Personal resiliency is key to supporting your career success. People are getting promoted and are landing new jobs because of their ability to successfully deal with difficult challenges and roadblocks. What I’m referring to is their resiliency.
Your Personal Resiliency is your ability to overcome the greatest of obstacles from impossible deadlines, difficult working conditions, to personal health and family challenges, and is drawn from your key strengths.
What is resiliency?
- It’s about your choices – whether to be overwhelmed, stressed or figure out a way to adapt to change.
- It’s a mental reservoir of strength that you are able to call on in times of need to carry you through.
Clarify your Resiliency Factors – Your Strengths
Over the past months of this pandemic your strengths have been on steroids – gaining muscle and capability. New strengths have also emerged. Consider the strengths you have nurtured. For example, your ability to quickly adapt to change; creatively problem solve and pivot to meet market challenges; multitask and time manage as you work from home; coach and inspire others.
What two or three strengths have helped you be successful this past year?
Leverage your Strengths to Create New Possibilities
As you set your goals and intentions for this year, consider building on these strengths as you determine what you want. What are your career goals and how do you want to invest your strengths and talents? Is it a new job, a promotion, taking on new projects or initiatives, or stepping into an acting role as you explore new career options?
It’s key for your success that you identify what tools and resources you will need to reach your goals.
Then consider what’s standing in the way of your success. What roadblocks might impede your accomplishing your goal?
Next, brainstorm ways to overcome these obstacles.
Lastly determine your first step you need to take and set a time frame for completing it. Career success never happens overnight. It takes a daily focus on moving forward – step by step.
Cultivate Resiliency to Support Your Career Success
Your resiliency will help you meet your career goals, but before launching forward ensure you have a strong foundation. Consider: How are you currently showing up? ‘Are you above or below the line?’ (Source: The Conscious Leadership Group) For career growth to happen we need the strength of character to open the kimono and be real with ourselves.
Are you below the line?
If you are below the line you view the glass as half empty. You are focused on being right and are closed off to new information or new opportunities. When you are below the line you show up as overwhelmed, needing control or resigned, rationalizing and justifying your behaviour, gossiping, blaming others for your lack of career succession, feeling insecure, and in conflict.
We all vacillate moving from above to below the line. The key to our success is to readily identify when we are below the line, then consciously decide to shift. This is tough stuff as it’s easier to blame, fall prey to being depleted, and remain in the defensive mode. We think everyone else needs to change, our job needs to change, etc., but the first step is to acknowledge we need to change ourselves: our attitudes, our beliefs – as we can’t change others (despite how much we might want to).
Or Are You Above the Line?
People above line the line are open, embrace new ideas and alternative solutions. They focus first on listening and asking engaging questions that open up conversations. They don’t need to be right and aren’t defensive. Instead, their world is one of curiosity and possibility.
Nurture this open spirit of collaboration, creativity and possibility by:
- Surrounding yourself with others with a similar mind set. Motivation Speaker, Jim Rohr, states: ‘You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.’ Being with others that inspire you or are moving forward in their careers will also bring out your best. Read more: Tips for Career Success: Surround Yourself with the Right People
- Ensuring your life is well balanced. Simple things like eating a nutritious lunch, drinking water and taking breaks during the day are strategies top executives use to keep them fueled and focused. Read more: 1 Surprising Job Performance Strategy That Works (Hint: It’s Not Time Management)
- Assessing your mental game. Are you are feeling depleted and raw? Are you getting enough sleep? Are you setting yourself up for success each day by focusing on what you have to be grateful for, and setting (realistic) daily intentions? I personally get renewed from learning something new which I can then bring into my coaching work. It revives and excites me.
- When you dip below the line, don’t get stuck. One of the best ways to reset is to get outside to refresh. New research proves that a walk in a treelined park restores not only your body, but your mind and spirit. Consider taking a vacation instead of pushing through when you are already overly taxed. A mental health professional can also be a valuable resource.
Closing Thoughts
Need help identifying your areas of greatest (and weakest) resiliency, and developing an action plan for recovery, read: Personal Resiliency Assessment
Coaching to Accelerate your Results: Accelerate your Performance and Enhance your Success
Joanne Loberg, Certified Executive Coach and Internationally Certified Career Management Professional, is highly skilled and committed to supporting her executive and professional clients envision, strategize and accelerate their career success.
Her coaching focuses on career advancement strategies for excelling in organizations and overcoming roadblocks to success. Joanne asks challenging questions that provide insight and clarity. Once your goals are articulated, Joanne coaches you to develop and implement strategies that deliver results!
Contact us for a complimentary Career Consultation to strategize solutions to help you get more of what you want in your career.
Wishing you much career success!
Joanne Loberg
Certified Executive Coach & Internationally Certified Career Management Professional
JL Careers Inc
