Five Scary Pieces of Career Advice

This is the time for all things scary but what you always want to avoid is scary advice that can derail your job opportunities and career.

Perhaps you’ve received some of the advice below (or maybe even offered it) but you’ll want to think carefully before you take it to heart.

Do what you love. This sounds great at first but should be taken with some caveats. Loving what you do also needs to be able to provide you with a sustainable income to live. You might love playing video games or taking pictures of your cat but only a few people make a living with those ventures. You might also love something you’re not particularly gifted or skilled at. Sometimes the work we do is difficult and hard to like but you’re able to use your strengths and skills to make a difference. By all means, if you can do what you love and make a living, then do so. But that should not be the only, or primary, factor in deciding your career path.

If the money is good you can learn to love any job. There are many people who make good money and hate their job and higher rates of income often relate to higher levels of job dissatisfaction and stress. Don’t assume that if the money is right, you’ll be able to enjoy your work.

Just take this job until something better comes along. If you feel hesitant to take a job and there are red flags warning you to stay away, do just that. If you can be patient, do so. Of course, in some situations you desperately need to find work but, in general, it’s best to avoid a job that could bring more headaches and make it more difficult for you to make the move once you’re in a bad work situation.

To get ahead you need to go back to school. There are many jobs and career paths that don’t require you to get another degree and there are alternative educational opportunities and training programs that can provide you with the skills and information needed to move forward, while you are gaining important experience working in the field.

You need to stick with a job for a few years. Don’t be a job-hopper. That may have been true decades ago when people often took a job out of high school or college and stayed in that job until retirement, but that’s no longer the case, and it’s acceptable now to move on to new experiences and higher levels of responsibility in your field.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: 8 Steps to Have Your Best Week (and Life)

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

The video below from Ryan Holiday and Daily Stoic discusses 8 ways to have your best week and life, starting with guarding your time. Check out the video to learn more.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 9 Ways to Improve Your Perseverance Skills

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 9 Ways to Improve Your Perseverance Skills: "By learning to take risks, you raise the probability of facing more difficult situations. When in those difficult situations, if you can learn to adapt and understand what steps are necessary to keep the company moving in the right direction."

• 5 Ways to Manage Your Fear of Uncertainty: "If a feared outcome materializes, chances are you will deal with it better than you could now imagine. Remember that the next time uncertainty rears its head."

• How to Cultivate Determination: "If you spend all of your time weakness-fixing, you’ll lose determination pretty quickly. When you’re moving toward a goal, take on the things you’re really strong at, and collaborate in areas where you’re weak."

• How to Make Your Organization Matter More to People: "We also believe that the business case for inclusion is strong, that we have a credible case to make to organizations that if you're committed to doing this, it will pay off in terms of your relevance, your resilience and your sustainability."
• 15 Leadership Lessons:"If you don't feel like you know what you're doing, leap into leadership anyway. You're more ready than you think."

5 Things to Do on Friday Afternoon at Work Before You Hit the Weekend

Everybody is “working for the weekend”, according to the 1981 Loverboy song, and while you might be anxious to leave work, get out early, and hot the weekend, your career and life might benefit from taking a few minutes to pause on a Friday afternoon to get a few things in order before you leave.

Scheduling just 30 minutes into your Friday routine to tackle the following five items will significantly impact your well-being, and help you be more prepared for the next week.

Evaluate the week. Take a few moments to check in on your priorities for the week. Did you accomplish your goals or is there some unfinished business that you’ll have to complete over the weekend, or get after first thing next week? You can do this in your head, but it can be helpful to write down a few notes to help you remember your assessment of the week. Think over your meetings and interactions with colleagues, supervisors, and customers. Is there anything you would change or is there a situation you would have liked to handle differently? You don’t need to spend a lot of time on this evaluation, and five minutes or so is plenty for now. 

Respond to Messages. You won’t want to go into the weekend knowing you owe someone a phone call, or an email reply and it can hang in your thoughts until you get back to them. Take care of it now, even if it means following up with a more detailed email or conversation later. You might also, if possible, work to attain in-box zero, meaning you have dealt with all your emails by responding to them or filing them away to read another day.

Organize your desk. Avoid coming in to work on Monday to a messy and disorganized desk by taking a few minutes to straighten up before you leave. Wipe away the stains from your coffee mug and toss out the crumbs from that protein bar you had after lunch.

Set some initial goals. Think about your priorities for the coming week and identify 3-5 preliminary goals or tasks to accomplish. Situations and priorities change but you’ll head into the week with a clearer focus by taking some time to prepare.

