High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: 4 Tips for Being a Mentally-Tough Leader

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!

• 4 Tips for Being a Mentally-Tough Leader: "It’s a lot easier to be tough when you truly believe in what you’re doing and you know, whether anyone else can see it or not, that what you are doing is right."
• 4 Productivity Tips to Change Your Life: "Simply take your to-do list and give each item a place on your calendar. it doesn't matter if you use a physical calendar or an online one; simply block out time to work through each item on your list."
• How to Take Charge of Your Career in 2016: "If you want to shake off one piece of brainwashing to start the new year, here is a good one to jettison. Pull yourself out of the delusion that going to work and doing your job every day constitutes managing your career."
• The 8 Self-Assessments You Need to Improve at Work This Year: "We all need to grow — not only to stay engaged in our work but also to keep up with our employers’ changing needs. And this is the perfect time of year to set personal development goals and start making progress on them."
• 4 Misconceptions about Getting a Job Out of College: "Remember: Often entry-levels jobs are just what they purport to be – a way for people to get in at the ground level of any business or industry."

5 Steps to Evaluate Your Career and Job at Year-End

As you come to the end of the year you might be getting some feedback from a manager or a supervisor about your work performance this year. It's great to get useful feedback from your employer and this often offers much to consider and implement in the upcoming year.

However, you should also conduct your own personal evaluation of the past year and how you did in relation to your career goals.

Here are five things to evaluate when assessing your career progress:

1. Major projects completed. What did you work on this year? Did you contribute to the completion of a major project in the past year? How successful was it and what was your role in it? Be sure to celebrate your achievements from this year.

2. New skills developed. Did you learn something new this year, take a class, or develop new skills through the completion of the projects you identified above? How do these new skills and abilities impact your career goals? How can these new skills move your career in the direction you envision?

3. New contacts and collaborators. Take some time to identify new contacts, collaborators, and friends you made over the past year. You might want to take a few minutes to reconnect with them before year-end. Think about some ways you can add some value to their life and career and seek a way to help them attain their goals. You can also spend some time identifying how these relationships might contribute to your career goals.

4. Areas for improvement. Be sure to consider the things that did not go well in the past year. Make an honest assessment of your role in the failure and identify ways you might have handled the situation/project/task differently.

5. How satisfied were you with your work? Take some time to consider what you liked and didn't like about your job and career path. Are there some things you can change to increase your level of enjoyment?

Finally, after you've completed your evaluation, update your resume and LinkedIn profile so you'll be ready for any new opportunities at the start of the new year.

Career Setbacks Can Lead to Opportunities

Most everyone experiences setbacks or disappointments throughout their career—some people may encounter many. Although they’re not always welcome, setbacks can serve as invaluable growth and learning opportunities.

Look at the Big Picture
When you experience a setback, it is easy to view the situation personally and over analyze it. While it is important to acknowledge your feelings, once you get over the disappointment, you’ll benefit more from viewing the big picture and studying the matter objectively. You may discover that the decision leading to your setback or disappointment was not personal at all and had more to do with management’s need to meet numbers at a specific point in time. Or, if you are truly honest with yourself, you may find that you weren’t ready to take on that new role or project you were trying for. It may help to think back to other times in your work or personal life where disappointment eventually led to bigger and better opportunities.

Uncover the Opportunities in Every Situation
Situations involving setbacks or disappointments are often opportunities for personal and professional growth. Focus on what you can learn from each experience and identify actions you can take that will help you grow. For example, if you were bypassed for a promotion due to your limited project management experience, are there existing team opportunities for leading a group project at work or through a volunteer organization.

Any career will have its ups and downs, but with dedication, hard work, and the right attitude, your career journey can still be rewarding and fulfilling.

12 Steps to Successful Career Change

Following up on our blog post last week about podcasts of interest to job seekers we came across the Dream Career Podcast and its series of 12 Steps to Successful Career Change. 


The series is broken down into 4 sections: Realization & Assessment, Exploration, Preparation, and Search & Networking.


Listen in here for useful suggestions and advice as you move through that career change.

How Your Career Saboteur Operates - Second in a Series

You have decided that you want to start your own business.

Or you want to change careers.

Or perhaps you want to apply for a promotion you feel you "barely qualify" for, or even apply to your dream company.

Welcome to the land of the saboteur.

Last week's post asked you to think of one to three big, "dream-worthy" things that you have wanted to accomplish in your career but haven't been able to. If you haven't done this already, go back to it now and do it. You're going to need them going forward. Because today we are going to get intimate with your saboteur, rooting him/her out and connecting in a way that you haven't done so previously. But, right now, we need to learn about what the concept of resistance.

In his book Do the Work, Steven Pressfield speaks of resistance, ultimately confirming that "any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity" will be welcomed with resistance.

You know what I'm about to say: your saboteur is what generates the resistance. Because your saboteur only comes into play when you're dreaming big. It's not your saboteur that keeps you from eating a piece of rotten fruit that will make you ill or keeps you from jumping off of a 20-story building. You may think it is, but it isn't. The saboteur is different from your physical survival instinct. The latter keeps you from dying; the former keeps your dreams-and you-from living.

In order to build the resilience to counter your saboteur's resistance, you need to get to know him/her. This is our next assignment.

Assignment #2: How Your Saboteur Operates
At the top of a page, write one of your career dreams from the last assignment. Underneath that, note all of the saboteur-like statements that arise when reflecting on that dream: statements that undermine your power, want to keep you safe, discount your magnificence, and strive to keep you the same. Make the list as exhaustive as possible. Finally-after you have done this with all of your career dreams-answer these questions about your saboteur (note: this requires a modicum of creativity and playfulness; just go with it):

- What is your saboteur's name?
- What does your saboteur look like? Describe him/her physically.
- What does his/her voice sound like?
- Where does your saboteur live? Describe his/her home.
- When do you first remember your saboteur first communicating with you?
- How has your saboteur evolved over the years?
- Under what circumstances is your saboteur the loudest? The quietest?
- What can your saboteur claim credit for costing you in your life?
- What makes your saboteur as powerful has he/she is?

Next week: what to do about your career saboteur.

Expectations: Not Just for New Hires

How would you define 'success' in your current position? Now, reflect upon your answer...is that what your supervisor would say?

Are you sure?

Job roles and responsibilities are not as black and white as one might think and the work world is complicated by divergent, conflicting, and unknown expectations. Some positions call for results to be met, period. Others call for results to be met but by a certain method. Where does your work fall within this spectrum, and what have you done to align your behaviors and output with what is being asked of you?

Like a relationship between you and a significant other, the relationship between you and your employer should be a dynamic of open communication and as free as possible from assumptions. To ensure that you are in alignment with expectations, partake in some self assessment by answering the following questions below:

How do I see my current work contributing to department priorities?

What metrics am I using to measure my success, and how does my work compare to those metrics?

How do my work methods support the teams that I interact with?

What upcoming problems or opportunities do I need to be prepared for?

These four questions are the beginning of a conversation between you and your supervisor to ensure that you are not just performing to standards but that you know what the standards are. In a meeting with your supervisor, modify the questions slightly to ask them to him/her. Share your responses and see how well both of yours correspond with each others. It could be that you are on track, but it could also be that you need to make adjustments. Regardless, you will be rewarded by demonstrating your proactivity and initiative.

Take the guesswork out of your performance and help drive expectations of you to feel better about the work you produce and what you contribute to your organization.