Career builder threats

   CAREER BUILDER THREATS

A career builder is menaced by temporary and permanent threats that need to be properly dealt with. These are the main career threats:

• Animosity from your equals. Envy is indeed commonplace in most work environments. Even reasonably nice and co-operative work mates may become ruthless secret enemies if you happen to be what they hate most: brilliant. So take Albert Einstein’s example (or emperor Claudius’s) and look a bit dumb (just a bit, OK?) Envy is one of humankind’s ugliest flaws, but also one of the most powerful ones, so don’t excite it by showing off or letting your excellence make others look too stupid when it’s not necessary. As a career builder you need to make (honourable) use of other people along the way, so it’s better to be friendly, co-operative and helpful to them so that you can benefit from the symbiosis. Don’t provoke your co-workers’ hate.

• Mediocre immediate bosses. They will hold their chair and assume that you’re going for it. A possible solution is to make it clear that you’re not seeking promotion within the same company and you plan to move somewhere else after you have achieved some experience. Then, if the opportunity arises, you may of course “change your mind”.

• Your own team. Your leadership skills may sometimes not be enough. The people reporting to you may dislike you for many reasons, including your making them work. So be aware of their moves. They may conspire to make you fall and get another boss. One possible solution is to “infiltrate” a loyal employee or a personal friend in your team, if you can. Another option is to be as nice as you can to your own team, but take proper record of all the steps they take, so you can prove their plot if they put you in a difficult situation with your own boss.

• Personal life distractions. Keep your two lives as separate as you can. Don’t allow your career to obsess you in a way that you may harm your family or social life, but, on the other hand, try to make it difficult for any personal problems or tensions to interfere with your work. Your employers will apreciate this.

• Reality change. Yes, this is a threat. As time goes by your knowledge and skills are less and less worth. Reality changes fast but it will depend a lot on which industry you are planning to have a career. If you’re a nuclear physician, a month outdate can make you useless in your industry, whereas in many other industries a few years of not recycling don’t mean anything. But in this Information Age, odds are you really need to recycle even if you don’t consider this to be urgent. Adapt to reality changes so that, instead of being a threat to you, they become the plus you provide.

• Unproper career decisions. After taking a main career decision it is very important to monitor it for as long as necessary to see if the right choice was made. Often changing jobs or companies may provide immediate good results (such as a better salary or more comfortable working conditions) and still be a wrong long-term decision. So it is advisable to speak to your career advisor before taking such a decision. And remember that not deciding is also a decision: many people just choose to stay in a given position or company without actually considering how it’s evolving and what the consequences can be to their career building. Passiveness and inertia can do as much harm as a fast and heated decision. Career awareness remains the key to career building.