Be a leading light at work

Everybody aspires to be top dog at work. But not all become key players. Why is it that only some amongst many turn into leading lights? Aspiring to be a leader at work is one matter and make such intents known to others is another. When you do the latter, you run the peril of being pigeonholed as a freebooter or a fortune hunter.

If you want to be a leader at work, the following tips can help:

·  Be enterprising: An enterprising disposition will not be comfortable at all, however, you will have to take everything in stride. People may regard your venturesome pursuits as crazy, but then that is what handling risks entail; a person who does not take initiative loses everything, including credibility. As a leader, you ought to be daring and not fearful of a failure; you should not compromise on the principles that you stand for either. As a leader, you should not shy away from playing with chance, particularly when others are backing out.

·  Embrace a triumphant outlook: In any situation, people have got a tendency to go with victors. Therefore, it is essential that your attitude manifests a winning outlook. All workplaces are generally backbiting establishments and if you have to go through them unaffected and without fingers being pointed, you need to have a very shrewd as distinct from a devious approach. All your efforts to discharge your responsibilities should invariably be earnest and bona fide; and at the same time you should display boldness and forcefulness as distinct from brazenness and hostility. If you want to be a leading light at work, there is no way that your self-confidence should plummet. You must have full trust in your capability to alter circumstances and mind-sets of people for the better.

·  Be liable and answerable: No headship function comes sans responsibilities and accountability. You will have to be adept at being answerable for all aspects related to your duties. You may proceed with due cautiousness and restraint alright, but yet meet failure. You could even be the very reason for it. When you become answerable for any work, it is not that you attribute success to yourself; every flop or a let-down is also to be ascribed to you. Therefore, you should be forthright enough to take blame for issues that resulted in a failure. And more importantly, you should learn from mistakes and ensure that they are not repeated in future.

·  Be understandable & open: If you display any reluctance to be blameworthy and not agree to any criticism, it will be seen as an act of selfishness. As a leader, you need to have an open mind, the implication of which is being responsive to new ideas at all times. There will be several well-informed and experienced people whose advice you will just not be able to ignore as they will be sound and prove to be real success facilitators. Since work is all about teamwork, there is no way that you can do it alone. You will have to accept new ideas and work on them.  

·  Don’t be secretive: There is no point in letting ideas remain locked inside you. You must share them, together with their very reasons. Unless you do this, you will never ever come to be aware about your flaws and inadequacies. It is essential that you know your vulnerabilities and various prompting factors for them. So, when you interact and let things inside you out, the space that is generated is used to absorb and house fresh concepts and recommendations put forth by others, including those whom you least look forward to for contributions. As time passes and this process assumes a recurring form, you have at your disposal a mine of new ideas that cause you to make very useful contributions at work. Your knowledge base becomes tremendous and which causes people to look up to you.

·  Make a note of everything important: To be a leader at work, you have to be an ‘action person’ and not a ‘paper tiger’. But before you get down to action, you must have an action plan, formulating one is not an easy affair; executing an action plan is equally difficult too. Planning calls for research and exploring minute details; the process is demanding and the likelihood of missing out on some important issue cannot be discounted. Therefore, it is always in the fitness of things to reduce all planning to writing so that you can refer to it when in doubt. And more importantly, when you act as per your plan, you will portray an image of being thorough, a trait that all leaders actually display.

At any workplace, opportunities will come to you for leadership roles. You have to be alert and keep your wits about to grip any suitable one. You will realise, much to your astonishment and delight that the number of prospects that lie ahead of you are many   and that you have to be dynamic enough to seize one. And when you get into any leadership function, you start discharging duties of a senior position, for which, a strong blend of manoeuvring capability and integrity is a prerequisite. 

Fundamental initiatives for your career advancement

A good knowledge of yourself to include your likes, dislikes, penchants and preferences; availability of necessary resources; and possession of appropriate skillsets are essential for you to do well in your life and career alike. You could well be in any job or pursuit, sans any discernment of your strengths and weaknesses as also aspects that you can excel at or improve upon, your career advancement may not be possible.

