I was on LinkedIn the other day and up came a video. Unfortunately didn’t catch the name of the person talking but it was a great video and I managed to scroll back and take a screen shot.
The big takeaway and which forms my thought for this Friday is…
Screenshot
I speak to so many young people who are looking for a job. And I encourage them to give examples of what they’ve done, what they’ve worked with and what they’ve achieved already.
Experience is critical.
Build your resume/cv with experience. Then the jobs will flow.
Today’s thought is from an accomplished football manager. And it’s something I learnt recently with my Under 13’s football team.
You see, we’d won like 10 games in a row.. and won them well. Unfortunately, we got to a stage that the team walked onto the pitch thinking we’ve got this and we can win easily. However, that’s not always the case.
We lost. And heavily. They destroyed us.
But you know what. We learnt so much from that one defeat. We learnt about our positioning, we learnt that we shouldn’t take particular risks when the opposition have certain qualities. Every team is different however, we shouldn’t become complacent.
I suppose, this is a life lesson. When you make a mistake, or when something doesn’t work out… you learn so much! And that is what makes you better.
I’ll share more in an up and coming blog post, but last week I was in Atlanta at a Leadership meeting. And at the meeting the boss put up a slide, and at the bottom of the slide he shared the books he recommends.
Personally – I loved that. Because, I always want to read new books which are recommended by intelligent people.
Which got me thinking… about smart people I know.
There’s a fair few of them. And then I began to notice a trend. A pattern, amongst them. They read books was number one. But they had much more in common…
So recently, I was on holiday and took the opportunity to read a book.
The book I read this summer was called, Never split the difference.
It was a great ready! Thoroughly recommend it.
The reason why I like it so much was because Chris gave some wonderful examples, he shared stories of successes but also failures! (you don’t have many people do that.. and then finally, it really did teach me something about empathy!)
So today’s thought is… make sure you’re equipped with the skills needed to negotiate.
Yesterday, I was talking to my team member about some work we are doing and I made the comment.. ‘slowly but surely’.
Now, for those who know me, I love the old Brian Clough quote, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I wasn’t on that particular job”. That’s very much me… but then on the other hand, there’s only so much you can do with what you have control over. It’s all about control.
So today’s thought is centred around doing what you can do, little by little, with the control you do have.
Whatever you enjoy doing… do it! (And there can be monetisable opportunities). But do it with some passion also. I’ll explore in another blog post of mine about a book I recently finished called, Tuesday’s with Morrie. Great book.
But for today’s Friday Thought… it’s from Gary V, and he puts it quite simply…
So the book continues and fair play to Arnold… it’s a decent read!
A relatively short chapter but nevertheless, a very important one. As you can guess, it was all about selling. Not selling yourself as such – but there is an element of that, but selling what you represent, what you stand for and included in that, your vision.
So the story Arnold tells is about body building. Again, you’ll have to read the book to learn about his story.
For me… what I took away was the element that people may or may not fully understand your vision. Understand what you stand for. Understand clearly where you want to get to.
This is where the sell, sell, sell part comes in.
Depending on what you’re doing. How you’re doing it. And the amount of success you’re having, you have to sell yourself, your trade, your work… whatever it is that you do. And sell it in a way that people want more!
I remember when I was at Kodak, and I wanted to become a chartered engineer. So I had to fill in forms, do lots of work etc… but I wasn’t selling myself. And I remember clearly my mentor at the time saying… ‘Bal, you have to write I did… not we’. That’s stuck with me since. I’m very clear and intentional that if I do something.. then I did it. Not just to get the applauds but if it goes wrong, then the buck stops with me… and my team is not to blame. Yes there’s times where it’s a team effort so it’s a ‘we’.
Have a look at your vision… work through the chapters and now, tell me honestly, are you able to sell it?
