The Best Reason To Quit Your Job--Or Keep It.

Croom and the Sumo's, a photo by chem7 on Flickr.

Cultural fit is the variable in your career equation that controls how well you succeed in your job.

I know—that’s a pretty bold statement. You might stay in your job for months, even years with a strong record of results. You might be told by upper management that your skill set is valued.  Bosses will encourage you to keep at your role—because the reward for hard work well done is—more hard work.

But thriving is a different story. After a year or two, a strong performer will want to take on new projects or move onto the management track. A sales diamond in the rough will want to take on a larger sales territory. This is where cultural fit becomes crucial. If you are a top-rated employee who decides to stick with your company with the hope of getting promoted, take an honest look at the cultural similarities and differences between you and the company you invest your career in.

First: know thyself.  Figure out your own priorities before you ever accept a new job opportunity. Take a good look at your life—at what drives you and also what deadens your soul:

·      Flexible or rigid schedule—what works for you?

·      What degree of hierarchical structure feels right?

·      Does meaningful work trump a higher salary?

Dig deeper and reflect on your more personal values:

·      Do you value ethnic and age diversity?

·      Are you sports-minded?

·      Are charitable pursuits a big part of your mission?

·      Do you highly value personal privacy after work is done, or do you like to have a beer with your team?

Some signs of cultural fit will be more obvious than others. If your company is headquartered in the Rust Belt, for example, and your coworkers enjoy congregating on the weekends to watch Detroit Lions games together, you may be at a disadvantage rooting for your Giants at home in the northeast.

Once you’re on the job, you need to be especially observant about cultural fit.

·      How often are you comfortable having scheduled conversations with your manager?

·      How many management layers of approval are you comfortable with before a decision can be made?

·      Look at the employee that seems to be most valued on the team. Is their personal or professional profile anything like yours?

It’s no reflection on you if the cultural fit isn’t there. It just might be time to move on. Knowing when to cut bait is the result of an observant and reflective mind.

What's Getting In The Way Of Your Career?

Sailor crawls through the mud on his way through the third obstacle of the Tough Mudder competition, a photo by Official U.S. Navy Imagery on Flickr.

Everyone is doing their share of level-setting these days. We’re cutting back on lattes or eating out, we’re downsizing our homes and accepting the research that says most of us will earn our highest salaries in our forties. But we hold out hope that our jobs will get bigger.

In spite of a salary freeze or a layoff, we know we have more to contribute to the world—we’re motivated and refuse to give in to career complacence. That we can push our career envelope further is the American Dream, and whether we intend to earn more, grow our own business or get promoted, we believe there’s always another rung on the career ladder to climb.

If this rings true for you, make sure you eliminate common obstacles that are getting in your way. Consider if you’re sabotaging your efforts with these missteps:

You haven’t found a place of peace.  There’s always a lot to learn before you get ahead in your career—but if you’re in turmoil, it’s impossible for you to get to the next step. If your mind is always churning over team politics or you are preoccupied with the next round of company layoffs, you can’t possibly be open to new career possibilities. Your brain is too busy to form strong partnerships. While you’re learning and planning your next move, find a quiet place in your mind and accept your current circumstances for what they are. Get calm so that you’ll be open to new opportunities without any attachment to the outcome.

You think you can grow your career alone.  When you’re in a good job, reach out to others in your network to offer help in their careers. When you need a job, reach out to those same folks for support. No one can grow a career or a business in a vacuum—it’s important to get out of your comfort zone and collaborate with others.

You’ve succumbed to Social Profile Envy.  Especially on LinkedIn, the profiles you see are professional branding messages, devised to make everyone appear in their best light. Would it help to know that most people don’t know three quarters of the 2,000 connections they are connected to? Put this in perspective, and try to be truthful when you create your own professional profile.

You’re using the same career-building tactics you used in your twenties.  The career landscape has changed drastically and so have you. It doesn’t make sense to deploy the same strategies you used when you landed your first job. Get a pair of fresh eyes to peruse your resume. Is it specialized (good) or have you portrayed yourself as The Master of Everything (old school)? Ask a friend or recruiter to rehearse an interview with you—is your suit too formal? Do the examples you’ve chosen as your greatest work put you in the best possible light?

Remember this. Sometimes what has to change in order to move ahead in our career is not the economy or the business landscape—just our perception of it.

Lessons You Should Teach Your Kids About Career Moves

Teacher In Classroom, a photo by www.audio-luci-store.it on Flickr.

If you’re a parent, no doubt you’re taking stock of last year’s career milestones and you’re considering your goals for the year ahead with your family in mind. Beyond pondering how your career will affect your family’s schedule or how you’re going to pay for college, consider how the actions you take in your career decisions impact your children’s outlook on their own careers. Here are a few lessons worth imparting to your next generation of workers:

Remind them that the professional relationships they create in every job move will stay with them throughout their careers.  If a career is done right, whether you stay with one company for twenty years or you change jobs every few years, it’s important to forge relationships with colleagues early on. There will be mentors in your midst, mentees, and business visionaries who become our role models. Remind your kids that it’s okay to lean on these relationships in order to grow and learn. And during inevitable times of downsizing, these are the advocates who will champion for us when we require job leads, referrals or sound career advice.

There’s something to learn at every job—good or bad.  Don’t change jobs until you learn something.  The full lesson may not be completely clear until you are long gone from the situation, but don’t abandon a role without gaining some understanding of what made the situation fail. Toxic bosses teach you how not to lead. Benevolent mentors bowl us over with generosity and teach us to pay it forward in our next gig.

Whenever you can, participate in a variety of project teams.  Even if your kids decide to work for themselves, being a lone ranger is not a recipe for success. They will still need to collaborate with clients and vendors. They will rely on referrals and form partnerships. Experience from the collaborative effect of teams is a powerful lesson. Point out that there will be backstabbers and there will be cooperators on most teams—but it’s their decision whom to emulate.

A job’s not supposed to be fun—that’s why it’s called work; but try to have fun anyway.  If you make a conscious choice to enjoy some aspects of even the most mundane job, it will be more tolerable. All of us remember the worst job we’ve had, and hopefully over the years we’ve learned to laugh about it. Tell your kids that while they are looking for  better job, they should look for moments of job mastery, some level of autonomy, and opportunities to collaborate with good people in any role they have.

Whether you impart these lessons to your children in a formal conversation or not, you are always leading by example. If you are depressed by a long job search, show your kids where you’ve had a small win (a job lead through networking, a great conversation with an industry leader). Try not to wear a gloom and doom cloud over your head when you talk about the economy or the job market. Reminisce about the joy you’ve felt in your career in years past. Because whether you want to or not, you are planting the seeds for your children’s attitudes about work.