Understanding Your Career as a Story

Over the past two decades, there is one thing that I have come to understand over and over: people’s careers are truly stories. Every time I sit down and listen to someone share their concerns and aspirations for their career, they engage in a story telling process.

There are characters, challenges, opportunities, failure, scenes and most of all, there are patterns. Out of the chaos of their lives emerge clear patterns of who they are and what they really want in life. There are patterns that show how they succeed and patterns that show how they fail.

What is very encouraging to witness is the increasing dialogue about this within the career development profession. For example, I encourage you to have a read of Kathy Hansen's Blog to explore traditional and post modern uses of storytelling in careers. You can check it out here:

http://www.astoriedcareer.com/archives/2007/03/plotting_the_st.html

She also provides a number of excellent examples to help get started on this.

Enjoy! Rob

Chunking it down to what matters

One of the interesting elements in life is that you can learn from people everywhere. I am always fascinated to hear someone who is very skillful talk about their passion. Of particular note is the fact that Emma-Jayne Wilson became the first female jockey to win the Queen's Plate, riding 15-to-1 long shot Mike Fox to a thrilling victory Sunday June 24^th in the 148th running at Toronto's Woodbine Racetrack.

During the interview she talked a lot about her strategy and I felt her words were jewels that anyone could benefit from hearing. She uses a lot of visualization to help her clarify her goal and then chunks it down into concrete actions she can take. This comes form asking herself questions like:

• What is it you do?
• What do you expect the outcome to be?
• How are you going to make that happen?

You can listen to an interview with her on the CBC PodCast here:

http://castroller.com/episode/580137

Enjoy! Rob

People Naturally Like to Help Other People

I was chatting with a colleague and they shared with me a neat story that just happened to them. They were standing in a line-up in a coffee shop in a small town, and happened to be carrying a book called "First Job Survival Guide" that they were reviewing. A stranger came up to them and started telling them about their company (a large well known firm) and that they were actively hiring for new positions. The conversation continued with a lot of sharing of in-depth and valuable information.

I always appreciate these types of stories; it reminds me that individuals really like to be able to help out others, even those they don’t know.

Serendipity is ever so sweet!

Rob

Effective Business Networking

There are significant parallels between networking to build a business and general career networking. It is equally important for a business owner to connect with people outside their immediate circle. Seeking out ideas from people you don't ordinarily talk to is essential to success.

In my experience, the most successful business owners spend less time networking with business colleagues who are friends and more time networking with a diverse group that includes acquaintances and strangers. As I have discussed in earlier blogs, these are “weak ties” of acquaintanceship, of colleagues who are not friends. They provide new information and contribute to business development because they tend to serve as bridges between unconnected social groups. Weak ties allow for more experimentation in combining ideas from different sources and demand less social conformity than do strong ties.

Business people who spend more time with a diverse network of weak ties: advisors, acquaintances, and complete strangers, tend to be more effective in attracting new customers than those stuck within a uniform network. What does this mean? Mix it up. Take a class with strangers; join a new group or seek out ideas from people you don't ordinarily talk to!