Important Principles for Getting Ahead in Business

Last week, I had the privilege of leading a webinar on the subject of career advancement. The title was “Earning That Promotion!” and was actually based on a paper written for Ideas & Advice on www.johnkeysercoach.com last summer. When it was first posted, my friend Chris Golski, a recent graduate with his Master’s Degree, called and said he enjoyed reading about the principles of getting ahead in the corporate world.

I thanked Chris for his feedback and then asked if he felt these principles were consistent with what he gained from his Master’s degree. Chris was silent as he thought and upon reflection said that he felt he was taught how to be a high level executive, not how to get there.

Coincidently, the very next day, I received a call from Sead Dizdarevic, another friend, who was about to complete his Master’s in a different program. Sead said what I had written would be helpful in his business career. As Chris and Sead know one another, I thanked him for his feedback and mentioned that Chris had said that schools should be teaching us this information. Sead was silent as he thought and then remarked “companies should be explaining these principles of success to its employees.”

Chaired very effectively by Jeff Chapski as one of his many volunteer activities, Georgetown’s Career Services office offers an amazing resource for Georgetown students and grads. Through Jeff, I was introduced to their work and to Emily White and Bridget Holmes, two terrific professionals who staff career services. They subsequently asked me to lead a webinar on the subject of career advancement.

The webinar was this past Tuesday, February 15. 191 alums registered. Not all were live on the call as it was 12:30 EST and many registered were from around the country, and some were outside the U.S. The webinars are recorded and presumably alums who are not able to be on the call live do listen to the recording at a time shortly thereafter.

I had a challenge. In the original paper, I had listed 15 principles to follow to be a success in business, and a few other ideas I wanted to discuss. I realized though, thanks to my coaching friend, Kari Uman, that 15 or more principles would take too long to discuss and that people could lose focus listening to me present that much information.

I thought about “takeaways” – what I hoped people would remember from the webinar that would help them advance in their careers.

I selected the following:

• Become an MVP for all we do.
• Ask lots of questions – What is expected, needed, and wanted from me, our team, our company? What would success look like?
• Be an intentional listener. The Center for Creative Leadership recommends listening 80% of the time. Effective listening is a state of mind!
• Be a great teammate. Of course, this relates directly to becoming an MVP. Actually all these takeaways are interrelated.
• Your boss is critically important to you. Many people I speak with hesitate to seek feedback from their boss, and do not develop a constructive working relationship with their boss. Do we want to do great work, to succeed? Our boss can help! If there is a problem, resolve it – a problem discussed is a problem half solved.
• Humility is the foundation of growth. This enables us to ask questions, admit what we don’t know, take responsibility for mistakes and learn from them, and to accept that “yes, I am good and I can be even better; I must strive for continuous improvement!”
• I must become respected, trusted and liked.
• Be early, always. This is my favorite little gem. I promise, it will help us succeed!

I told stories around why I selected these takeaways, why, based on my 40 years of experience, I believe these are critically important to advancing in business.

Are some of these principles more important than others? If we want to succeed, let’s try to do them all well!

I hope to do another webinar about the other principles I did not cover on Tuesday, as they too are critically important, e.g. – making things happen – being a source of positive energy – self-awareness – offering and seeking constructive feedback – being a presence in the community -offering ideas and solutions – setting priorities – time management –these, too, matter! It’s just too much to offer in a 45-minute discussion.

We also discussed that women can do all these takeaways, some maybe naturally better than men. I told a few stories about how women with whom I worked achieved great success, and what I observed.

My invitation to you is to write down these principles, and others, maybe post them on your bulletin board or below your computer monitor, some place where they will be a reminder to you. And, please, if you would like to correspond about them, email me. I am happy to correspond about your career advancement, contribute from my experience what I have learned and observed. I know I can continue to learn from you.