Collaboration. Traditional communication skills. How skilled are you at getting along with people? Get skilled in communicating effectively with others, some who may be vastly different to yourself. Create, develop and maintain positive, purposeful, professional relationships. This is effortful and requires thought, thoughtfulness and consideration. Ask: how is my choice of words going to impact the person I’m talking with? Don’t play the blame game – if you have had a number of bad relationships with colleagues, don’t assume they are being difficult. They are a challenge to your underdeveloped communication and leadership skills. We naturally gravitate to people who are like us, which means we don’t become practiced at communicating with people who are quite different to us. There are theories, practice and knowledge around communication and collaboration, it’s not instinctive.
We have two jobs – the job that you actually do and communicating and collaborating with others in your workplace.
Clarity. What do you actually want to do? What do you love? What’s your passion or interest? What are you good at? What are your strengths? What’s your purpose? Most people don’t ask themselves these questions, but we need purpose to have career confidence and to feel like we are contributing to society. It can be illuminating and it can be vastly different to where you’ve ended up.
Confidence. No one can give this to you, you need to take responsibility for it yourself. We don’t all need to be an extrovert just to feel good about ourselves. There is a science behind confidence and it’s about self efficacy and understanding that the human spirit is hard-wired to suffer. It’s effortful to be happy and to look at things in a positive light – that’s why even people with a lot of money can still be miserable.
Creativity. Everybody is creative, it’s not just about art or performing. It’s our ability to think of things in a different way. It’s everywhere, it’s allowing what might be possible to enter your mind, and think of new ways of doing things. This is satisfying and gives you confidence.
Four Cs for career confidence
From p8
“We’ll see radical change in the next decade; already we’re seeing brands drop at an alarming rate.
“At Symes Group we’re going to assist and support organisations to be able to think more creatively, be more creative, and maintain an environment that fosters it. It’s a slow process with a lot of obstacles.
“But most of all we’re passionate about – one person at at time – helping individuals get in the driver’s seat and take ownership and control of their own careers.
"We’ll be launching a digital coaching platform this year and continue our work in career confidence.
“Dramatic changes can come from individuals taking control of their own learning, their own development so they can contribute in a really positive, productive, creative, innovative and energetic way to any organisation they choose to join.
“We want to see a future where we’re no longer having these conversations around poor engagement and unhappy workers because everyone will self select where they want to go. It’s about work-life integration.
“We believe in a really exciting future of work and a positive one.
“The robots are coming and there’s a lot of fear surrounding the loss of jobs that technology and AI will bring, but I’m really excited to think about what will happen in the space of creation of jobs. The future is bright.”
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