You need to select your career with care and having selected one, you should do proper planning. All this calls for prudence and farsightedness. But despite planning, there will be glitches and hitches as you move ahead in your career; and which will call for serious contemplations. You will have to take bold decisions – some under uncertain circumstances. Your capacity to make sound decisions will depend on what information you are privy to at that particular time. At the same time, you should also know what knowledge you do not possess and hence make efforts to first get it and then evaluate it for its credibility.

Career planning generally comprises three phases – selection, planning for the way ahead and assessing an employment offer. While the first two could do without much of decision making, the third phase definitely calls for good decision making prowess. You could also decide to change a career and that would necessarily entail understanding what you as a distinct entity signify and manifest. You should thus know in detail about yourself, what you stand for, what you like or have a penchant for and where you are or what precisely is your current status in your career journey. It will be of no use if you go in for an employment without knowing these important facets of your personality.

There are eight fundamental initiatives that you should take for your career advancement and all of them are highly decisive ones. They are:    

· Assess your propensities: It is in your interests to be aware of your strengths – be they execution of professional assignments, social obligations, communication skills or grasping power. You should be clear about your likes and dislikes because it is only such knowledge that facilitates strategizing and charting a schedule for career advancement.

· Estimate your legerdemains: You can always acquire new skills and improve upon existing ones. But whatever you are cut out for is innate. However, betterment of your expertise is brought about by learning and development programmes followed by practical training. It is here that your skilfulness at grasping new things come in. The faster you acquire such additional knowledge, the faster will be your career advancement.

·  Identify your individual élan: No two individuals are alike. Each person has exclusive mannerisms, way of communications and response mechanisms to different situations. You will be always at ease when you have to act in harmony with your individual flairs and hence it is essential that you know them well. This will also facilitate effective and constructive interactions with people.  

· Ascertain your interests: With the passage of time, you can decide on issues that need to be the focus of your attention as a matter of routine. In other words, you get to be clear of what interests you and what does not. It is thus easy for you to make use of your abilities and skills towards your career advancement.

· Appreciate your own background: It is not easy to erase impressions and habits formed on account of your past circumstances, background, childhood and education. However, it is essential that you understand how in the backdrop of such conditions, you as a person has been stimulated and moulded. Such a comprehension will help you to apply your make-up in your efforts to move ahead in your career.     

· Bond with your values: Your ability to judge situations for their veracity and effects; and people for their knowledge and character traits is triggered by the philosophies, ideologies and values that you stand for. That is how you are able to distinguish matters that are principled or[H1]  unjust and workable or impractical. You are thus geared better to able to put across your perspectives and standpoints to others. In the context of your career, you can utilise such abilities in consonance with other stakes to heighten your plans and preferences for your career advancement.

Remember that your career advancement is contingent on the targets that you seek to achieve. You can always change your objectives; such an alteration can be facilitated by your inherent attributes. However, there is no denying the fact that it is you and you alone who will have to evaluate ongoing developments for their effects on your career advancement. But more importantly, it is essential that you have an open mind towards success because you will invariably attain whatever your mind permits you to attain. Your own resolution to move ahead and up in your career will count the maximum.

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The need to plot your career path

When you plan and plot your career path, you ensure that you are not rendered aimless or lost at any stage of your career journey. And when you get a job, it is not going to be forever; this point if comprehended will highlight the importance of career planning. Companies and organisations, big or small invariably focus on their interests; and such interests need not be in sync with the concerns of the employees.

Your company can help you to manage your career in limited ways. Making available some opportunities for training, granting promotions when due and training you to handle higher responsibilities are perhaps issues that you can bank upon your company. The responsibility to decide on what you want to accomplish, decide on the ways and means to do so and getting into appropriate jobs to facilitate making your dreams come true is yours and yours alone. Nobody will ever understand the significance of career planning for you other than you.

When you plot your career path, you cater to uncertainties that may strike you in the future. The benefits that accrue in the process are many, but generally pertain to:

·  Acquisition of skills that render you more in demand in the job market.

·  Your capability to switch jobs effortlessly.

·  Gaining experience to shoulder greater responsibilities.

·  Getting trained to take sound decisions.

·  Comprehending the larger picture for affecting better assessments.

·  Being better poised to understand how and where different appointments and responsibilities fit in your entire scheme of things.

·  Reaping knowledge about true self-worth and remuneration packages possible.

