5 Quick Tips to Control Your Career and Your Future!

It’s unlikely that anyone today will stay with one employer their whole working life. As you make choices regarding your career your identity comes from these choices and not your employer.

Who is making a lifetime commitment to your career? It’s surely not your employer, no matter how benevolent they might be. The person controlling your life is you, so if you take responsibility for your life and your future you’ll be far ahead of most people. It’s counterproductive to blame circumstances you cannot control or to blame your employer, your supervisor or co-workers.

If you feel powerless because of where you work, or the career you are in, wake-up and get started on your future. Everyone, with a bit of planning has the ability to quit their jobs and start with another employer, another career or start working for themselves.

The job market is relatively soft right now, but the economy will change and if you plan for a job or career change you future success starts now.

Five Ways to Quickly Get Control of Your Career and Your Future.

1. Research job opportunities all the time.

This doesn’t mean you need to send out five resumes every day. What is does mean is you are constantly looking for opportunities. Some may be internal-with your current employer-some may be external.

Some opportunities may be additional education, self-study, networking with outside organizations, and becoming a player in a career related organization. All will provide you with a constant stream of valuable career information.

If you get stuck and don’t see a way out, work hard at getting help. Career coaches are everywhere, how about a mentor or someone from your network.
Build up your support team and soon you’ll have a group of people working on your behalf.

2. Don’t use money issues as the reasons holding you back.

If you use this as an excuse for making a career or job decision you are shortchanging yourself. If you think you need a certain income to live well, there are many families living better but earning 10%, 20% and even 50% less than you do. How do they do it? Do some research.

After your research then make your plans and you’ll soon find that financial issues will drop off your worry/excuse list.

3. Honestly assess where you happiness comes from.

If it were money, millionaires would be the happiest people on the planet. And earning 25% more may or may not increase you level of happiness. Probably not as there is always 25% more, and 25% after that.

After you’ve built your career plan and you take action this is the fasted path to fulfillment and happiness, not ruminating about what you cannot control.

4. Blaming others or taking a routine negative approach to a situation is a lose-lose proposition.

How you view situations matters. If a problem becomes framed as an opportunity you’ll be well on your way to controlling the situation. Search for the best in every situation, taking the optimistic approach will put you more in control of your career and your future.

5. Do the best presenting in your “brand.”

Looking your best starts with physical conditioning. What is your ideal weight? Do you regularly exercise? Do you go out of your way to build in some physical activity into your daily routine?

Working in a three story building-how often do you use the stairs? Going shopping? How about parking at the edge of the parking lot and getting in some extra walking. You get the idea.

What you wear can make a difference. Recently I meet with a manager who was dressed in what looked like Goodwill castoffs. He didn’t impress any member of my team and he had to work extra hard to get his points across. This is not to suggest that he had to wear a $2000 designer suit, but freshly pressed khakis, with a shirt without a frayed collar and shined shoes would have made at least a neutral impression.

Need assistance with the rest of your appearance? Get help, get a regular haircut, etc.

Also, as part of your career planning work hard to improve your ability to communicate, both in writing and in making an oral presentation. Improvement in this area will also improve your “brand” and will pay big dividends.

Controlling your life, career and future is no easy task. Once you make the decision to start, work through one thing at a time. Keep it up and before you know it you will put together a record of personal achievements and career advancement. The time to start is now.

Annie Dias lists some guidelines that can help your team perform as a cohesive unit

Today teamwork has become far more significant that it was a decade ago. Team building skills, therefore, have come to be an essential part of seeking a new job or promotion into the next level of management.

There are several studies that show the effectiveness of working in a team and tell us that a team achieves much more than the same group of people working individually.

So, how can you become a team builder? How can you get the members of your team to work as a cohesive unit?

Here are some guidelines..

Communication: every member of your team must be allowed his share of talk time when he can voice his concerns, air his ideas, and share his thoughts. Any decision taken must be a collective one. Good communication also involves active listening among team members and every team members and values the suggestions of other members.

Trust: every good team must trust each of its members. Only then will they be active and productive.

Define Goals: set clear and specific goals to every members of your team. Team goals must be given separately. Each goal should also come with a set time limit.

Reviews: goals mean nothing unless you monitor them. For Example, you need to conduct a regular progress review on how members are proceeding and what glitches they may have come up against that could affect deadlines. Members of your team should be encourages to sit down regularly to take stock of the situation and review not only their goals but also that of the team so that they can work through any problems that may have arisen. 

