The need to identify your career success drivers

Ensuring a successful and rewarding career is not simply about gaining some specific piece of knowledge and then taking on a role that appears to be appropriate. Knowledge is only one component of any career role that you have to take care of and manage - no matter what it is. Depending on the role itself others components (to varying degrees) include;

1. Ongoing demand for that role in the economy/organization

You cannot assume you can continue to perform your current role, in its current form, forever and gain the same financial reward. You need to determine why your role is in demand and ensure you move along with what is and will be required.

2. Leadership and management ability and understanding

This is just not about being a leader or managing others - it's about understanding and having empathy with those who lead and manage you. There are many styles of leadership and management and both as a leader and someone being lead you need to comprehend what is best and how to adapt to the varying styles with which you will be faced.

3. Time and stress management

Put simply, if you do not manage or your time or stress levels then your career performance will suffer. Two key drivers of performance are focus and dedication - being stressed and not allocating time to important tasks will not allow you to be either.

4. Networking

More and more careers are requiring some kind of networking to be undertaken - even if it's inter-departmental. Don't shut yourself off in your cubicle, home office...These days it's very much who you know as much as what you know.

5. Personal presence and confidence

Personality plays a large role in career success, no matter how knowledgeable you are in your role. If you want to progress and develop in and beyond your current role you have to be confident (not cocky or bragging) that you can handle your role and more. This is just not about ensuring promotion in your career. If you wanted a flexible work arrangement for say family reasons, there is even more reason to appear that you are confident you can perform in this situation.

6. Health and well-being

More and more evidence points to the fact that if you are strong physically it will allow your mental capabilities to be fully utilized. Mental health and well-being is also a critical component of performance and you must ensure meditation and relaxation is scheduled into your week.

7. Identification of re-education required

Associated with Point 1, experience will only take you so far - as the world changes, the economy changes and thus demand for goods and services changes. Your knowledge of today will not suffice for what is required tomorrow and you have to ensure you keep yourself up to date - this can mean subject matter knowledge, marketing and sales techniques, IT etc. If you don't, then you run the risk of becoming redundant in terms of skills on offer and career options will be limited.

8. IT ability

You need to assess the basic level of IT skills required now and in the future. This basic level will continue to rise so don't think being young means you automatically know everything required.

9. Perseverence and drive

This is one of the most important components. You need to work hard and smart and don't regard failure at any point as the end of the journey but as part of the journey. Success is not achieved overnight and you cannot assume that once you have achieved one thing that it will not disappear if you don't continue to perform. You need to understand your motivations and values for performing.

If it was only knowledge that was important then those with the highest IQ would have the most successful careers - and this is not the case. Aspects of emotional and social intelligence play a major role in success apart from IQ.

The next three important steps are the following; (1) identifying the rank and percentage of the total current role related to the above components, (2) produce a plan on how to improve your performance of each and (3) do the last two things for your next planned career moves. It's no good finding out you don't know how to drive or drive well when given a car....you have to plan in advance.

Are you great at what you do or just think you are...the danger of believing hype

When it comes to achieving career goals, whether that be within an organisational environment or as the owner of a business, it is critical to recognise whether or not those goals are achievable or not; there is no justification in having goals for the sake of it. In order to have goals that are achievable you must know what it takes to achieve them - this is one of the major inhibitors to achieving goals (the other is simple procrastination and lack of task dedication) in that you might be doing nothing to achieve the goal you have set yourself.

So what does it take to achieve a goal? So as stated above the nature of the task undertaken influences how well you might achieve your goal. But assuming you are undertaking the proper actions to achieve a goal that is not enough to guarantee achieving a goal. You must perform that task at the required level and you might be required to do so over an extended period of time. A great writer, athlete, investor and so on do not achieve long term goals by achieving something once - they succeed at achieving over and over again. But as it is with life you must recognise your limitations and plan your goals accordingly. Of course we would all love to play football like Thierry or Ronaldinho, be a gifted actor like Benicio del Toro or motivate like Tony Robbins. However the fact is that we cannot.

So when it comes to assessing or reassessing your goals it is important to recognize your level of talent and ability. Now personally I've been in a situation more than once where the support and feedback from my colleagues and senior management has led me to believe that my performance inferred I was a 10/10 (and I naturally applied this to everything I did...who doesn't love recognition). However in retrospect I was perhaps an 8/10 and this applied to perhaps 50% of my responsibilities. What this caused me to do was get myself in situations where I greatly over-extended the limits of my abilities and knowledge. It was like a weightlifter being told they were the best after lifting a personal best....then thinking they could lift another 20%. Whilst I'm a major promoter of continual personal development, it is important to recognize your current limits - not only do you not set yourself up for goal failure but you can set out a professional development program that truly and accurately reflects where you are now and what you need to do to in order to put yourself in a position to achieve your future 'reach' goals.

