Soar with Honesty

A longtime colleague asked me recently what I would advise my clients to do in order to discover if they are contributing at their highest level.  I told him I would recommend they be honest with themselves and be open to learning about themselves and their world of work. A few suggestions came to mind as starting points. They include the following:

• Identify your values and how closely they match to your current employer.
  • We know that people are happier in their work when their values are aligned with those of the company they work for. We spend more waking hours at work than anywhere else, so this alignment is crucial for job satisfaction.

• Create pie charts for each area in your life to show the current percentage of time you spend on different aspects. Important areas to note include work, community involvement, professional organizations, family, spiritual, wellness, interests and others.  Then reflect on these charts and ask yourself what would be different in six months if you changed these proportions.
  • We must look at all parts of our lives in order to determine what we want to change and to determine how we want to contribute to our organizations and other people.

• Talk with people you respect that have differing points of view from your own to gain their perspectives regarding your capabilities.
  • Engaging others in your quest to contribute at your highest level can make an impact throughout your organization. The key is to listen to what they have to say, take it into consideration, and thank them for sharing their thoughts.

• Take the opportunity to redesign your resume to reassess your goals and accomplishments.
  • A qualified professional needs to administer and interpret a group of assessments. Often times people think when a person redesigns a resume the individual is looking for a new job. In this situation, the resume process is one of the best ways for a person to self-assess. A person has the opportunity to reflect upon their accomplishments, assessing skills, interests, relationships and what they enjoyed doing the most.

• Read the book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith.
  • Marshall’s list of 20 behaviors that we need to stop doing resonates with many people. They get it quickly as they review the behaviors. With the support of an Executive Coach and other key stakeholders an individual development plan can be created that maximizes individual performance.

• Ask yourself, what is the living legacy you want to create daily?
  • Key leaders in our world encourage us to create one sentence that describes your living legacy. This empowers us to make a personal vision into a reality.

My colleague was in the midst of making some changes in his life, and after implementing these suggestions, as well as others, he identified and was more engaged in the areas he wanted to focus on. He noticed that with an aspiration to actualize his living legacy, he increased his effectiveness in all parts of his life.

Barbara A.F. Greene is the founder and CEO of Greene and Associates, Inc., an organizational resilience company offering corporate coaching and consulting services from the executive suites to the shop floor. She has a Master’s Degree in Counseling and designation as a Master Certified Coach by the International Coach Federation. A published author, Barbara serves on charitable and professional boards and has received numerous awards for leadership, mentoring, and community service.

Career Partners International provides top quality talent management services to organizations of all sizes. Their offices around the world help assess, engage, develop, and transition talent in any industry. To find out more about Career Partners International and how you can maximize your organizational performance, reach out to an office near you or contact us today!