·  Securing job-satisfaction and work-life balance.

Whatever career path you plot, it should reveal and demonstrate your goals and aspirations alike. As years roll by, you may have to reassess things and put into operation midterm alterations, rectifications and modifications. Your career journey may span through over four decades and hence, you would be required to pass through different life stages as follows:

·  Up to 25 years age: During these years, you are still subject to influences by your parents, teachers and even friends to a large extent. And you also tend to look up to them for advice and encouragement on all possible issues, including higher education. The hard truth is that you lack contact with people who can offer you comprehensive and all-encompassing career advice.

·  25-35 years age: These years are essentially a sort of a beginning or an onset. You tend to still debate about the career that you are in and which selected while at school or college. The foregoing notwithstanding, it is some years that have been through the rut and gained significant experience of what life is actually all about. Such experience could be in the form of challenges, competitions and even knowledge. This is the age when people also settle down and have a family; and that is why domestic influences also started exerting and could even engineer a change in your plotted career path. 

·  35-50 years age: This is an important stage because it is during these years that you reach the pinnacle of your career or get to know that it is the end of everything. This decade and a half is generally characterised by development and advancement; and new opportunities emerge in consonance with your previous experience. The significance of this phase can be gauged by the fact that you will exercise major career-related choices to make certain that you are moving in the correct direction. However, in case there happens to be some element of disenchantment, you will per force take remedial action to offset the disadvantages that may accrue in subsequent years.

·  50-65 years age: This stage can be rather incommodious and vexing for many people. This is largely on account of the need to have an add-on career plan necessitated by either a decision to quit a job or even retrenchment. The age factor will force the career path to go through a drastic modification and revision; most people will seek work options that are comfortable.

·  Beyond 65 years age: After attaining this age, most people tend to decide on the clear-cut and well-defined role that their career ought to play in their lives. If that be so, your motivation can shift towards something that perhaps was never your focus of attention in the decades gone by.  

In the light of the above, your career planning has to be such that it adapts itself to changing situations. You will thus be required to evaluate issues on a regular basis to discern whether you are achieving whatever you set out for. In your quest towards accomplishing your objectives, you may modify your plan so that there is a perceptible improvement of your status. But if you fail to assess things, there is every possibility of going off track. And that is where your networking is likely to pay dividends because good, new openings are rarely advertised. More importantly, you should never slow down on your efforts to remain updated at all times so that you are, at all times, ready to confront challenges.  Last but not the least, you should not forget that it is only when you resort to good planning that you will succeed in transforming otherwise indescribable imaginings into reality.  

Work your way up in your career with rectitude

Most people who seek career advice want immediate results; they want short cuts to progress and advancement. The reason why they want this is because of widespread beliefs that moving up in a career is all contingent on the contacts that you enjoy. Regrettably, there is nothing more untrue than this. There are no shortcuts to move ahead in your career. However, there could be exceptions wherein some odd person may have succeeded through dubious means but the fact is that such progress will never be long-term. 

One can climb up the corporate ladder and reach a particular position. But being able to sustain yourself there in a manner that everybody looks up to you is difficult because herein come into play your aptitude, capabilities and brainpower. You cannot undervalue the subject of earning esteem and trustworthiness that is essential if one has to lead and oversee people. You simply cannot achieve victory in one big leap; it is accomplished gradually. And the best part of career advancement is that the magnificence of all accomplishments is contingent on the sweat that went in for the same.

In the light of the above, how do you move up in your career with rectitude? The following guidelines will be of immense help:

· Say ‘No’ to Machiavellian methods: Wily, underhand and sneaky methods to climb up the career ladder also require some planning. Such planning will consume more time for obvious reasons. It is better if the time is put to good use; you could always engender new ideas, toil hard and gear yourself to face difficult situations. Doing so will offer you distinct advantages that will have long-term ramifications. However, this in no way reduces the importance of conventional career planning. It is up to you to identify ways and means to perk up your proficiency level and accomplish whatever career objectives that you have set for yourself. It goes without saying that towards such planning, good networking skills are inescapable. You need to understand that Machiavellian methods call for greater caution and run the risk of exposure. Therefore, they need to be shunned because if your ulterior motives get exposed, you will suffer immense shame and opprobrium.

