Over the past couple of days I have been having trouble with Twitter to the extent that I am actually “locked out”. I was using Tweetdeck successfully until yesterday too but now that no longer wants to play along. Apart from the time it has taken up trying to sort it has shown me how much I rely on Twitter for my day to day communication.
But it has shown me something else too.
As I tweeted about the issues, my frustrations, asked for help …I got lots of offers of help - from people I knew and many I had not met yet.
This is the benefit of social networking. Hard to quantify but real when it works like this.
As I write this the Twitter situation is still not resolved but I felt it was the right time to say to those who have offered help/advice/suggestions.
thank you !
I think there are a couple of important messages in this current climate when looking for a new job
1 if you lost your job through redundancy there is a fair chance that the number of jobs in that field has been generally cut.
2 if you think of yourself as an accountant/banker/ manager - and only look for jobs to replicate the previous one you are probably underestimating the breadth of your skills and talents.
I have just read Ian Sanders’ excellent book - Juggle. It is a small book packed with great ideas, stories and advice. The basic premise of the book is that we all live “multi-dimensional” lives - but we sometimes forget that. And from our different interests and experiences - throughout our lives generally - come skills that can be useful in the business world.
Think about this for a moment. What do you know about in your life ? What might be your specialist subject on mastermind? What do you do regularly - that you take for granted but could be really valuable to an employer/client? What do you do in your spare time that needs your work skills?
The “personal statement” part of a job application form or on your CV is your chance to show your breadth of skills. There is no one guaranteed way of getting a potential employer to hire you but if you appear one dimensional on your application/CV they will have no way of assessing whether you might be better suited to another job in the organisation if they don’t want to offer you the job you applied for.
And here’s a tip for when you are looking at the job ads - cover the title of the job and just look at the job/person specification. Can you do what they are asking by applying your skills in a different way? If so- and you want to apply- remember to make your application/CV fit what they are looking for. A client of mine with a background in HR applied for a non HR job. The feedback she got when was not successful in the application was that her CV was too HR based. So she rewrote the CV emphasising her skills and achievements in a general work context - and got the next ( non-HR ) job she applied for.
You owe it to yourself to be as attractive as possible to employers. Pigeonholing yourself won’t do that!
I watched the Scotland Rugby team beat Australia on Saturday. It was a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours and the glow that went along with the ( unexpected) result lasted all evening. It so happened that I was at a country hotel with my parents , husband and kids and the atmosphere in the bar as the audience realised that Scotland might actually win was electric. When they did - well lets just say that many of the guests found it hard to get the smiles off their faces for the entire evening!
Over the past few years the Scottish Rugby team has come in for a lot of criticism. To be fair it has been a hard time to be a fan - wins were a bit thin on the ground. They have a new coach this season and so far they have won 2 games out of 2 under him. It is very early days yet to see how different their performance will be but it has certainly given the critics something else to think about.
Critics - the clue is in the title - are their to criticise. My dictionary describes criticism as - “to find fault”. For those in the public eye - including our sportsmen - it goes with the territory. But for the rest of us who run up against a critic it can be difficult to manage.
I have taken my fair share of criticism in the past - and it hurt! But as I got older ( I would say wiser but that would be a stretch ) I realised that criticism is based on the critic’s agenda. And just because the say what they say does not make it true!
We can discuss what do do about criticism intellectually and come up with all sorts of advice. But there is nothing more emotionally satisfying than proving a critic wrong.
Most leaders will receive criticism at some point or another. The strength of their leadership is often how they respond to that criticism.
I sat in on a session that Mike Fiszer was delivering on Leading with Emotional Intelligence this morning at Edinburgh Napier University. I was fortunate enough to have participated in a workshop Mike delivered on EI last year . When I arrived he was covering ” Self Regard” and why the ability to accept your own strengths and weaknesses is important in leadership.
Mike is a master storyteller and he explained what he meant using the story of the Lone Ranger. He said he should be called the “Almost Lone Ranger” . Tonto - his trusty sidekick - could track all sorts of things ( especially when they were in danger) and Mike explained that the “ALN” did not take himself off to tracking school to find out how to do it better than Tonto - he accepted that Tonto’s talent added value to what he was doing. And then of course his 4 legged friend Silver could be relied to take them out of any dangerous situation - whether it was galloping off or pulling rocks . And yes - Silver is not human - but you get the drift.
Joking aside the ALN is a great example of how a leader who knows his or her strengths and looks for others to add to their team to balance them up.
To me it was such a great illustration I just wanted to share it with you!
And then… I discovered from the Lone Ranger fanclub site that Johnny Depp has been signed up to play Tonto in the proposed movie with Jerry Bruckheimer as producer. It is certainly hard to pigeonhole Mr Depp - which is another great example of leadership … I feel a follow up post coming on.
In conversation over lunch a friend mentioned that she finds the “what do you do?” question really hard. We discussed the answers that wouldn’t remotely cover the elements of who she is as a person and talked about how difficult it is to summarise a work history especially if you have a portfolio of work. .
This brought to mind a conversation with another very good friend in the early days of my business. She had mentioned that she was meeting me and had been asked what I was doing now . She said that she realised that she couldn’t tell them what job(s) I did but she could tell them that I was creative and someone who would deliver on what I promised. At the time I was troubled by that. How on earth could I sell my services to clients and potential clients if they did not know what those services were?
So I focused on answering the question with a short story about what I had been doing most recently or what was most relevant in the context of the meeting and found that that worked. Saying I was a coach kind of brought the conversation to a juddering halt - but talking about working with youngsters in schools on projects really got things going. Saying that I teach public speaking skills gets one reaction - telling a story about a participant on one of the programmes gets a whole lot more.
A huge advantage of having a real live online presence nowadays is of course that after meeting someone for the first time - or even before meeting someone new - you can check out their profile(s) and take it from there
I appreciate we are all advised to have an “elevator pitch” ready so I say my business is getting people to talk - as a coach and teaching communication skills that is exactly what I do!
I would love to hear what you answer when you are asked the “what do you do” question. Please share!
