One of the key characteristics of people with successful careers is that they take action. Most of us though pause, wait, or just aren’t sure what we’re doing or where we’re going. In order to get your career development on track, think about what you’re wait for? What knowledge, opportunity or skill set are you waiting to develop? Are you waiting for circumstances in the economy or your life to change?

Take some time to think about this over the weekend and then WRITE DOWN what you’re waiting for. Then ask yourself:

Why am I waiting?

How much thought have you given about the type of leader you want to be?

Regardless of your level of leadership, most of us give this question little, if any, thought. We assume the mantle of leadership and start acting. Maybe we’ve seen some examples of leaders we didn’t like and so we try not to be like them. Maybe even go way out of our way to be different.

The problem with these two approaches is that we end up choosing to take a back seat in our own leadership development. Rather than defining who we are and want to become we either let it slide or focus on the negative of what we don’t want to be. How leader-like is that?

To be a leader of others, you first have to be an effective leader of yourself.

That’s right, you have to take charge of yourself. Take ownership and responsibility to all you do, the choices you make, and the consequences. A good place to start is with developing a clear vision of the kind of leader you want to be. What are the leadership qualities you’d like to possess? Which ones do you already have? Which ones do you need to work on?

Do you have a leader you admire? That leader can be real life or fictions? What are the qualities of that leader that you admire? Would you like to have those same qualities? What do you need to work on to get those qualities? Forget thinking about why you don’t have those qualities - that will keep you stuck. Think about what’s possible!

Once you know the leadership qualities you’d like to develop, it is time to start thinking about how you are going to develop those leadership skills. Are there courses you need to take? Is there experience you need to get? Where can you get that experience – even outside of your work environment? In fact, a great place to develop your leadership and managerial skills are outside of work, such as working with civic and community groups.

Make sure you understand your personal values, vision, mission and purpose. As you lay out your vision of leadership, recognize that you are where you are and that’s ok. Then get as clear as you can be on the qualities you want to have and then go about learning them and putting them into practice.

Go ahead. Get in the Driver’s Seat of your leadership development. Find someone to help get you there.

This week Success Rockets released our first free E-book:  

7 Steps to Career Success in the 21st Century!

The path to a successful career, and even what we consider a successful career, has changed dramatically since the turn of the century. The economies of the the world continue to integrate, business that have thrived for decades have disappeared and new industries unimaginable even 5 years ago play dominating roles.

What’s clear is rapid change is the norm. How do you develop a successful career through this constant upheaval? Our e-book, 7 Steps to Career Success in the 21st Century, lays the ground work you can follow and that is at the heart of our Successful Career Development programs.

The 7 Steps to Career Success in the 21st Century are:

Step 1: Understanding Your Personal Values
Step 2: Developing Your Vision, Mission & Purpose Statements
Step 3: Understanding Your Motivated & Burnout Skills
Step 4: Uncovering Your Personal Brand
Step 5: Developing Your Strategic Career Plan
Step 6: Identifying and Removing Blocks
Step 7: Building You, Inc. – The Business of You

To learn more about how these 7 Steps download our e-book now!

Increasingly large corporations are looking for staff with an entrepreneurial spirit. While we often think of an entrepreneur as someone who is building their own business, based on their own ideas or products, it is possible to use those same qualities in the right corporate environment to be successful. In fact, even large companies want to be growing and so having employees who want to grow the business is great for long term corporate success. While there are differences between the independent entrepreneur and the entrepreneur in the corporate environment there are still a number of similarities that are usually ignored.

An independent entrepreneur takes an idea, seeks capital from outside investors and finds a way to sell the product or service. The corporate entrepreneur effectively receives funding from the company to develop ideas. The corporate entrepreneur generally trades risk and reward for steady work and pay. The corporate entrepreneur will typically have access to more resources to achieve what he or she wants. 

The benefits of an entrepreneurial spirit can be found though out many parts of a large corporation from front office functions like sales and deal making to back office functions where your customers are other employees of the firm. Sometimes the entrepreneurial spirit is disguised with other descriptors such as: shows initiative, proactive, a go-getter, and so on.

As an employee, if you start to think of yourself as an entrepreneur in a larger business, how do you approach your work differently? If you’re a leader or owner of a business, what transformations would happen if you viewed and supported your staff as if they were entrepreneurs rather than cogs in a wheel?

Often, it is just a shift in perspective that can yield great results.  What do you think?   

Once you have defined your personal brand, your unique promise of value, you can move on to developing your personal brand environment. Your brand environment is everything you surround yourself with. Your surroundings speak to your personal brand. Recall, one of the key points of personal branding is that your brand lives in the hearts and minds of others, not yourself. And so what other people see definitely affects your personal brand and your brand alignment.

For example, if your personal brand includes being orderly or accurate, you want to make sure that your environment is orderly and supports being accurate. Your desk is organized. You have a filing system that enables you to quickly access information. If your brand includes being high tech, do you use the latest technology?

What is is your personal brand?  Does your environment support or undermine your personal brand? Is your personal brand and your brand environment aligned? What’s one way you can better align your personal brand and brand environment this weekend?