· Let hard work not deter you: The younger generation is not much inclined to sweat it out for accomplishing anything. They want easy ways out. Your own initiatives to learn the tricks of the trade are dependent on how serious you actually are with regard to your career. If you are really serious-minded, you should understand that you will achieve nothing without hard work. All hard work has costs attached and it is neigh impossible to achieve success by moving in a particular direction or method where there is no hard-slog. The fruits of labour are always sweet – you must understand this.

· Provoke new thought processes: New ideas and concepts are always welcome in any establishment. But that does not connote that you keep coming out with them to an extent that your boss gets confounded. Whatever you suggest has to be pertinent to your place of work and have the potential of heightening efficiency and outputs. It is also likely that your idea may be good but because of your inexperience, somebody else more competent is asked to implement it. If that be so, you should have no objection to credit being accorded to him or her. Your principle ought to be working for a principled stand and not commendation; a selfless approach will boost your image in the eyes of others.

· Mentor & guide others: It is likely that you are still rather young and guiding others may not appeal to you. Leaders can well be young. You can always adopt a leadership stance and concentrate on motivating and impelling others. When you do this, you will get to acquire knowledge and expertise to work your way up in your career. However, you will have to adhere to the tenets of teamwork. As a leader, you may have to be stern to ensure that things move in the correct direction, but you cannot afford to be authoritarian. All your actions should be governed by accepted norms and organizational interests at all times.

It is essential that you do not lose sight of your sight; your concentration also has to be of a high degree. It is also necessary that you adhere to simplicity and honesty in all spheres, including your thinking process. When you proceed with righteousness, you will realise what ascending the corporate ladder is actually all about. You also need to have a high degree of self-confidence to attain your objectives and self-confidence comes automatically with self-discipline. Moving up the corporate ladder with rectitude is the best possible way to also attain dignity, self-assurance and triumph. 

Press forward in your career

You could be working in a large multinational or a small local set-up; you could be holding a senior position or a junior one; your workplace could be located in a high-rise building in a high-end locality or in a small shed. All these issues are of little significance when it comes to staying in work for the years to follow.

The key to remaining employable is your own ingenious exploit. There are three strategies that you should adopt vis-à-vis your career:

· You must regard your career as your own business venture: The issue of career management is that even if you happen to work for somebody else, you must regard your career as your own venture and take care of it. Today, retrenchments, restructuring, acquisitions and mergers are quite common; and you should not allow yourself to sit at a place other than behind the steering wheel. Rather than thinking that you are working for somebody else, you should think as if you are a self-employed person, a master of one’s own destiny. You must raise some very tough queries with yourself like the nature of business that you are engaged in, your product line and the market for it. Whatever be your trade, you should identify at least three characteristics and advantages each of your skills; and be awake to your true value in the job market. Your perception of your workplace ought to change; in fact you must see your career as a business, a venture that is supposedly totally yours wherein you are the whole sole in charge of each and everything in it. Now when that happens, you will become the driving force of your own career and the nit-picky winds of change will have no role to play.           

· You should be able to utilise your skills everywhere: When you work, you do so on the basis of certain abilities and expertise; these are invariably required to accompany you everywhere. What are the skill sets that you are carrying along with you? Are they few or are they many and varied? The more they are, the more is your competitive advantage. In order to maintain your competitive advantage, it is essential that you take stock of your skill-sets from time to time and gauge them for their quality and standards. This will necessitate doing a comparative evaluation vis-à-vis your colleagues; issues that will have to be looked into will be your academic qualifications, training courses undergone, quantum of experience to your credit and your career advancement. You could be well-qualified now when compared with what you were a couple of years back; and hence better-poised to take on all future challenges. In case you are not, then you would need to reorganise yourself because to move ahead tomorrow implies being in a similar position today. It is of little consequence where you are in the corporate hierarchy today. What is significant is that you should be well-versed in executing assigned tasks with the skill-sets that you possess, not in your current job, but elsewhere too. Your skill-set and their relevance are aspects that will stand you in good stead, given the ever-altering competitive work environments that exist today.      