Review your calendar for the upcoming week. Before you leave take a quick glance at your calendar and note any meetings, training sessions, or big deadlines coming up. You don’t want to arrive at work on Monday morning to discover you’re 10 minutes late for the company-wide meeting.

By taking a few minutes on Friday afternoon to prepare for the following week you’l

l set yourself up for success and allow yourself to better enjoy the weekend.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: How to Simplify Your Life

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

The video below from the School of the Life discusses ways to simplify our lives to enable us to live and work better. Check out the video to learn more.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 3 Ways to Find the Right Company Culture For You

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• 3 Ways to Find the Right Company Culture: "company culture is not one size fits all. You need to decide which style will best boost your engagement and keep you motivated to succeed."

• 5 Signs You're Successful (even if you don't realize it): "Successful people give themselves permission to dream as big as they want.  When you create a vision for your life that might seem wildly ambitious, but you take steps every day towards it, know you are successful."

• Simple Hacks to Fight a Mid-Afternoon Slump: "If you don’t want to get super sweaty, you can still get an energy boost from going on a short walk. Just 10 minutes of walking or climbing the stairs can be more energizing than that extra cup of coffee."

• 4 Principles of Servant Leadership: "Fostering leadership comes in many forms, including coaching, mentorship and growth. Take the time to teach someone the ropes, to offer words of encouragement and answer questions these young leaders have for you. Great leaders give back."
• 7 Ways Young Women Can Assert Themselves at Work:"I’ve found that simply repeating an idea or contribution (with minor rephrasing or recontextualization to avoid repetition) until it’s acknowledged is sometimes the only way for your voice to be heard."

How to Deal with Concerns About Your Job Security

There are times in our career when we experience concerns about the security of our job and wonder if we’ll still be employed in the next few weeks. For example, your company might be struggling financially, or has recently gone through a restructuring or round of layoffs or is in the process of a merger.

These situations always bring about a great deal of uncertainty and can lead to anxiety in the workplace and fears about the future.

But there are ways to make these situations more manageable and allow you to deal with concerns about job security in a healthy way.

Get your finances in order. Hopefully, you’re not waiting until a crisis to get your finances in order. And by, in order, we mean ensuring that you have a budget in place, your income is greater than your expenses, you’re saving money, and you are contributing to a retirement plan. Having a sense of financial security can ease the stress of anxiety related to your job and future employment.

Avoid gossip. Stay away from the speculation about the company and what might happen. There will always be a lot of people with opinions in your company but many of them are not informed opinions and only serve to stir up controversy. Avoid the people in your company who are gossiping and sharing information that might or might not be true.

Maintain good communication. On the other hand, maintain good communication with your immediate supervisor and be sure to discuss any concerns you have about the company and its direction. Let your manager know you and the team would appreciate regular updates on the merger, state of the industry, or whatever the specific situation your company is going through.

Focus on your health. Take care of yourself, both mentally and physically. If you’re experiencing some depression or anxiety, seek out the help of a professional. Get enough sleep, reduce or eliminate alcohol intake, get some physical exercise, and focus on maintaining an optimistic approach to your life and work.

Deepen your network. At any time in your career there should be attention paid to developing and deepening your network. Having a healthy and robust system of support is always helpful to your life and career.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: How to Build Self-Confidence

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

The video below from Alex Heyne at Modern Health Monk discusses ways to increase your self-confidence to bring greater success to your life and career. Check out the video to learn more.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 5 Traits of a Championship Mindset

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• The 5 Traits of a Championship Mindset: "Commitment should not be just about setting a goal, but living by a standard. A goal is a something you reach. A standard is something you live by."

• Why More Women Need to Say Yes to Top Leadership Positions: "There are other biases that women face in the workplace, but the number one bias that all women face is about family and career."

• How to "Sell" Yourself in a Job Interview: "You’ll be perceived as someone who is keenly interested in what the interviewer has to say and what the company can offer."

• How to Improve Mental Health at the Office: "Many individuals with psychiatric disability can and do work effectively. How the condition impacts work life varies considerably."
• 3 Tips for Making Collaboration Fun and Productive:"Keeping teammates in the dark can stall a project. By sharing the same information with every member of the team, it shows each person that they are essential to decision making and gives team members the ability to execute on their own."

How to Identify a Toxic Workplace Before You End Up in One

There are few things that make a job more unbearable than working in a toxic workplace, a place you dread to go to every day, that brings out anxiety every Sunday evening, and that leaves you feeling drained and run down rather than energized and enthused.