Lately I’ve heard a lot of people talking about burning bridges with their careers. One of the things I find interesting about these discussions is the variety of circumstances that people talk about burning bridges. Almost universally people think it’s a bad idea to burn bridges, unless you are feeling really angry and want to make a statement.  With all these ideas I would like to talk about what burning bridges means, what it means for you, and most importantly why sometimes burning a bridge is crucial to your career development. And what it says for you personal brand.

What Does It Mean to Burn A Bridge?

Burning a bridge means making a commitment so that you can never go back. Often there is a connotation of doing so in a negative way, perhaps insulting people so they never what you back. But it can also mean choosing a path which would make it difficult to go back to a different route.

When Burning Bridges Is a Career Killer

Burning bridges out of spite or anger, in a way that damages relationships is generally a poor choice for multiple reasons. First you never know if the person you are burning a bridge with in this way will be someone who can help you in the future but may choose not to. Sometimes people will realize this and not burn a bridge as a result, but sometimes they do recognize it and don’t care. But there is yet another reason not burn a bridge in this way – it sends a message to others and yourself about how you treat people. Others will look at you and wonder when you will chose to do themsame with them. You lose the trust of others. You also develop a habit and belief that this is an acceptable way to end a relationship with an employer and increase the likelihood you’ll repeat it. You increase your chance of developing a reputation and others will avoid you.

When Burning Bridges Is a Career Maker

Sometimes burning a bridge, if handled well, can be a great move for your career. Have you ever struggle with making a decision? Which way should you go? Is now the time to leave your job? Should you change careers? As you advance in your career you have to make commitments to either take the step up to the next level or to make a move in a new career direction. During these times, burning a bridge so you can go back can be a smart move. Of course you want to burn a bridge in this way with class and sincerity. You will likely cross paths with the people you’re leaving behind and may want they help and support at some point. Maybe they’ll even be your customers in the future.

If you’re going to burn a bridge, do it for the right reason – you are making a commitment to make a change. And do it in a way that keeps your relationships with others intact.

It’s just as important to plan how to end your job and transition to a new one as it is for you to do well in your interview for either job. The way you end your relationship with your employer speaks to your character, which everyone will notice. What do you want others to think of your character?

How are you using and helping your online connections? Do you really know your connections? Do you help them? Why should your online connections help you?

There has been a lot of buzz and debate about the use of connect with people online and building your social network. Do you keep your network connections small and limit them only to people you know, or do you openly network with everyone (or almost everyone) who want to connect with you or who you find?

The benefits of open networking are that you can expose yourself and your message to people who you ordinarily wouldn’t have met. And that works for a short time, during which you need to capitalize on that connection. First of all, social networking sites have gotten smart and no longer post everything that everyone of your connections post. They realize that some aggressive marketers count on the fact that the more people that see their posting on your account profile the better for them and the you get nothing from it. So some sites are filtering what’s seen on your account and limiting it to people you actually interact with.

So this brings us to the point of connecting with someone on a social network. Step 1 is to connect, which is where most people leave it. The next step is to develop a relationship with that person. Exchange some emails. If possible, try to meet or talk on the telephone. You may find you have a lot more in common or that there are unexpected ways you can help each other directly or with connections you each have. Perhaps your connection mentions she’s going on vacation to some exotic location and is wondering what to do and you have a friend who’s been there. Make that connection and for the two of them. They’ll both probably enjoy it and you’ll get the credit for being a helper.

This weekend, reach out to one of your online connections who you’ve only connected with and start up a conversation. Who it will be?

When it comes to building our successful career, often we are our own worst enemies — holding ourselves back in ways we don’t even realize. Some of these success blocks are easy to recognize one you start looking for them and some make take the observations of others, like a trained Energy Leadership coach. In a way these blocks are designed to protect you from emotional or physical pain. Often they are based on past experience, which may no longer be relevant in your life. They lead to automatic responses in you, that if you thought about them for a while you’d realize are no longer helpful. These four blocks are sometimes referred to as the GAILs (though their effects on you much like their synonym, a gale).

The power of these blocks in your career is that you fail to take action that could lead to greater success because of them. Even if you are successful, these blocks may be preventing you from being more successful.

The GAILs are:

• Gremlins: Your inner critic, that little voice in your head that tells you: YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. There a many variations of this theme: “You’re not smart enough,” ”You’re not cool enough,” “You’re not handsome/beautiful enough.” Gremlins are also especially powerful because they are the most intimate and personal of the GAILs. Because gremlins are beliefs about yourself they are notoriously difficult for you to notice on your own.

• Assumptions: A belief based on past experience that since something “bad” happened before in the same or similar circumstances it will happen again and as a result you hold yourself back from taking action. Assumptions are essentially ghosts from our past, or perhaps someone else’s past experience, that hold us back and prevent us from taking action.
• Interpretations: An opinion or judgment YOU make about an event, situation, person or experience and you believe it to be true. When you are interpreting someone else’s behavior, whether you are aware of it or not, you are filtering what they say through your own personal filters.
• Limiting Beliefs: Ideas or principles that you accept about life, yourself, the world, or others that limit or hold you back in some way. With limiting beliefs there is little to no evidence that the belief is (still) true.

Merely identifying your GAILs often leads to a significant shift in your focus, energy, recognition in what’s possible and your ability to achieve success. How are you pushing a boulder up a mountain when all you have to do is let it go and run to the top?