· You should be pragmatically smart and realistically canny: You need to be aware that workplace rules are being subjected to change on a continuous basis. If that be so, you should be also aware of aspects that will ensure that you remain relevant and pertinent. In other words, you have to be a person who still matters and who cannot be ignored or discounted at any time. The career game has indeed changed; it is based on creativity, prominence and suppleness. The foregoing thrusts two major liabilities on you – display of headship attributes and remaining prominent at all times. You simply cannot afford to hide behind curtains or a bookshelf and remain preoccupied with routine tasks. It is essential that you look much beyond your primary duties and make concerted efforts to ensure compliance and completion of what your boss desires or whatever your section or  team seeks to do. You should thus make yourself crucial to all matters. You may be required to do some self-marketing by dwelling on the results of your endeavours. Whatever be the name and repute that gets tagged on to you, it could facilitate or hamper your prospects of succeeding. You could well earn a good reputation by being associated with successful projects that propel you to wide publicity, so much so that people who get to see you can influence your career. This will surely be possible if you play a lead role in raising a new section for an ensuing project, ensuring that technology is smoothly adopted by organising and controlling its introduction or being part of projects that call for inter- and intra-office liaison work, including handling allied communication responsibilities.     

Remaining ahead of others calls for an intense determination, particularly in the present day world that is plagued with extreme competition. You must understand that an individual who is going to be successful in his or her career will do so not because of ‘work well done’ alone. If you are working, you are expected to work hard, work well anyway. What will put you ahead of others is your ready-for-action spirit, your gung-ho! It is your competitive advantage that will matter a lot.

The importance of personal branding in your career

Workplaces and working environments all over the world have undergone a tremendous change in recent times, largely because of globalisation. The rise of social media and rapidity of technological developments have caused the dividing line between work and personal life to fade, if not disappear; this has made the change more pronounced than ever before. With increased competition in the world of employment, the problem stands compounded.

In the light of the above, the need to stand out in a crowd in order to survive requires no amplification. It is not any exaggeration to say that every single individual has a brand of his own and stands a fairly good chance to show up. Therefore, issues of age, designation, appointment and pursuit notwithstanding, we need to realise that branding is an important going-on.

We need to appreciate that irrespective of the position we hold, in some way or the other we are the No. 1 of the organisation we are in and that we need to sell ourselves too. Today, personal branding has gained momentum because every person out to get a job as also people managing low-key enterprises are concerned about staying relevant, particularly when economic conditions are not very encouraging. We should recognise the fact that anything that sets us apart from others can be made use of to achieve success.

Personal branding pertains to identifying your unique qualities and then making them known for others to judge to facilitate accomplishing your career and life objectives. If you can comprehend what you are – that is, you are aware of your strongpoints, principles, standards and expertise – you can utilise such information to detach yourself from those posing a challenge to you and emerge successful. Personal branding is indeed very potent because it tends to communicate to the environment an image of what you are and what you capable of delivering. You thus get to be acknowledged and recognised for your plus points.

Personal branding is a procedure that comprises three distinct phases – Abstraction, Vocalisation and Display. The Abstraction Phase calls for an introspection based on your own market external inquiries so that you get to understand how others view you and what makes you different from others. In the Vocalisation Phase, you decide on how you intend to portray your unique assets and abilities to those who ought to know them. You thus give a shape to your own brand that needs to be asserted. In addition, you should also re-draft your biodata so that you portray your best. Your career marketing tools are thus well-oiled and your career marketing documents are fresh. The third phase, that is, the Display Phase is all about demonstrating to the environment your brand in every activity that you are associated with, your networking, your utilisation of technology, your appearance and your bearing included. You thus reveal and publicise an exclusive potential of value that you possess.     

Personal branding is nothing but a reformation of the methods adopted by you to manage your career. It implies ascertaining, categorisation and airing of different aspects that make you exclusive, apposite and convincing so that you are able to accomplish your objectives with relative ease. In a nutshell, personal branding is nothing but making use of your actual self to attain whatever you seek from life. 

Does personal branding help you to get a job or to function better? Yes, it does. Hence, there is no denying the fact that you need to brand yourself as a brand. Branding will rejuvenate all your career marketing tools and documents, which otherwise tend to lose their verve and punch over a period of time. It also puts together a vibrant method to engender an interest in you – something that facilitates winning the confidence of your clients. You thus get to function from a seat of authority and supremacy.

