The definition of "mentor" per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: a trusted counselor or guide; see also tutor or coach.
Seeking out mentorship in your chosen career field or path means you are seeking someone - or several someones - to help counsel and guide you along your chosen career path. Having a guide to light the way is a good thing, particularly when you come to a fork in the road and are unsure of which side to continue on. Having several mentors means you get different points of view, different facets of experience and knowledge to draw from.
A good mentor, like a good coach or counselor, gives you guidance but does not plot out your course for you. Your mentor should give you reasoned, honest input and feedback based on his or her own experiences and the experiences of those your mentor knows or has known personally and professionally.
A mentor can be someone further along on your chosen career path, perhaps someone in a position you might attain to, or someone who came up the ranks in a similar fashion - like the supervisor I shared about last week who advanced from being an administrative assistant to the chief of our contracting division over the course of her career.
Your mentor might also be a peer who is going through some of the same trials and tribulations along his or her path that you are.
Feedback and guidance can come from all levels, and mentorship is no different. Someone in a higher position might not see the pitfalls of his or her communication style or treatment of those around them clearly. Good leaders garner feedback from all levels - above, peer and below.
There is formal mentorship - where you build a relationship based on mentoring or being mentored, with scheduled meetings and such - and there there is informal mentorship - where you seek guidance from those around you in a less structured manner.
I recommend that you look outside your direct supervisory chain for formal mentoring both to avoid unnecessary conflict and to gather other points of view in order to broaden your horizons. I also recommend you offer to mentor others, particularly where you see potential in someone - helping others grow helps us grow too...and it builds good karma!
Next week begins a new month and a new topic - Relationships.
Until then, Namaste!
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Sunday, July 20, 2014
MaXIMIze - Taking Charge of Your Career
As I wrote this post out longhand (as I do with all my posts), I realized there is a lot to cover in this topic!
As I considered this topic, two images came to mind. The first was of a boat bobbing along on the water without direction. The second was of a boat with its sails being adjusted to compensate for the storms and calms, but definitely heading in a particular direction.
You can either take charge of your career (the second boat) or let it take charge of you (the first boat).
Some of you know that I work for the Federal government as a civil servant. I spent the first nine years of my career moving from administrative assistant job to administrative assistant job, through two closing bases and moving from working for the Air Force to working for the Army. I didn't have a true career path, even though I enjoyed my work.
In 1997, I decided that to move forward I needed at least a business degree, so I started going to community college with that aim in mind. Shortly thereafter, I was intrigued with the design of websites, and started to follow that path in my education until that industry tanked in the late 1990s-early 2000s. My supervisor at the time was a woman who had moved up in Federal service from a GS-1 or 2 (the lowest grades in civil service) admin clerk to chief of our contracting division - a GS-14 (the second highest grade in civil service without moving to a political appointment-type position). And she did this all without a college degree.
This supervisor saw the potential in her employees and encouraged them to grow, even though it meant she might lose them to another part of the organization or to another organization altogether. She saw in me the ability to run an office budget and basically be an office manager, taking care of the day-to-day administrative issues so the contract specialists could deal with, well, getting contracts out the door. Her encouragement, as well as comments from others in the budget analyst field about my abilities in that area, and of course the opening of an upward mobility position as a budget analyst in our resource management office culminated in me heading off on the budget analyst career path 13 years after entering Federal service.
Now, I was still a bit like the boat bobbing along on the water, but at least now I had an oar or two to use for steering. And I had a path to move down - becoming a budget analyst working with overhead funds and operating budgets.
I learned a lot working for our resource management office about how funds came into the organization and the various colors of money we dealt with and what those colors meant during the course of the year.
Two years or so after I became a budget analyst, I got to work with our planning division on their operating budget and learned how our project budgets (we are a project-funded organization) and schedules affected the operating budget for that particular division. I did a lot of workload and workforce analysis, and wanted to know more about the programs and project side of the house.
Within two years after I started working with our planning division, a budget analyst position came up on the programs and project side of the house,which I applied for and got. So, now I was working with project funds and learning about the three-year cycle of the Federal budget process. Wow!
My ship was growing from a rowboat to a sailing ship!
Within a year or so, the opportunity to be a program and project manager for a program that ran our smaller projects came available, and I took the chance and applied for it - and got it.
If someone had told me back in the days when I was a GS-2 military admin clerk that I would become a budget analyst let alone manage a program and all the projects in it, I would have called them crazy!
I have since done an eight-month stint as the supervisor of our project budget analysts - during which I discovered I am a much better worker-bee or project manager/team lead than a true supervisor. It can be very challenging to deal with the sometimes complex issues of adult children that other people raised.
I am currently back to being a budget analyst, working with several complex and interesting projects, and I'm happy with the work and the people I work for and with.
There are some that would say I caught a lot of lucky breaks to get where I am today. I disagree.
Did I have people recognize my potential and encourage me along certain paths? Yes! And I bet if you look at your own life and/or career, you have people who do this for you, too. They are called mentors.
Am I sorry I gave up on designing websites? No! I have a very fulfilling career and I've been involved with projects that helped communities with their flood risk reduction, ecosystem restoration, and water supply issues.
