There are times when you make mistakes: decisions, which seem right at the time, but it doesn’t work as well as planned. Maybe you didn’t have all the information you needed. Maybe you didn’t understand how the chain of events would play out. Or perhaps what you did worked, but there was a far easier way to go about your task.
The learning process is constant and is riddled with missteps and miscommunications. To help you avoid some of those paths, members from Forbes Coaches Council, below, share some advice they wish they’d followed when they were first starting out, something that stuck with them enough that they regularly share it with clients.
1. Learn Different Communication Styles
Learning how to communicate effectively, as well as how different communication styles play into miscommunication, has gone a long way in helping me evolve. When I work with a client at any level, the first thing I do is evaluate how they communicate and how that impacts their success. For anyone struggling with conflict or being heard, I recommend starting here. It boosts confidence.- Christina Holloway, CMH Business Corporation
2. Meet Regularly With Staff
Set up regular meetings with everyone you supervise, weekly preferably, but absolutely biweekly. Even if you feel like you see someone "all the time," when you sit down with someone that you supervise and set aside time just for them, they feel empowered by your interest and attention to them. They will return that interest with a loyalty and commitment.- Lynn Jones, Dr. Lynn K. Jones, Certified Coach
3. Don’t Fly Solo
One piece of advice I wished I had learned earlier in my business career is to never fly solo. Always have at least one accountability buddy, master-mind group or mentor that is a higher level than you, so you are constantly challenging yourself to grow. These types of relationships are indispensable to keeping a leader sane. -Rosalee Laws, Rosalee Laws Company
4. Break Out of ‘Sameness’
If you want to succeed in your job or career, you have to break out of the “sameness” mentality. Stop believing you have to follow the crowd. You are one of a kind: Embrace your uniqueness, and strive for ways to add value to your interactions. Persist even when the going gets rough, and those around you are quitting. Finally, always autograph your work with excellence.- Daisy Wright, The Wright Career Solution
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
5. Know What You’re Applying For
Get clear on the type of job you're applying for. Make sure it is a good fit for who you are so can be authentic, which will have you gaining satisfaction from what you're doing. You'll enjoy it and will be more successful than you can imagine!- Linda Hardenstein, Hardenstein Consulting
6. Decide What You Want, Then Figure Out a Way
We don't know what we don't know, so we tend to constrain our goals based on what we know "how" to do, or what we think is possible. The best thing you can do is decide what you truly want, and realize that you do not have to see every step to the finish line. You just have to take the first step and trust that it will lead you down the right path.- Rachel Headley, Rose Group, Intl
7. Practice Preparation
Flexibility is the key to power, but preparation is the key to flexibility. Early in my career, I did a lot of things but I rarely prepared. This meant that I spent significant amounts of time doing the wrong things or ended up having to redo things. It has taken me a while, but learning how to prepare, and committing the time to do it, has transformed my results.- Kyle Brost, The Choice Group Inc.
8. Focus on Execution, Not Strategy
Execution beats strategy every time. Choosing the right strategy is helpful, but you'll never know if it really works until you execute on it. Most delays in progress come from a lack of execution instead of a bad strategy. If you can't execute on it yourself, hire someone to help you do it.- Scott Swedberg, The Job Sauce
9. Don’t Over Deliver What Is Not Wanted
I worked overtime, tried to prove how smart I was, and not surprisingly, I was never invited to office parties. After finally being invited out, one of my colleagues confided in me that what they really needed was to trust me, for me to be a part of their culture, and to attract new clients. Once I did this, promotions and raises followed.- Louis Carter, Best Practice Institute
10. Seek Mentors
I wish I would have sought out mentors sooner and began asking more questions much earlier than I did. Perhaps that's the reason I ultimately began reaching out to interview world-renown thought leaders — but I wish I would have realized the benefit of doing so earlier on in my journey.- Corey Poirier, Career Alternatives
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