When you craft a personal brand for yourself, you get to be more mindful of the person that is ‘You’. You get to develop an astonishing comprehension of yourself and various attributes that make you exclusive and treasured via-a-vis others. Your strengths are rendered more optimised and more powerful, however, towards this, you ought not to be plagued with any sort of ambiguity with regard to your goals and targets.

You will thus see that personal branding aids in the creation of conspicuousness, display and aura; and eventually attainment of your objectives. It is all about making a difference from those who otherwise are your equals. You get to sit on a seat of authority and are able to exercise proper command and control over all your professional pursuits. Now if that be an outcome, you automatically stand perched on a higher pedestal. Isn’t that your aim?

Transferable skills perk up your chances of career success

· What would be your reaction if you were told to meet a high end personality, interaction with whom was hitherto fore done by the CEO of your company?  

· Do you communicate whatever you want to effectually or do you fumble?

· If a balance sheet was made available to you for perusal, will you be able to understand the financial health of a company?

· Can you enlighten a non-technical man about an intricate or technical issue in simple, lay man language?

· Will you be able to render first aid to somebody who faints while standing?

When people embark on their careers, they are more or less convinced that their qualifications are the only things that will matter. Well, academic qualifications are tickets to impressive jobs, but it is not knowledge by itself that expedites your career progress. You may have an excellent network, but again the people you know may not be facilitators of your career success.

Today, quite a few organisations are invariably on the lookout for people who besides discharging their individual responsibilities, are able to gel with others at workplace and function meritoriously. The importance of smaller issues matter a lot and this aspect assumes greater significance as one keeps advancing in the career journey. Smaller issues generally imply certain essential skills that are germane to a horde of circumstances and work, but are generally disregarded by us. Such skills are what are known as transferable skills.

Most transferable skills get to be acquired with experience, though some can be ingrained through learning. Are there any courses that teach you how to preside over a conference or a seminar? Do you have any institutions that coach you to make your customers feel comfortable so that you can sell your products? How do you acquire the necessary expertise to ensure that your subordinates remain pepped up? It is you who has to learn all by yourself more about communications, hiring processes and crises management. And if you aspire for a successful career, there is no short cut to it and you can do so by developing transferable skills. Different transferable skills are:

· Rendition of reports.

· Negotiation skills.

· Verbal communication skills, including speaking over the telephone.

· Comprehending financial aspects of a case.

· Handling an interview.

· Client dealings.

· Undertaking routine organisational work.

· Making financial arrangements for various projects.

· Planning, accounting and costing.

· Suppleness, tractability and manipulability of approach.

· Headship qualities.

The above qualities are seemingly a mixed bunch of goings-on that entail apparently inconsequential expertise but otherwise hobnob with other significant pursuits. Yet they have great applicability and consequence. To illustrate the point, replacing the fuse in an electronic gadget and making a draft operational plan are both equally crucial skills for the smooth management of any establishment. 

Amongst all the skills listed above, it is the communication skills that are specifically vital. Quite a few people fail, and fail miserably when they are required to communicate with others. They attempt to elucidate issues but miss out on major issues. Their written reports leave much to be desired, in that, they lack head and tail; and are replete with grammatical errors. In most circumstances, people also fail to gauge other people for their erudition or capability and thus adopt an inappropriate communication style.  

There are some career courses that are well-focussed and have a rather strong component of expediency and sensibleness, towards some of these skills. Such courses train candidates in practical approaches. But most training courses do not gear candidates to face challenges and work without fear so that they are responsible for their own progress. The foregoing notwithstanding, most people already possess some such skills and hence, they take note of them and take necessary action to improve upon them. It is only then that one can convey to others his or her true competences.

In the present day age of high employment costs and progress, your transferable skills serve to maintain your PR, give a boost to promoting yourself and facilitate taking up any new responsibility. You may not realise it, but you will have highly valuable skill sets that can be put to use at any workplace. In fact, your transferable skills are a catalogue of your assets that that will make certain your professional resilience as also the robustness and longevity of your career. In the long term, your transferable skills ensure that you are not rendered professionally redundant. In other words, your transferable skills perk up your chances of career success.