating increasing value to the business in which you are employed (this also applies to entrepreneurs, solo professionals, and business owners). It is not always about making more money and having more power with an increasingly more imposing job title! So, making a growth plan is the foundation of a solid career plan. A growth plan requires a growth mindset, not a reactive/passive mindset (Read Carol Dweck’s, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success)!

3.     Have a clear vision about what you want to do. Many clients, who come to me, are clear about how they see themselves as a successful professional. For example, there are those who do not see themselves as a manager running a group or a department, but see themselves as an individual contributing to the greatness of their company, community, or organization without having any direct reports. This vision requires a different career plan than a one that is steeped in having a different vision that one holds about having many direct reports, a budget, and line authority.

4.     Once you nail down your vision then break that into a time-based action plan. For example, if you are an individual contributor and want to become a general manager of a business in your company, look at the careers of those in your company and those of their peers to learn how they got there. Look at their LinkedIn Profile to see the patterns of their success and what they did to get there. See if a similar plan can work for you.

5.     In a previous blog I wrote about the seven points of inflection in one’s career. Each point of inflection requires a specific mindset and an intervention. For example, going from an individual contributor to a manager requires, not just doing great work as an individual contributor, but also an ability to fundamentally shift how you pivot around that success to become a people manager/leader and an ability to get work done through others. I wrote about this in one of my recent blogs (Google’s Quest: Understanding the Managerial Challenge). Learn about how to complement your high IQ with the four other “Qs” I wrote about in yet another blog, if you want to accelerate your career as a manager, going from being an individual contributor.

6.     Find mentors, who can work with you to help you in your career and share your plan with them. Learn from their experience to accelerate your own growth. Be a mentor to someone else. Find a good career coach as a proxy to a mentor.

7.     Volunteer your time to some cause that is important to you. In many volunteer organizations it is easy to be working alongside with someone, who has already made a name for themselves in their field. Become visible by doing great work in your own area of expertise, or use that platform to professionally grow in a direction that is new to you. Volunteer organizations rarely ask to see your résumé, but that experience can be showcased in your résumé for your own growth!

8.     Learn and acquire some of the basic skills that are expected in your position of increasing responsibilities that come from your career-growth plan. For example, as an executive you are expected to have excellent communication skills and executive presence. These are learned skills and not nature-given!

9.     No matter where you are in your career and on your growth plan, never assume what the next stop is for you. Do great work by first stating what you are going to do, exceed the expectations, and then claim your prize. Do not assume that you are going to get it just because you did great work!

10.  Above all, be nice to others, respect them as you respect yourself, and have fun!

Good luck!

So, why this blog?

The New York Times article missed the basic point at the epicenter of this discussion: How individual contributors evolve to become managers and how they can succeed in their new roles, despite their technical prowess, which got them promoted in the first place? This concern and managerial conundrum date back to the 1950s when a worldwide survey of nearly 14,000 managers first evinced the fact that nearly 80% of those in the managerial positions were viewed as dysfunctional in some major ways; only about a fifth of the managers were truly worth their salt!

Interestingly, not much has changed since that survey!

Although the managers themselves did not then directly admit to their own dysfunction; rather, it was admitted by proxy of how they chose to spend their time doing the work that they did. So, even today, in a typical pool of managers—at all levels—only about a fifth of them inspire their teams to grow and bring out the best in them; an abysmal stat! The problem created by the majority of the dysfunctional managers ripples throughout the corporate world—or anywhere else, where managerial hierarchy is required for an organization to function. Those 80% take an incalculable toll on their “subjects” they manage, wreaking havoc on their careers, health, personal lives, and on their well being! Why, then, despite this alarming statistics, little has been done over the years to change this situation?

I think that the reason for perpetuating this status quo is that those in the managerial position, who should be actively working to change this situation, are not even aware of it; they are living in a state of unconscious incompetence, exacerbated only by the arrogance that comes with the power they hold! They don’t know what they don’t know, and the learning disabilities that stem from the arrogance prevent them from learning anything from the carnage they leave behind in the wake of their role! In some cases they know that they know, but are unwilling to change the status quo for the sake of self-preservation. It is these managers that are very good at managing upwards and at letting their team pay a heavy price in its members’ aggravation, frustration, and grief. Often they are immune to their members’ plight! It is here that I commend Google for launching an initiative and an intervention that illuminated this problem, at least within its own organization.