So don't believe all the hype around your achievements - assess what and how you achieved and what this means for your future goals. Believing in hype around your talents will create a void in your development as you will not think you require the level of development that you actually do need. Remember greatness does not happen overnight and do not let your ego get in your way of achieving those future goals.

Why you need to identify each of the 'components' of your career

Ensuring a successful and rewarding career is not simply about gaining some specific piece of knowledge and then taking on a role that appears to be appropriate. Knowledge is only one component of any career role that you have to take care of and manage - no matter what it is. Depending on the role itself others components (to varying degrees) include;

1. Ongoing demand for that role in the economy/organization

You cannot assume you can continue to perform your current role, in its current form, forever and gain the same financial reward. You need to determine why your role is in demand and ensure you move along with what is and will be required.

2. Leadership and management ability and understanding

This is just not about being a leader or managing others - it's about understanding and having empathy with those who lead and manage you. There are many styles of leadership and management and both as a leader and someone being lead you need to comprehend what is best and how to adapt to the varying styles with which you will be faced.

3. Time and stress management

Put simply, if you do not manage or your time or stress levels then your career performance will suffer. Two key drivers of performance are focus and dedication - being stressed and not allocating time to important tasks will not allow you to be either.

4. Networking

More and more careers are requiring some kind of networking to be undertaken - even if it's inter-departmental. Don't shut yourself off in your cubicle, home office...These days it's very much who you know as much as what you know.

5. Personal presence and confidence

Personality plays a large role in career success, no matter how knowledgeable you are in your role. If you want to progress and develop in and beyond your current role you have to be confident (not cocky or bragging) that you can handle your role and more. This is just not about ensuring promotion in your career. If you wanted a flexible work arrangement for say family reasons, there is even more reason to appear that you are confident you can perform in this situation.

6. Health and well-being

More and more evidence points to the fact that if you are strong physically it will allow your mental capabilities to be fully utilized. Mental health and well-being is also a critical component of performance and you must ensure meditation and relaxation is scheduled into your week.

7. Identification of re-education required

Associated with Point 1, experience will only take you so far - as the world changes, the economy changes and thus demand for goods and services changes. Your knowledge of today will not suffice for what is required tomorrow and you have to ensure you keep yourself up to date - this can mean subject matter knowledge, marketing and sales techniques, IT etc. If you don't, then you run the risk of becoming redundant in terms of skills on offer and career options will be limited.

8. IT ability

You need to assess the basic level of IT skills required now and in the future. This basic level will continue to rise so don't think being young means you automatically know everything required.

9. Perseverence and drive

This is one of the most important components. You need to work hard and smart and don't regard failure at any point as the end of the journey but as part of the journey. Success is not achieved overnight and you cannot assume that once you have achieved one thing that it will not disappear if you don't continue to perform. You need to understand your motivations and values for performing.

If it was only knowledge that was important then those with the highest IQ would have the most successful careers - and this is not the case. Aspects of emotional and social intelligence play a major role in success apart from IQ.

The next three important steps are the following; (1) identifying the rank and percentage of the total current role related to the above components, (2) produce a plan on how to improve your performance of each and (3) do the last two things for your next planned career moves. It's no good finding out you don't know how to drive or drive well when given a car....you have to plan in advance.

Life decisions based around the 'status quo' will fail in today's world

Why have I chosen to write about the above subject today? I see a lot of people who are walking around at the moment kind of stunned and shocked with the multiple stress of losing wealth, job security, political instability and the fact that they suddenly realize they have no clear life direction or purpose. The question is what can you do to adapt and what does a changing society mean for you personally?

Well first of all stop thinking that life will just 'work out' even if you make little effort or do not think about your actions. In the past society was more stable and changed at a slower rate - people lived by different principles. Now everyone wants more, more is expected of us, consumerism is becoming more of a lifestyle where we either work or spend and entrepreneurs are always looking for the next thing as humans' attention span is now so short. Unfortunately there are also limited resources so those who do not go and get will end up with nothing.

You might say great wealth or job satisfaction is not important, you would rather live an easy life. Well get real...with technology, investment trends, globalization, political disputes changing ever so quickly there is no way anyone's life cannot not be impacted by social changes occurring. The need to adapt is just as necessary now as it was for the caveman when fighting for his life in the wild. Our 'wild' is now the urban jungle and the dinosaurs are everyone else trying to succeed. The survival of the fittest rings true and if you don't realize this now then good luck.

However if you do realize you must adapt with change then your next step is to focus on how much you need to change and in what areas. Whether it be new skills for a career, changing your investment structure, changing your perceptions of the world, fitness and mental agility your plan must be clear and focused. Society, as it was in the past, will not automatically take care of you, your employer will not guarantee you a job for life, your wife will not guarantee a relationship for life...it is time to accept that the direction your life takes is in your hands and your hands only.

Go see a business or personal performance coach, look at tools such as neurolinguistic programming to put the changes into effect. But more importantly act today.