Work, success, and meaning at every stage of your career
Building skills on the job
The solution, the authors posit, is to become a soloist. If you’re lucky (and very good at what you do), the authors say, you’ll be able to distance yourself from all the time-sucking meetings and mind-numbing office protocol and simply work on interesting projects – alone, or with a small, talented group of people you don’t hate.
Leaving college and entering the world of work can be pretty intimidating if you’ve never had a full-time job before. There’s a minefield of things you might not be used to; feeling like you fit in can take some time. Complicating matters is the fact that young graduates don’t have a great reputation; the stereotype is that they have come out of college know it all and that this entitles them to their dream career. How can you come across as confident – but not over-confident?
Slacking seems to be hard wired into the human brain. If I pull alone, I pull as hard as I can; after all, who else is there to pull? But once we add a team into the mix, I can relax a little, knowing that my team will share the load.
If you don’t have a great deal of work experience, or are fresh out of University, a great way to get international work is by Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). TEFL teachers mostly need a degree but don’t need to have any teaching specific qualifications. They also don’t have to speak the country’s language; they are being hired for their English ability after all.
As with all things in life, being successful at work is a much smoother process when you ask for guidance from someone who has already been successful. The wisdom and experience of a mentor is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to avoid making rookie mistakes while climbing the professional ladder.
Have you ever wished that there were a magic button you could push to get through to someone? You’d be in the middle of a difficult and frustrating conversation, where nothing was clicking, and suddenly, with one touch, your message would come across and you can hear and be heard. That button might be closer than you think.
Fairness is a concept that is elemental in business; it’s the presumption that makes commerce and workplace transactions possible. We expect fair pay, a fair price, a fair offer, fair treatment and fair trade. But what happens when something is not fair?
Gino goes on to say that anonymity is akin to darkness, and that may explain the concepts of trolling on the internet, heckling from the back of the room, and anonymous poison pen letters to the boss. When people feel that they can’t be seen, they change their behavior, and they feel free to do and say things they would never do face to face.
In Who Says It’s a Man’s World, Bennington describes her struggle between ambition – wanting to achieve the lofty goals she set for herself – and gratitude, living and appreciating the wonderful life she’d built. For much of her life, she felt harried and miserable, always chasing happiness that seemed to reside somewhere in the future. She finally decided that the only thing that mattered was this moment, right now.
Emily Bennington describes herself as a career author, speaker and space invader. Not the kind with ray guns (although, to be fair, I didn’t ask to see them, so she may be that kind, too.) She’s talking about what Stephen Covey referred to in his writing: “between stimulus and response there is a space, and it’s in that space you choose how you wish to respond.”
