As leaders in the personal and professional development industry, we tend to write and talk a lot about the need for personal renewal and life balance. Topics that are crucial for our mental, emotional, social, physical and spiritual health.
Not sure we address the equally vital topic of reinvention and disruption enough. Specifically our skills, brand, and reputation. Each of us takes different career paths (some choose very deliberate and narrow specialties, and others are more accidental, even pursuing broad ranging areas that might fill different emerging interests). Some of us learn very specific skills early in our career and stay on the track until we finish our journeys. Others choose different paths and move fluidly across varied roles and even vastly different industries. Both work well. Both also have issues. (More on that in a future post)
What we all have in common is the reality we’re faced with in an insanely competitive world where you need to differentiate continually.
What value do you offer your current or future organization that they need you so vitally they truly recruited you?
They sought you out and came after you. Didn’t take no for an answer.
Actively re-recruit you to stay and even accommodate your own emerging needs and interests. Because you’re so incredibly valuable to their mission, clients, strategy, they don’t wait until you announce you’re leaving, and then they throw everything at you. They proactively keep re-engaging you, even in small ways you wouldn’t think of leaving.
Ask yourself some of these questions:
- Did your current employer recruit you? Not did they simply hire you, did they seek you out, proactively and with purpose and chose you over others?
- Did you need to convince them to hire you, or did they persuade you to join them? There’s a big difference.
- If you were to announce you needed to move to another state (to take care of a relative, be closer to your hobby, fill in the blank), would they be so invested in keeping you they’d support and even encourage your relocation?
- If every associate were terminated and then all roles were re-posted, would you win yours back? Against someone, newer, younger, more talented, more nimble, less expensive, better behaved, more collaborative, easier to work with?
- What are you deliberately doing to disrupt your own career? Are you so scared that you’re building a trench around your role to guard against an inevitable incursion? Or are you both courageous and vulnerable enough to ask others to assess your skills, relevance, and future viability?
- Is your head up? Are you aware of the “shifting winds,” inside and outside your organization? Complacency is often the surprising end for too many. Are you looking around for “what’s next”? What’s on the horizon, what’s around the corner? This doesn’t mean you’re never satisfied (that’s me, and that’s fatiguing to everyone), but that you’re always mindful of how you could be most relevant.
If you can’t see a path to your own disruption, find one, before someone else does it for you. Be mindful of the adage, “Act, or be acted upon.”
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