4 Habits to Accelerate Your Career Success
At work, navigating the dynamics of your boss, your team, your company, your customers, all of their feelings AND your own is a challenge. Add to it that you are a human with a wide-spectrum of emotions, experiences, and responsibilities beyond the office, and you’re off the deep end, along with the aforementioned everyone else.
Early in my career, I was always asking everyone for their recipe for success in their career — a question they often struggled to answer. As I’ve grown to be obsessed with the topic of life and career success, I’ve interviewed hundreds of leaders, read countless biographies, listened to thousands of podcasts, and ultimately what I believe is that success comes to those with a bias for goal-oriented action, a solid ratio of confidence : humility : empathy, and the willingness to grow, adapt, and rise to the occasion. I think makes people successful isn’t their pedigree, or big bets they made at various points in their career (though those help), but their commitment to developing their own personal operating system — their systems, habits, who they surround themselves with, and how they approach problem-solving, and helping others develop their own personal operating systems too.
In this article, I have broken down four habits of my operating system, ones that I try to embody every day in my approach to my work, and that I encourage those around me to adopt as well. While I am sure there are others, what follows is my top four:
When in doubt, just ask: Whenever you are interacting with others, more is left unsaid than said, simply by virtue of the fact that we do not have endless scores of time. Sometimes at the end of an engagement with someone else, we feel whole. Other-times, we are left feeling un-whole, confused, like we are having a sharing hangover, or like we misinterpreted something important. Whenever I am second-guessing myself, rather than waste a bunch of time spinning my wheels, I reach out to the person in question and simply ask or share whatever it is on my heart that’s been left unsaid. I’ve found this always reduces the amount of time I spend in uncertainty and self-doubt. I’ve also found, more often than not, whatever was left unsaid was indeed felt by both parties, and both are relieved that the other person reached out to get it off their heart. What unsaid questions do you have on your heart that are impeding your top performance? What question, if answered, would clear up a ton of mindshare and get you back on the right track?
When in conflict, invite them into the process: Whether it’s a relationship with your peers, your boss, your direct reports, or your customers, sometimes decisions are not black and white, in fact, more often than not, I find there is a lot of grey area in decision-making. Unfortunately, for many of us, at the end of the day, we still have to make the call. It’s at this exact inflection point that this habit finds its power. Inviting people into the process, showing them your thinking, and the inherent challenge of arriving to a conclusion is often times the fastest, most direct route to solving the problem. And guess what? You won’t feel like you’re compromising your humanity or your integrity in the process. What internal conflict are you battling right now that affects someone else? What would it look like to invite them into the process?
When in need, just call: All the time in our careers people ask “Anything I can do to help?” or they’ll say “Just let me know if you need help.” And then what do we do? We get stuck, we need help, and we sit in analysis paralysis mode. Not anymore, with this habit, if I need something, I pick up the phone and I ask for the help I need... and you know what happens? People give it! Just like they said they would, because they care, and they really do want to help, and you really do need it, otherwise you wouldn’t have called. It’s magical the way that works. Sahil Bloom says that help often comes in three forms: You want to be HUGGED, HEARD, or HELPED. I try to be clear on what I need before I make the call. If it’s something where I want a HUG or to be HEARD, maybe I call Ronnie instead. But if I need HELP, that’s a call to my boss, peer, or direct report to get shit done. Where do you need help right now? What kind of help do you need? And who can you call?
When feeling stuck, just start: We’ve all been guilty of it before: We aren’t sure how to solve sticky, hard problem, so instead of doing anything we procrastinate OR we don’t have the energy to work on a big project that we have to get done by XYZ date, so we procrastinate instead. In either situation, the situation is now worse because now you just have less time to solve the hard problem. I used to do this. Now, instead of doing this, I just start. I take whatever part of the problem I can start working on, and I start working on it. I let that inform where I go with the problem next. The thing is, feeling follows action, and once you get the energy of problem solving in motion, it’s a lot easier to keep it going. So just start. What big thing have you been putting off that you just need to start?
As you finish reading these, my guess is one or more of these resonated with you. Here’s what you need to remember: success comes to those with a bias for goal-oriented action, a solid ratio of confidence : humility : empathy, and the willingness to grow, adapt, and rise to the occasion. So, if any one of these seemed like it could be the level up you need to take your career to the next level, I’d urge you to reduce the time between reading this and leveraging the information. Today is the perfect day to take one of these habits and turn it into action.