Was I willing to take chances, seeing a need and/or a job I thought I could fill and do well? Yes!
Was I scared of failure and disappointing those who believed in me and hired me? Yes! That has just fueled me to do the best job as I saw it.
Yes, I said "as I saw it." The best way to move up is to truly serve - not please, serve. And the best way to do that is to understand the truly unbendable parameters of your job in your organization and then do that job to the best of your ability. This means not saying no without a compelling and valid reason, never saying that something is not your job and just leaving it at that, and truly doing your best at whatever you are hired and assigned to do.
Was I always looking for that next promotion? No! I did the best job I could do in the job I was in until I saw a need to be filled somewhere else that called to me with a siren song. That is how I moved from budget analyst to program and project manager to supervisor - not because I was simply looking for the next promotion.
Now the topic of this post is taking charge of your career, and - as I hope you've seen in the examples from my own career above - the best way to do this is by knowing your strengths and weaknesses, your personal boundaries, and the boundaries of the organization and the position. If the job you are in is not a good fit, find another one keeping those parameters in mind.
What you end up with as your career should be your passion, your calling, your vocation. It should fulfill that part of your life, not just be a J.O.B.
Next week, we will discuss mentoring - helping others find and walk their best path or finding someone to help you find and walk yours.
Until then, Namaste!
As I considered this topic, two images came to mind. The first was of a boat bobbing along on the water without direction. The second was of a boat with its sails being adjusted to compensate for the storms and calms, but definitely heading in a particular direction.
You can either take charge of your career (the second boat) or let it take charge of you (the first boat).
Some of you know that I work for the Federal government as a civil servant. I spent the first nine years of my career moving from administrative assistant job to administrative assistant job, through two closing bases and moving from working for the Air Force to working for the Army. I didn't have a true career path, even though I enjoyed my work.
In 1997, I decided that to move forward I needed at least a business degree, so I started going to community college with that aim in mind. Shortly thereafter, I was intrigued with the design of websites, and started to follow that path in my education until that industry tanked in the late 1990s-early 2000s. My supervisor at the time was a woman who had moved up in Federal service from a GS-1 or 2 (the lowest grades in civil service) admin clerk to chief of our contracting division - a GS-14 (the second highest grade in civil service without moving to a political appointment-type position). And she did this all without a college degree.
This supervisor saw the potential in her employees and encouraged them to grow, even though it meant she might lose them to another part of the organization or to another organization altogether. She saw in me the ability to run an office budget and basically be an office manager, taking care of the day-to-day administrative issues so the contract specialists could deal with, well, getting contracts out the door. Her encouragement, as well as comments from others in the budget analyst field about my abilities in that area, and of course the opening of an upward mobility position as a budget analyst in our resource management office culminated in me heading off on the budget analyst career path 13 years after entering Federal service.
Now, I was still a bit like the boat bobbing along on the water, but at least now I had an oar or two to use for steering. And I had a path to move down - becoming a budget analyst working with overhead funds and operating budgets.
I learned a lot working for our resource management office about how funds came into the organization and the various colors of money we dealt with and what those colors meant during the course of the year.
Two years or so after I became a budget analyst, I got to work with our planning division on their operating budget and learned how our project budgets (we are a project-funded organization) and schedules affected the operating budget for that particular division. I did a lot of workload and workforce analysis, and wanted to know more about the programs and project side of the house.
Within two years after I started working with our planning division, a budget analyst position came up on the programs and project side of the house,which I applied for and got. So, now I was working with project funds and learning about the three-year cycle of the Federal budget process. Wow!
My ship was growing from a rowboat to a sailing ship!
Within a year or so, the opportunity to be a program and project manager for a program that ran our smaller projects came available, and I took the chance and applied for it - and got it.
If someone had told me back in the days when I was a GS-2 military admin clerk that I would become a budget analyst let alone manage a program and all the projects in it, I would have called them crazy!
I have since done an eight-month stint as the supervisor of our project budget analysts - during which I discovered I am a much better worker-bee or project manager/team lead than a true supervisor. It can be very challenging to deal with the sometimes complex issues of adult children that other people raised.
I am currently back to being a budget analyst, working with several complex and interesting projects, and I'm happy with the work and the people I work for and with.
There are some that would say I caught a lot of lucky breaks to get where I am today. I disagree.
Did I have people recognize my potential and encourage me along certain paths? Yes! And I bet if you look at your own life and/or career, you have people who do this for you, too. They are called mentors.
Am I sorry I gave up on designing websites? No! I have a very fulfilling career and I've been involved with projects that helped communities with their flood risk reduction, ecosystem restoration, and water supply issues.
Was I willing to take chances, seeing a need and/or a job I thought I could fill and do well? Yes!
Was I scared of failure and disappointing those who believed in me and hired me? Yes! That has just fueled me to do the best job as I saw it.
Yes, I said "as I saw it." The best way to move up is to truly serve - not please, serve. And the best way to do that is to understand the truly unbendable parameters of your job in your organization and then do that job to the best of your ability. This means not saying no without a compelling and valid reason, never saying that something is not your job and just leaving it at that, and truly doing your best at whatever you are hired and assigned to do.