Cooperate: every team member must be encouraged to collaborate and cooperate with the others in the team. Remember this is not about personal accomplishments.

Be professional: team members must be willing to set petty differences aside and work together for the greater good of the organization.

Diversity: every team member must enjoy and celebrate the differences in the others. They have to respect the value of being different and you must highlight the fact that being different means getting so many more ideas and new ways of approaching a situation.  

Enthusiasm: encourage members to jump into the team process with enthusiasm.

Collaborate: encourage each team member and see that they feel that they play a vital role in sharing the work.

Acquire these simple traits to become a good team leader

Not everyone can lead. Very often we find individuals who are promoted into leading positions merely because they were high performers in their jobs. But leading is very different to doing a task-oriented job. It requires the individual to have other attributes. The main ones being…

Feedback: an essential quality you need to have if you want to lead others successfully. You need to learn hoe to give feedback. Most people are looking at you for praise, recognition etc..

Listening not hearing: gone are the days when you told someone what to do and to get on with having it done Today this attitude will not work You have to take the team along with you if you want to succeed in any new venture.

Get it Right: leading others also means maintaining the correct balance between delegating work to other people and tracking its progress.

Set targets: set Key Results Areas for each member of your team and see that these are realistic result oriented and achievable.

Train and develop: when you are leading you must also be able to train others.

Leading not a simple process: there are many facets to good leadership. And leading successfully means that you will have a company that is up ad moving with the times. You have to ensure that you are operating at peak performance levels yourself if you want others to emulate your example.

Plan your work and then work your plan to achieve your objective

Do you realize that working from home is really no different than any other job when it comes to managing people? If you do, then you will also figure out that managing people means getting the right people for the job, setting goals and objectives, and finally getting results.

First set clear goals for yourself and for your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly tasks and then start looking for the right people to help you achieve these.

But wait. Do you have a business plan? Do you have a essential action items needed to reach your objectives? Do you have an agenda for these action items?

If your answer to the above is no, then it’s time to contemplate writing a plan for these items. As the experts says,’ plan your work and then work your plan.

Never forget that your job should be balanced with your life. You have to build quality time with your family into your plan. So it should not be so full of action that your have no time at home. You also need time off from the business to relax and unwind, some time for yourself and may be your hobby. Bear all this in mind when you are chalking out a schedule or plan.

Now obviously you cannot do all the work yourself. You need someone or some persons to help you accomplish the required tasks for your business.

For Businesses that run out of the house, you should try and “outsource” as many routine functions as you can. Ensure that whomever you outsource to offers you the ability to monitor progress and results of those tasks.

Last but not the least, monitor your progress against your goals and objectives. Start each day by using your agenda to review the days and week’s action items.

As your business grows, set yourself new goals and targets. Long term as well as short term goals must keep getting added to your plan.

Working from home is like any other business, you constantly need to tweak and redefine your objectives.

A positive attitude can make life rewarding for yourself and others around you, says Udayan Banerjee

 An old man was walking along the seashore when he came upon a part of the beach where thousands of starfish had been washed ashore. A little further down the area he saw a young woman, frantically picking up the starfish one at a time and tossing them back into the ocean.

“You silly girl!” he exclaimed, “You can’t possibly save all these starfish. There are too many of them. It won’t make any difference”.

The Young woman paused briefly to consider the old man’s words, picked up a starfish and tossed it into the ocean. Then turning to the old man she said very simply,’ I made a difference to that one!”

The old man could only shake his head in awe for he had just been taught a valuable lesson by the young woman.

No matter how insurmountable the task, with a positive attitude you can make a difference. A positive attitude is the first chapter in the book of success. A negative attitude definitely guarantees failure. So, if you want to succeed and make a difference, make difference in your attitude First!”

Here are some ways which should help you develop a positive attitude.
Unshackle yourself from the past: past failures and setbacks tend to create negative emotions which not only affect your present performance but also inhibit you from recognizing future opportunities. So de-focus from the past and re-focus on the possibilities of the future.

Achieve, achieve achieve: achievements boost confidence and self-belief. As your achievement list grows your attitude soars. Once this happens, no mountain will be too high to climb, or for that matter, no boss too difficult to handle.

Get out of your comfort zone: accept new challenges and opportunities and you will discover new skills and qualities you never thought you had before.

Accept failures as stepping stones to success: failures are only a diversion and not the end of the road. Learn from them and move on.

Get into a learning curve:  upgrade your knowledge and skills on a regular basis, The more you know, the more confident you will be and the more positive your attitude.

And last but not the least, work according to your strengths.