Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership

Career Growth Strategy (2): Figure Out What Will Get The Company Ahead

2 Comments

In my previous article Career Growth Strategy (1), I stated that if you want to move ahead in your career, the first step to take is to “Get comfortable in your own skin by celebrating who you are.”  The original four steps I introduced to build a long term career were as follows:

  1. Get comfortable in your own skin by celebrating who you are.
  2. Figure out what will get the company ahead.
  3. Learn to articulate “your” story by highlighting how your differences are a tremendous asset.
  4. Articulate how your unique talent, viewpoint, and approach would be a significant advancement for the enterprise.

Today, we look at the next step which is a complete 180 degree turn from celebrating the individual.  In this article, I will expand on the second step:  (2).  Figure out what will get the company ahead.  In essence, this is really about shifting from celebrating you to celebrating the company—it’s about making the company’s goals your goals.  When you can have this kind of attitude, your career will flourish for the long term.  Continue reading Career Growth Strategy (2): Figure Out What Will Get The Company Ahead →

Famous personality, Leadership

The Temperaments of America

15 Comments

“There are strong minds in every walk of life that will rise superior to the disadvantages of situation, and will command the tribute due to their merit, not only from the classes to which they particularly belong, but from the society in general.”

So wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #36, one the founding articles of the United States of America.

If this is not one of the best arguments for the importance of Temperament in the Human Wealth of Nations, then I don’t know what would be.  The genius of Hamilton’s America is that it matters not the station one was born into, whether it be: from a dirt poor family in a log cabin in Kentucky (Abraham Lincoln, Rational); from modest family in a modest house in Omaha, Nebraska (Warren Buffet, Guardian); from a rich family in a New York apartment (Humphrey Bogart, Artisan); or from an unmarried African-American mother in the deep segregated South in Kosciusko, Mississippi (Oprah Winfrey, Idealist). Or born in another country, and being able to be an immigrant, including a poor white kid, of a single mother household from Dutch territory, the Caribbean island of Nevis: “that Scottish bastard,” Alexander Hamilton (Idealist). Continue reading The Temperaments of America →

Leadership

Career Growth Strategy (1): Get comfortable in your own skin

10 Comments

In my previous article (Popular Question From an Introvert), I stated that moving ahead in your career isn’t about making clever maneuvers.  But rather, that it’s about building for the long term.    I ended by introducing what it takes to do this:

  1. Get comfortable in your own skin by celebrating who you are.
  2. Figure out what will get the company ahead.
  3.  Learn to articulate “your” story by highlighting how your differences are a tremendous asset.
  4. Articulate how your unique talent, viewpoint, and approach would be a significant advancement for the enterprise.

In this article, I will expand on the first step:  (1).  Get comfortable in your own skin by celebrating who you are.  To start, I’d like to take a look at why it is so difficult to celebrate who we are, and then I’ll move on to how we can shift our perspective.

Continue reading Career Growth Strategy (1): Get comfortable in your own skin →

Famous personality, Leadership, Rational

Real Idea Men

15 Comments

It is one of the biggest corporations in the world, with yearly revenues greater than the gross domestic products of 169 countries. Not bad for a company that was co-founded by two young nerds on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell software on computers. They didn’t have much money then.

In fact, one of those guys who arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico airport from Boston in 1975, didn’t have enough money to afford the “upscale” moderately priced motel the computer manufacturer who was interested in buying this software had reserved for this nerd while he proved that his software worked on their computer. He was very nervous about the software — everything was riding on the code — which was punched onto a small role of paper computer tape he carried with him. But, it worked the first time, largely because they had used an emulator of the computer (a software program written by this guy) to build and test the code back in Boston.

This guy, although he didn’t have much money at the time, he did have a big idea. Now others had similar ideas,which was to sell software for computers. That wasn’t the big idea. He and his co-founder shared a firm belief in this big idea, but they were a little different in personality.

Continue reading Real Idea Men →

Leadership

Popular Question from an Introvert

6 Comments

Q: I am a fairly introverted person.  It seems like to get ahead at my company you have to “toot your own horn”.  This makes me uncomfortable. Do you have any advice?

“Tooting your own horn” works well if you have a beautiful “horn” and you are talented in “tooting.”  There are those who do this quite well—with charisma, grace, and finesse.  They know how to position themselves, and sell themselves to just about anyone.  Then there are those without horns, who have not had much practice in the fine art of tooting.  So what do you do if you’re not a horn tootin’ kind of guy or gal?  Many “so called” experts would say that if you’re going to succeed that you have to learn to “speak up” and “stand out”—that you should get yourself a beautiful horn, and start practicing like crazy!

Continue reading Popular Question from an Introvert →