Do you want to show up more creatively for your clients and your colleagues, your family, and your friends?
Do you want to default to thinking about opportunity versus focusing just on problems?
Discovering Hope is full of proactive steps you can take right now, to achieve a more positive mindset or to help maintain the positivity you already have
Getting Positive reveals that more optimism is close at hand
Staying Positive Increases Your Chances of Getting Hired
Just spoke with a strategist who lost their job and with it their confidence, but how they reacted was smart.
After reflecting, first they concluded that the world and ‘their’ world, would not end. They decided they wouldn’t let it!
They decided after allowing themselves to be shaken for 24 hours to return to the front foot.
They then then posted on social media. Their post focused on gratitude to all that had given them the opportunity both in the agency and all that had helped their development. They highlighted the fact that they had so much to learn. (Gratitude and humility can go a long way, as can other’s awareness of our availavility to work.)
Within a day they had received some positive responses and within a week they had a job offer.
#proactiveapproach #neversaydie #strategicplanning
To Get the Job You Hoped For – Ask incisive questions at the interview
A salutary lesson for any job seekers but particularly for strategists, trained to ask the right questions for their clients and then not doing so for themselves when interviewing for a new job.
“Unfortunately, the role wasn’t what I was sold – I started there on the promise of delivering strategic work, but the other personnel and the agency leadership were only focused on delivering comm’s or worse, ad campaigns masquerading as strategic innovation! I left within three months of arriving. It was a hard lesson in really being on the same page as others in terms of what you want to achieve.”
Moral of story – To obtain a better first-hand understanding of the opportunity you’re being considered for, ask better questions, such as:
How does the agency make the bulk of its money? (tells you what the actual business focus is)
Key People in the agency – What are their primary skillsets? (tells you what skill-sets are really valued)
Awarded Work – What is the agency known for/Where is it being recognized and how?
What is the publicly articulated vision for the agency?
Your Success is defined as what? Be crystal clear what the people about to hire you believe makes you a success in your role. This will confirm whether your and their thinking aligns.
#CareerSuccess#Clarity#Questions
Enhancing Your Chances of Finding Work
I’ve had conversations with a few agency heads in the last few days that have told me they have in the last few weeks re-hired some of theose they furloughed two months ago. It’s a start! So what should job seekers be doing, perhaps as the tide begins to turn, to enhance their employment prospects 1. Follow the money – Ask yourself, where is money being spent? Target those companies and products you/others consistently buy. If company’s products/services are selling well, their advising agencies are quite possibly doing comparably well and are likely to be the first to need extra help. 2. As money starts to be spent again, (it’s beginning) energise your effort to talk with more people. I know from my own experience, that creating maximum opportunity for working prospects is based on being in the right place at the right time. The speed with which you identify career opportunity is directly related to your energy and peristence. But critically, you can’t talk with everyone all the time, so target your energy, as indicated in 1) above. hashtag#followthemoney hashtag#Persistence hashtag#Opportunity
Get Inspired Get Living
‘Inspiration exists, but it must find you working.’ (Pablo Picasso) I’ll certainly be working this long weekend…On my tennis arm, my drinking arm, my sun worshipping everything…May you all be ‘found’ working this weekend. ps. time out is crucial for successful careers. Be kind to yourself. Live a bit! hashtag#Live hashtag#Inspiration hashtag#Timeout
Pivotal To Your Career Success
Many of you are capable of brilliance, a brilliant strategy that helps win a pitch or propels an existing client forward. But, can such quality thinking be replicated on a consistent basis? It’s this consistency that leads to greatness. Great reputation and with it, great opportunities for career success.
Why do some have greater consistency than others? Is it different talent, experience, work-rate, support network, determination? Perhaps it’s the significance of the outcome (pressure) or something more fundamental, the challenge of forming habits, of being able to consistently change your behaviour.
The truth is, everything that matters we want to be consistent. And what does consistency give you in a career context. To name a few:
- It builds reputation – When you consistenly deliver, people take note and you become the ‘go to’ person.
- Amplifies skills – It’s well documented that mastery arises from persistently repeated activity and the nuanced learning that comes from this.
- Builds Self-Belief – When you are able to consistently deliver something, that’s empowering. When you know others know it, that’s validating and further confidence boosting.
- Achieves results – Reliability builds momentum which backed up by planning and resources, leads to results.
- Builds relationships – Bosses and consumers seek consistency and when it exists, so relationships begin to form.
For more on why we fail to be and how we can become more consistent, a few links attached.
Onwards,
Stuart Parkin/SPARKIN
Articles and commentary that might be of interest…
Struggling to be Consistent
- Why do people struggle to be consistent?
- How to be consistent in 4 steps
- How to be outrageously consistent
Why consistency is Important
- Consistency in action. Is it the hidden driver of success?
- Power of consistency – 5 Rules
- Purposeful consistency with the right mindset = Unstoppable
- Consistency: The key to Success
Consistency – Getting Motivated
Greetings Friend,
You are receiving ‘Narrate’ a newsletter designed to inform/help you, the most recent edition was based on the issue of chronic self-doubt or ‘impostor syndrome.’ This subject and all that I write about are based on weekly conversations with your strategic problem solving peers.
Other recent newsletters have addressed: Mental Health, Ageism, excessive stress, biased thinking (anathema if you’re paid to be objective!) and effective listening. The newsletter unlike my writing on social media, includes links to allow for broader reading on subject matter addressed.
If there’s any subject that you’d be interested on my writing about, please let me know and I’d be happy to address.
Sincere best wishes,
SPARKIN
Revisit Previous Newsletters
- Imposter Syndrome – Managing Chronic Self Doubt – September 2019
- Ageism – Is It About Our Age? – July 2019
- Excessive Stress – We’re All Vulnerable – May 2019
- Biased Thinking – The Anti-Strategist – March 2019
- Effective Listening – But How? – January 2019
- Personal Branding – Why Your Livelihood Depends On It – September 2018
- The Future of Advertising is Positive – June 2018
- The Ever Transactional Market for Strategic Talent – May 2018
- Adaptability = Career Success? – April 2018
- Job Security – Do we ever have it? – January 2018
- Agency to Client-Side Means What? – November 2017
- A ‘Complete’ Strategic Planner? – September 2017
- Strategic Planning Jobs – Where are they going? – July 2017
- Humor and Building Brands – June 2017
- Integrated Thinking and Polymaths – April 2017
- Purpose Driven Brands and Strategy – March 2017
- Being a Good Boss – February 2017
- View Complete Newsletter Archive