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This past Sunday, 60 Minutes aired a program describing the plight of people who had been unemployed for one, two, three or four plus years.
In the story – Trapped in Unemployment – Scott Pelley indicated that today, there are over 4 million Americans who have been out of work for more than a year.
One of the individuals interviewed related being at home alone, in front of a computer, answering hundreds of job ads – but not receiving any invitations to interview. I found myself talking to him and the others – through the television – telling them what they were doing wrong!
Why are these individuals, some of your family members and friends – or you – out of work for a year, two years or more?
How do you crack the code and discover the strategies to prevent or recover from long-term unemployment?
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‘Staying on point’ – while acting on your carefully crafted Leadership Career Growth Strategy – sometimes requires that you take a step back.
The step back could be voluntary:
deciding to take a sabbatical;
volunteering;
fulfilling a public service or military service commitment;
accepting a less complex (smaller) role;
pursuing an Executive MBA (or the advanced degree best suited for your particular discipline) or
taking the time to conduct a thorough review of your leadership career growth strategy.
The step back could also be involuntary:
illness;
responding to family needs;
lay-off or
termination.
It really doesn’t matter the reason.
For continued leadership career growth – when you need to take a step back… utilize elements of the Leadership Career Growth Wheel to ensure you obtain the greatest benefits:
A question for you to consider:
When was the last time - you took the time - to take a step back?
I am currently coaching several leaders who wish to make major changes in their careers, for example:
A former corporate Marketing VP wants to leverage his market insight, Big Brand product management, strategy and ‘category first’ expertise into building a different type of marketing consulting practice
A senior executive decided to research and ‘try on’ two interrelated roles and make a decision on moving efficiently into one or both roles
A Global Business Consultant with excellent competitor analysis and developing and emerging (D&E) markets expertise needs to revise her business model by creating new options based on social media re-positioning and constructing new strategic alliances
An executive with a sought-after professional expertise wants to move from a private consultancy to a larger firm or private company
A senior manager who is in an economically unhealthy company wants to move to a larger role in a healthy company with future career growth opportunities
She had an amazing, problem-free on-boarding into the new role and the company. From Day One, she was on a fast-track to be named as a lead candidate for the C-level succession pool. Excellent hire – right?
I write a lot of articles on the topics of effective leadership strategies and out-of-the-box career management and career transformation methods. I have written about the ‘how tos’ and the ‘whys’ but I have not addressed the ‘what”.
So let’s go back to the beginning.
What is strategy?
In his book, Crafting Strategy, Dr. Bob Frost notes most strategy theorists agree that “strategy differs from long-range planning…”
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Happy New Year!
At the start of a new year, we all have the best of intentions:
To work on our physical body (to lose weight or to start exercising),
To work on our personal/interpersonal life (to be more patient with our spouse or boss) and/or
To work on our professional life (to take a leadership development course or write a Five Year Career Plan).
But as usual, we get caught up in our everyday commitments and we forget to focus on the actions that will accelerate development physically, personally or professionally. When we lose focus in any of these arenas, we face certain threats. I could write volumes on the threats we face physically or personally but my true expertise is in the area of leadership career success and leadership career growth. ... Read more
In a recent interview Mike Myatt, author of Leadership Matters…The CEO Survival Guide commented:
“No matter who you are – you don’t know everything, and the more successfulyou are, the greater the risks associated with blind spots and knowledge gaps. Continued growth and development are a leader’s greatest competitive advantage – those who fail to recognize this will be replaced by those who do.”
Whether you refer to us as Executive Coaches, Leadership Coaches, Leadership Success Coaches or Management Consultants our primary focus is on leadership effectiveness and enabling leadership career success. Ultimately, we all have same goal: to help the client identify, ‘try-on’ and incorporate new behaviors that will increase the potential for personal and organization success. ... Read more
Remember your first day – in what was identified by peers as the hardest class with the toughest professor – in your freshman college year?
The professor with the scary reputation always started the class with “Look to your right; look to your left. One of you will not be here by the end of the semester.”
Your company’s Human Resources team is much more sophisticated than that scary college professor and today, they use some variation of a Leadership Talent Management Model to: ... Read more
After purchasing and enjoying two generations of Blackberry phones in the past, in May, my family upgraded to the Blackberry Torch.Within two weeks, we had returned to the mobile phone vendor six times. At the seventh visit, the vendor sent us to a reclamation center and we were given – at no extra charge – just-like-new “reconditioned” phones.We should have paid attention to and read the fine print in the Disclaimer Statement:
When I saw this video clip of Matt Lauer interviewing two successful CEOs – who happen to be sisters – I had to share it. You can almost feel the joy, sense of adventure, personal pride, sibling rivalry and the leadership career success mindset that was instilled in the family of four sisters growing up with an extraordinary Father. ... Read more