Was I always looking for that next promotion? No! I did the best job I could do in the job I was in until I saw a need to be filled somewhere else that called to me with a siren song. That is how I moved from budget analyst to program and project manager to supervisor - not because I was simply looking for the next promotion.
Now the topic of this post is taking charge of your career, and - as I hope you've seen in the examples from my own career above - the best way to do this is by knowing your strengths and weaknesses, your personal boundaries, and the boundaries of the organization and the position. If the job you are in is not a good fit, find another one keeping those parameters in mind.
What you end up with as your career should be your passion, your calling, your vocation. It should fulfill that part of your life, not just be a J.O.B.
Next week, we will discuss mentoring - helping others find and walk their best path or finding someone to help you find and walk yours.
Until then, Namaste!
Sunday, July 13, 2014
MaXIMIze - Career - Follow Your Passion, Find Your Bliss
When you focus on doing the things you do well, that bring you joy, you find your bliss.
When you focus on doing the things that bring fire into your life, you find your passion.
When you focus on all the above, you follow your passion and find your bliss.
I've written on this topic before, and will likely write on it again since part of my passion is helping others be the best they can be, and that means helping them follow their passion and find their bliss.
Is what you're doing right now feeding the fire inside? If not, you may like your work, but it still feels like a job rather than a vocation.
For some questions to consider while you're looking for your passion, see my post from December of last year on my previous blog page.
You can even create a Manifestation Board that shows concrete images and words connected to that which makes you feel alive, that which feeds your fire.
Here is a quote from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand to consider:
"Why do they always teach us that it is easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves. It's the hardest thing in the world - to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage."
Do you have the courage to follow your passion and find your bliss?
Or are you content to live a lukewarm life?
The choice, as always, is yours.
Here are the links to my previous posts on the subject of passion and bliss:
More Questions To Consider
Finding Your Passion
Find Your Passion
Next week, we will discuss taking charge of your career.
Until then, Namaste!
When you focus on doing the things that bring fire into your life, you find your passion.
When you focus on all the above, you follow your passion and find your bliss.
I've written on this topic before, and will likely write on it again since part of my passion is helping others be the best they can be, and that means helping them follow their passion and find their bliss.
Is what you're doing right now feeding the fire inside? If not, you may like your work, but it still feels like a job rather than a vocation.
For some questions to consider while you're looking for your passion, see my post from December of last year on my previous blog page.
You can even create a Manifestation Board that shows concrete images and words connected to that which makes you feel alive, that which feeds your fire.
Here is a quote from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand to consider:
"Why do they always teach us that it is easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves. It's the hardest thing in the world - to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage."
Do you have the courage to follow your passion and find your bliss?
Or are you content to live a lukewarm life?
The choice, as always, is yours.
Here are the links to my previous posts on the subject of passion and bliss:
More Questions To Consider
Finding Your Passion
Find Your Passion
Next week, we will discuss taking charge of your career.
Until then, Namaste!
Sunday, July 6, 2014
MaXIMIze - Career - J.O.B. or W.O.R.K.?
Are you just marking time and collecting a paycheck or are you in a place where you enjoy what you do and you have room to grow?
Is this just a J.O.B - just obeying the boss - or is this W.O.R.K. - a willing opportunity for respect and kindness?
Now, you may be working yourself through college or need a job to put food on the table, however that doesn't mean it has to be a J.O.B. Even the most temporary employment can be W.O.R.K. - it all depends on what you are willing to give and able to receive.
I know a lot of people complain about their jobs, saying they are "oppressed by the Man" and such. My answer back to them is what are you doing to make it better? What are you doing to make a difference? And, if it is truly as bad as all that, find another job that fulfills you and sustains you.
The catch is this - in order to have something outward that fulfills and sustains, you need to be inwardly fulfilled and sustained. Everything comes from the inside out. If you are not content within yourself, nothing outside can fulfill or sustain you.
So, what lens are you looking at your employment through - is it just a J.O.B. or is it truly W.O.R.K.?
The choice, as always, is yours.
Next week we will discuss Follow Your Passion, Find Your Bliss.
Until then, Namaste!
Is this just a J.O.B - just obeying the boss - or is this W.O.R.K. - a willing opportunity for respect and kindness?
Now, you may be working yourself through college or need a job to put food on the table, however that doesn't mean it has to be a J.O.B. Even the most temporary employment can be W.O.R.K. - it all depends on what you are willing to give and able to receive.
I know a lot of people complain about their jobs, saying they are "oppressed by the Man" and such. My answer back to them is what are you doing to make it better? What are you doing to make a difference? And, if it is truly as bad as all that, find another job that fulfills you and sustains you.
The catch is this - in order to have something outward that fulfills and sustains, you need to be inwardly fulfilled and sustained. Everything comes from the inside out. If you are not content within yourself, nothing outside can fulfill or sustain you.
So, what lens are you looking at your employment through - is it just a J.O.B. or is it truly W.O.R.K.?
The choice, as always, is yours.
Next week we will discuss Follow Your Passion, Find Your Bliss.
Until then, Namaste!
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