As a professional you are more than likely motivated. You get that achievement requires disciplined effort. You are not afraid of hard work.
So far so good. Yet maybe you are struggling to:
- Land that job at the next level.
- Manage or lead people.
- Present your ideas effectively.
- Earn your place at the table as a business partner.
Of course we all struggle with things at times so you are no different to others.
What I want to ask you is how you respond to the struggles?
If you are like many professionals the temptation may well be to get into doing mode.
Now action is always positive.
At the same time there is often a huge amount of value of stopping, thinking and then choosing the specific action that is going to be the right one.
The starting point is to ask yourself great questions. Those that are both big and specific.
Let’s use some of our struggles to illustrate how this works.
Land that job at the next level
You might think the following question is a good one:
What can I do to land that job at the next level?
Trouble is that it’s pretty broad.
A better question would be
What could I do to land that job as a Financial Controller in the technology industry within 6 months?
It’s a big question and it’s specific. It’s going to get you focused and increase the chances of getting the result you.
Manage or lead people
Your initial question might be:
What can I do to be a better manager or leader of people?
Reasonable question but again very broad. Chances are there are aspects of managing and leading people you do really well and areas where you struggle. It’s those areas of struggle that offer the greatest opportunity.
A better question that you might ask might be:
What can I do to get the support of people to a new process or system?
The real value of taking this approach is that you get into targeted solutions mode. Rather than just being random you choose one solution, test it, look at the results and then adapt. If it doesn’t work you try something else. Either way you keep moving forward.