Of course, once we’re in a toxic workplace we usually recognize it right away, and if we have some savings built up or a new job offer, we can move on.

However, the best way to avoid working in a toxic workplace is to avoid taking the job in the first place. Here are a few ways to determine if the company you’re thinking of applying to, or accepting a job at, is, in fact, toxic.

Negative reviews. Research the company to see what people are saying about it. Use Google and search Twitter feeds to learn more about the company and how customers experience it and what employees and former employees have to say. Glassdoor is a good resource to get a sense for the reputation of a company among its workers.

Recent layoffs or high turnover. Search the news to learn about recent layoffs at the company and to see if there is a pattern of downsizing. Companies that go through frequent restructuring patterns often have employees with low morale because they fear they could be the next to go.

Negative comments about others. Does the company publicly make negative comments about other brands or businesses? Or have you seen the leadership from the company use social media to attack others? If so, these can be clues to stay away. The company might be led by individuals who think bullying is the way to achieve their goals. When you have an interview at a company pay close attention to the way the hiring manager or HR staff person speaks about current or former employees. This will provide some important information about the health of the company you are considering.

Unclear job description. If the company cannot provide you with a clear and specific job description you might want to steer clear. This can be an indication of a company that is not clear about its goals and does not provide the necessary directives and training for you to succeed at your job.

Trust your gut. In the end, trust your instincts. If your gut is saying no and telling you this is not the right opportunity, then you should strongly consider trusting your intuition. You might be unemployed a few weeks longer, but you’ll appreciate it when you find yourself enjoying your job and the company you work for rather than wishing you could flee after a week or two on the job.

Daily Leap Career Video of the Week: 5 Things Great Leaders Do Every Day

Each week we present our Daily Leap Career Video of the Week. The video we share presents news or advice related to career and life development, searching for a job, the economy and employment, and other career-related topics.

The video below from Entrepreneur discusses five things great leaders do every day, including facing challenges rather than avoiding them. Check out the video to learn more.

High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: Fostering a Workplace Culture that Supports Well-Being

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share them so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

• How to Foster a Culture That Supports Well-Being in the Workplace: "Understanding the elements that are most important to a workforce can help a company decide where to focus resources in creating a well-being program to meet talent’s expectations."

• Everything is Figureoutable: "We are capable of figuring out anything in life, whether it’s finding a home for our sick parents, inventing a new technology, or overcoming a daily challenge like managing our health, money or relationships."

• 3 Things to Know About an October Job Search: "For most industries there is a push in October to wrap up end-of-year hiring before the holiday distractions begin."

• Why Reverse Mentoring Works and How to Do It Right: "While digital skill development should not be the focus of a reverse-mentoring program, many of the companies we researched mentioned that it was a meaningful part of the relationship."
• This is the Biggest Time Waster at Work:"Tools meant to improve productivity and boost collaboration in the workplace have actually made employees more distracted."

Add These 5 Habits for Lifelong Career Success

It’s never too late (or too early) in your career to instill good habits into your work routine, and there are some basic habits for success that apply to any job or work environment you might encounter in your career.

Here are five habits to will help you build a track record of success in your life and career.

Focused, hard work. If you don’t have a practice of working hard, you’ll have a difficult time finding career success. Hard work should be the cornerstone of your work habits and should, obviously, be a given. But you can also work hard on the wrong things and it’s important to develop the ability to focus on a single task rather than allowing the distraction of multitasking.

Continuous learning. Regardless of the position you’re in, there is always room to learn more and to expand your knowledge, deepen your skill set, and expand your tool kit of expertise. This requires an attitude of humility and a commitment to seek out opportunities to learn more about your job and industry.

Positive approach. Taking a positive approach to your life by developing a habit of positive thinking and seeking out the best in others and every situation will enable you to create more success in your life and career. Others will want to work with you, and you’ll instill a sense of trust in your relationships that will build an effective and lasting network.

Seek out mentors. Successful people realize that they can not do it alone and they seek out mentors and others who they can learn from and who can be a support system along the way. Strong and successful individuals have a strong system of support, starting with a mentor who has their best interests at heart and isn’t afraid to be honest.

Attention to purpose. Lifelong career success comes from developing a clear sense of your purpose and seeking out work opportunities that fulfill that purpose. Successful people are not driven by the accumulation of wealth but seek to serve others through their skills, interests, and knowledge, and want to make a difference in the world.

Work to cultivate these habits in your work and life and you’ll be closer to having the successful career you want.