So, what must the managers (those 80%) know to disabuse this notion of managerial dysfunction? Here is my prescription from my own learning as a corporate manager and as a coach who sees this daily in his clients’ plight!

There are 10 key elements for a manager to become successful:

1.     As the new managers embrace their role, first, they must understand the four functions of managing (Leading, Planning, Organizing, and Setting up Controls, with their associated tasks that fall under each of the four functions to become an effective manager). For example, the task of Communicating falls under the Leading function, which sets guidelines for effective communication. These four functions and their associated tasks must now become their new core skills, and as they embrace this new core set of skills, they must learn to subordinate their technical skills—their core skills until now, which got them that prized promotion—to their new core skills (the four management functions). In their previous role they did not have to make this conscious choice; their technical skills-set alone was sufficient. This simultaneous skill renewal and relegation of their prized skills to a “lower” status is a major struggle for most newbies. Unless this is understood and overcome early in their management careers, managers stay ineffective—even dysfunctional.

2.     The managerial work and technical work are orthogonal entities. By doing more technical work you cannot solve a management problem; in fact, you often make it worse. Managers often revert to doing technical work when faced with a crisis than doing the right management work that only they can do. This is so, often because they really understand–and are comfortable with–the technical work. They prefer doing the wrong work correctly than doing the right work poorly or by taking a risk doing it! Some of this stems from how they got there: by doing flawless technical work; they now expect the same of their management work! This is perhaps one reason why they stay away from tackling management work.

3.     Undone technical work (a broken system, a late project, an irate customer, or a badly drafted plea agreement) becomes a burning platform, requiring urgent attention to prevent it from getting worse, whereas undone or ignored management work (planning, setting up program controls, terminating a bad employee, or hiring the right attorney) quietly piles up, gradually creating more technical fires. It pushes the work down an organization creating stressful—even toxic—work environment.

4.     As a person who is promoted to a managerial position because of their excellent technical contributions secures increasingly higher positions of authority in the management chain, their technical expertise becomes their context, as discussed in #1, above (which was previously their core), and they must learn how to make that transition from “core” to “context,” with spending more time on the core and less on the context, as they move up the management ladder. Their new core now becomes what they had never done before: managerial work that only they can do, with increasing organizational impact. If they take refuge in doing only (or more than required) technical work that was previously their main focus, then they have less time to do their new core work now (managerial work).

5.     As one advances to higher levels of managerial authority the core work (management work) and its importance increase exponentially with each level, with a commensurate decrease in their technical (context) work. If they do not recognize this and keep doing technical work that those they manage can (and must) do then they are not spending enough time doing the work that only they can do. This behavior has a deleterious—even pernicious—effect throughout all levels below their locus of authority, as everyone is then doing work below their ability and authority, leaving behind a wake of undone management work. Again, remember, undone management does not usually cry for help, only undone technical work does!

6.     Managers at all levels keep going back to their old core work (technical work) in preference to the Eight behaviors, and the Three pitfalls that are their bane that Google has identified. It is perhaps because they understand what that work is and are mortally afraid of letting go of it, should they ever lose their jobs! Ironically, in many cases this fear alone results in exactly their becoming that (you become what you fear!).  To make this transition a manager at each level must learn how to conceptualize their technical work and use that in conjunction with their new core work (managerial work) to keep the right balance between technical (context) and management (core) work at each management level.

7.     Team members, too, have the responsibility to remind their manager what the division of labor is and how that should be managed. Accountability is a mutual responsibility. Merely taking orders from your manager, no matter how high you are in the hierarchy, can promote a behavior, which can be a seed for dysfunctional management.

8.     When managers do management work (the four functions again!) and focus on the work that only they can do, it frees up an amazing amount of resources for productive work throughout the organization. People become empowered, incompetence gets highlighted, and the overall team output shoots up, with everyone going home energized and coming back to work the next day to change the world. The exact opposite happens (and that is the norm) when this simple rule is ignored.

9.     Focus on knowing and doing the right management work starts at the top, so, CEOs, take heed! How much time did you spend doing technical work (guideline is 10% or less)?  For the first-level manager, at the other end, this time is 50% or less. Of course for start-ups and early-stage companies different rules apply, but they must be applied consciously.

10.  Understanding what the basic message of this blog is, together with knowing how to embrace Google’s Eight behaviors and avoid the Three pitfalls will make any manager an effective one!

Good luck!

