Leadership

Career Growth Strategy (3): 3. Learn to articulate “your” story by highlighting how your differences are a tremendous asset.

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In my previous article Career Growth Strategy (2), I stated that if you want to move ahead in your career, the second step to take is to “Figure out what will get the company ahead.”  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 third step which serves as your foundation for expressing who you are to the world.  In this article, I will expand on the step:  (3).  Learn to articulate “your” story by highlighting how your differences are a tremendous asset.  This is really about communicating who you are to the world.

Continue reading Career Growth Strategy (3): 3. Learn to articulate “your” story by highlighting how your differences are a tremendous asset. →

Temperament research

Introverts Are Happy Too!

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As I predicted in my previous entry “Don’t Worry, Be Happy(er)”, many of my introverted friends felt a need to push back on the assertion that acting extroverted can make anyone – including introverts – feel happier.  Comments such as, “The study was obviously conducted by extroverts”, or “extroverts only think they are happier because they aren’t in touch with themselves” have been hurled at me by introverted friends.  We’ve also had very good discussion within the comments of this blog where I noticed in particular the observations that “Maybe extroverts value happiness more” and “Maybe extroverts are happier because society rewards extroverted behavior”.

Continue reading Introverts Are Happy Too! →

Famous personality

A Modern Greek Tragedy in Temperament

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… and Gender.

The Fates can be cruel or kind, or both.  It seems so in this story.  This story is about discovery.  This story is about life and death.

She had worked hard all her life.  She had overcome her circumstance. Latin: Circum– to encircle, stance to take a position, to contend. Yes, it had been a man’s world, she was surrounded by her society and her family who discouraged her from her passion: science. Of course, other women had suffered discrimination before her: Marie Curie and Emmy Noether to name two, but they had their families to teach them, encourage and help them. Nobody had encouraged her, certainly not her family, and still was a man’s world in science in 1952.  She had to rely on herself, so she thought and acted.

Continue reading A Modern Greek Tragedy in Temperament →

Famous personality

Complex Idea Men

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There are two new (relatively) autobiographies that have been published recently. Both of these autobiographies are about “Complex Idea Men” — Inventor Rationals. The difference between the two men, however, is significant. One man wrote his autobiography and published it both physically and electronically, April 19th, 2011. The other did not publish his full autobiography prior to his death on April 21, 1910. Rather this man put in his will that it could be officially published 100 years later.  A hundred years is a significant amount time.

The full autobiography was published as detailed in the will — physically, and electronically—on November 15, 2010, 100 years after his death.  That is the autobiography of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

Continue reading Complex Idea Men →

Leadership

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

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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

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“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 →

Temperament research

Don't Worry, Be Happy(er)

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

–  Declaration of Independence of The United States of America

Pursuit of Happiness – our unalienable right.  What makes people happy?  What makes them unhappy?  If you’re unhappy, how do you get happy?  The results of a survey of more than 3000 people who completed the Keirsey Temperament Sorter-II at the Keirsey.com website were a little surprising, and led us to look a little deeper into this question – and it turns out it may not be hard, for any of us, to feel happier just because we want to. Continue reading Don't Worry, Be Happy(er) →

Leadership

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

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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

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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 →

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