Career goals are important since you cannot get where you are going if you don’t know where it is. Your career goals is where you intend to go with your career. Where do you want to be at the end of your career?
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The 3 Types of Managerial Power
There are three types of power in organizational life: role power, expertise power, and relationship power. Role power is the power you have because of your position. The second, expertise power, is the power others give you because of your ability and knowledge. Finally, relationship power is the power you have because of the strength of your relationships with others.
5 Tips to Help You Manage Your Career
In the modern economy, there is the perception that people are changing companies more often. While it is difficult to tease how true that is (e.g., changing companies versus changing jobs at a company), it has become common wisdom that your organization is not managing your career. It is up to you to manage your own career.
Get Commitment, Not Compliance
It is not unusual for a manager to not care why one of their direct reports does the work, only that the work gets done. There is an element of truth in this. However, you, as a manager, also care how well the work gets down. Team members that are committed to the objective produce better work than those that are merely complying with directives from above.
5 Easy Ways to Limit Distractions
Attention and focus have become targeted by companies as if they carry intrinsic value. Focus does not have a value unto itself, but its value varies on its use. You only have so much attention/mental energy you can pay out over the course of the day. When we try to multitask we become less effective. This means you should avoid all the little distractions that clamor for your attention and try to suck you away from your current task.
What Type of Team Do You Have?
“Team” has become a pervasive concept when talking about a manager and his directs. It is a useful metaphor, but it is incomplete by itself. Teams function differently in different sports. The late, great management thinker Peter F. Drucker calls out three types of teams in his opus Management. They are the baseball team, the football team, and the tennis doubles team.
How to Properly Pushback on Tasking
Your manager has just come by your desk and handed you a task. You know you can’t do it the way he laid out with the resources you have. Should you go back and tell your manager, “No, I can’t do this”? Although you may be tempted, this is neither prudent nor productive. This doesn’t mean you need to suffer in silence and then fail to deliver. You should, instead, have an honest conversation with your manager. And this is a conversation you need to prepare for. Giving your manager pushback on tasking is okay within limits.
Feedback Is About Behavior
The feedback you give should always be about the behavior of your direct. If you cannot link your feedback to a behavior, don’t give it. We tell you how.
The 6 Sources of Your Work
Work comes from a few well defined places and when we get work from outside of those places bad things often happen. We will cover the main places your work comes from and what it means for you.
You Need to Give Smaller, Frequent Feedback
As managers, we know it is our job to correct behaviors that our subordinates engage in that is ineffective. The sad truth is, we generally don’t do it until it has gotten pretty bad. We wait and wait to give feedback before we feel compelled to step in. Then when we finally give feedback, we wonder why it is so painful and our direct is less receptive. Imagine if your bank informed you about your account balance this way. After several months of no statements they told you that you were $10,000 overdrawn. You would not be happy with your bank. You might be annoyed when your bank tells you your account is overdrawn by $2, but you are at least you can prevent future problems. The same principle holds true with your directs and their performance.