Communications of the ACM
Ten Essential Career Success Strategies
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By enhancing your career with lessons from personal branding, you can become more engaged and successful at work. Most importantly, career success occurs when your career direction aligns with who you are and what is important to you. To build a successful career, determine what success looks like for you. After you define what success means for you, create your personal brand and then set and meet your career and life goals. When you master this success strategy, your efforts are channeled in the right direction to ensure your career brings personal and professional satisfaction.
When you take care of yourself, manage stress, and demonstrate a positive attitude and confidence, others enjoy interacting with you and value your contribution. It is tempting to blame others or the situation when things are not going the way you want. When you put yourself in charge of your career, you take ownership for your mistakes and accomplishments. By taking ownership of your words and actions, you link your efforts to success and learn from mistakes. To be successful, you need to pay attention to what others have to say. You benefit when you listen carefully, clarify expectations, and act on feedback from others. The benefits of learning from everyone include an increased ability to see multiple perspectives, exposure to helpful corrective feedback, and an opportunity to develop rapport. Career success depends on expressing yourself clearly, directly, and diplomatically. When you express your perspectives and provide information and feedback effectively there is little room for miscommunication or misunderstanding.
When you cultivate your curiosity in the workplace, you manage the large amounts of information available and become a lifelong learner. You are interested, up-to-date, knowledgeable, and aware. You understand your learning style, apply what you learn to work more effectively, and use learning strategies to retain important information. Others need to know they can count on you to exceed their expectations and achieve exceptional results. To exceed expectations you prioritize, plan, organize your time and activities, and persist on tasks. Those who are successful in their careers accept that the world is rapidly changing. To thrive in uncertainty you need to take a heads-up approach to work. You observe patterns and trends and anticipate change so you can quickly adjust. When you thrive in uncertainty, you are seen as flexible and versatile. To create your success, you need to let others know your goals and aspirations so they can assist or guide your progress. As well as sharing goals, you can also promote your brand by highlighting your skills, interests, experience, and other valuable personal qualities.
From Personal Branding Blog
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