Career

The Career Growth Framework: Realize Your Career, Personal, and Professional Potential

Here’s a post that I originally published on my work blog, but I thought the readers here would benefit from it too. It’s a simple model for thinking about your career growth. With things like a “jobless economic recovery,” careers ending, and a “skills-for-hire” economy, it’s even more important to focus on growth while managing your career. At the end of the day, YOU play the most important role in your career growth – own it.

How To Be a Leader in Your Field

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” — John C. Maxwell How can you become a leader in your field? A colleague shared a link to How to Be a Leader, which I found interesting. I think the key takeaway is that to be a leader in …

6 Job Personality and Work Environment Types

John L. Holland identified 6 personality and work environment types. According to Holland, if you can match your personality type and your work environment, you can improve your success and satisfaction.

Don’t Confuse Strengths and Weaknesses with Skills

If you're not good at something, is it a weakness? If you're good at something, is it a strength? No, it's not that simple. There's a difference between natural talents or strengths, and things that you learn over time by building skills and knowledge. There are many things that when you start out, you will be unskilled. That's not a weakness. I'll pause right there, to let that sink in. It’s a key concept when you're trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses.

Proven Practices for Individual Contributors

I got an email from a GM (General Manager) at Microsoft, who will be giving a presentation at Microsoft on “How To Be an Effective IC (Individual Contributor)” and he’s collecting best practices. Scott Hanselman shared his thoughts and I thought I would share mine. For this post, I attempted to boil down some of the best lessons I’ve learned for myself, that I mentor others, and that I see others put into practice.