Why is that?

As in any exchange employers are looking for someone who brings a strong value proposition to them, both from a track-record view and prospectively. A typical example of a strong value proposition is that you just did a stellar job at getting a new breakthrough product out as a competitor. Other examples are hiring top talent to manage your new group, coming up with a new idea for a breakthrough product, and identifying new initiatives to improve an existing process. In many cases it is difficult for employees to keep coming with a stream of new ideas that add immediate value to their employer and that will keep their employer ahead of the pack.

For a variety or reasons, which may include environmental conditions, such as bad economy, company’s cutbacks; and on the personal front, the person’s shifted priorities people lose their career mojo. All of these factors redound in one’s losing their career momentum and may even cause them to slip into a career coma! So, when you need to make a transition most, you are in a position of disadvantage, often due to your own doing (or not doing!). What is happening to you and to your job in the most recent period can be called your career momentum. Since one’s career is a course or progress through their history, career momentum deals with how you have evolved in your current job, where you are headed with it, and what you aspire to do.

So, how does one manage their career momentum and keep their mojo in a marketable stead? Well, here are some suggestions:

1.     If your job is merely taking orders from above, shift your mode to initiating something new that will become visible to the higher-ups because of the impact of that change. Also, make sure that when you make this change you first predict the outcome beforehand, and, after completing the initiative that you let important people know what you did. Otherwise, some politically savvy person will hijack that to their credit. This suggestion applies to everyone from an individual contributor to the CEO.

2.     If you have stayed at the same rating in your performance review for the past three years it means that you have ceased to grow. Even if you have received a string of the coveted 5/5 in your rating it means that you have become stagnant and risk-averse. This also means that you are losing your edge and have become less and less marketable as time advances.

3.     If you have stayed in a job with the same title and responsibilities for three years you have begun losing your career momentum. Even if your responsibilities increase for the same title you may be growing somewhat, but your résumé may not be able to reflect that adequately when you start marketing yourself. So, keep looking for greater responsibilities that go with commensurate titles. If a formal title change is not possible, at least change your title to something more imposing on your business card.

4.     If you are in the Silicon Valley, do not stay at one company for more than 6-7 years, in the same job title for more that about three, and in the same industry for more than 10. If you are in the US, but outside the Valley the numbers change to 12, five, and 15 respectively. Of course, these numbers are not cast in concrete, but recent examples of how my own clients were able to (and were unable to) make a transition suggest these boundaries. For example, one Silicon-Valley client, who was in a consulting company for 10 years was recently told by his hiring manager that he would be getting a job offer from the company that interested him—I had cautioned him that if he stayed in consulting for more that 10 years he may find it hard to get back into the clients-side of his business, the corporate world—but was stopped cold by an SVP, who thought that he was too risk averse for staying in one place for more that seven years. We changed our approach and pursued a contract position in a large company as a transitional strategy, which worked for him.

5.     There are several ways of building your career momentum: Becoming more visible in your professional groups by joining and actively participating in their proceedings. Another way is to become known by writing blogs about the area that interests you.

6.     LinkedIn has become a potent source of showcasing your ongoing progress in your area of expertise and interest. By constantly keeping your Profile updated, adding new connections in areas outside your comfort zone, and getting Recommendations from people that matter (not from your friends and relatives!) can significantly add to your career momentum. This is also an active way of creating your brand, and a passive way of marketing yourself. With this approach you’re not shopping around with your résumé to market yourself, which can also ding your career momentum.

7.     If you need experience in an area where you lack the background to claim a position, try volunteering at high-visibility events and claim a spot that gives you the exposure you need. Treat this experience as if this were a job you did to put on your résumé.

8.     Shift your mindset from becoming an expert to becoming a problem solver. This is especially true if you are moving from a consulting space to a specific industry. Although consulting companies demand subject matter expertise, industries are increasingly looking for savvy problem-solvers more than they are, for experts, because the technology is changing at such a rapid pace. Make sure that you focus your résumé appropriately (Problem Solver Vs. Subject Matter Expert) when making a career transition.

9.     Start a personal development plan to master the areas that you have ignored before. Such areas include improving your Emotional Intelligence, better communication, effective presentations, project management, and developing business skills.

10.  Identify your limiting beliefs and learn how to conquer them. I find that in many transitions my clients’ limiting beliefs are more a factor in their setbacks than any outside factors that they cannot control.

Good luck!