Are you completely bored in your job? Is your job just one huge frustration for you right now? Do you feel you absolutely MUST change jobs or careers as soon as possible? Let master career coach, Unre Visagie show you to use your current job to find a job that will challenge you and make you feel good about going to work again.
Slide 1 (I am bored with or in my job and must change)
Welcome, I hope you enjoy this talk. Dean was bored with his work and he really needed a change. How Dean went about it and what the result of the story was should interest you if you currently have the feeling of being bored in your job. Dean realized that when we all work and invest together we would benefit together. Sometimes there’s a bit of a delay between the work and the benefit, that’s normal. Dean had these perceptions that he was bored with his job, which was the truth; it was his true perception, and his absolute truth. However, he realized that if he looked, approached it differently, and do a few actions, he could move to a tremendous space, where he could have a total change in his job.
What can be done, and what he did, to get rid of this boredom in his job to where he now has a tremendous job in the same company, sometimes you have to change companies, in less than three months. He does expect to get a tremendous increase early next year, because the value of his job changed when he started working together and looking at the future in the way we will propose just now. He was waiting for someone to notice that he was bored and he needed a change, but no one noticed, they were very happy that he was doing a good job. They assumed his boredom was related to other problems.
Are you one of those lucky people that have too many job opportunities? For your career to thrive you need to make the right job choice. Let master career coach, Unre Visagie, show you how to make the right job choice.
Slide 1 (The solution to grab new exciting challenges of your choice)
We are looking at people that say, they have too many choices, and how do they choose? When we all work and invest together for the benefit of everybody, we will get more benefits. The key thing is to do first for others. When making these choices in your own best interest there is a solution where you can look at the exciting challenges and the great returns you can have from making your choices. You have to know what you currently do for whom. Why did you get into the position where you have all these choices?
You prepare and communicate to influencers. You engage and communicate the work that you enjoy doing and that is valued. Recently, with John, who had a fantastic position, it was very clear that if he keeps on doing the same he will have less than he can have. Referring back to Einstein’s old saying that if you keep on doing the same thing expecting different results it may be close to insanity. It is something to keep in mind.
Slide 2 (Know what you currently do for whom)
Let’s look at people who have too many choices and have the perception that it’s difficult to exercise just one choice and lose the others. When you make the right choice it becomes clear that there’s no doubt. You don’t have any feeling of loss, you move from those perceptions, because they are just perceptions, to the great spaces where you know exactly why you’ve made the choice and what you expect back. You can communicate clarity to everyone around you.
You have to know what you currently do for whom. Why is it so valuable that you have all these choices? Let’s look at simple ways to understand and discuss what you say no to and what you say yes to. That is where a man with a plan has all the benefits. ‘No’ is probably one of the more profitable words in the English language, as mentioned by Jack Welsh. When I sat with John and said, “Ok, let’s look at what you say no to” it was great stress because he didn’t want to say no to anything. What do you say yes to? What are the consequences when you say yes to certain things? Yes often means a three year commitment and where are you going to be in three years? You can never quite control it but at least you can make the best choice with your current insight.
Slide 3 (Prepare to communicate to the influencers)
Let’s look at those choices. When moving from the perceived boxes to the great spaces you have to prepare to communicate to the influencers. How do you prepare? You discuss it with people around you. You can start right now. It’s amazing what the people around you know. When John discussed it with people around him, including some of his clients in big mining companies and clients in big IT companies they collaborated with, he was amazed to find that his choices were even more than he was aware. However, they also helped him to understand the future of the industry, the future of the consequences of his choices with much greater clarity, factual and grounded in reality. When John practiced, he could approach the company he wanted, that didn’t even have a job at that time. He should have the job shortly, in January or February.
Slide 4 (Engage and communicate)
Lastly, John engaged with his clear, prepared stories. A man with a plan is welcome everywhere, a man without a plan people usually leave alone to figure himself out, they’re just kind to you, it’s not as rude as some people think. He approached companies with his clear, practised plan and showed respect and acknowledgement to the people he recognized as leaders in the broad industry, whom he could see was on the fast track. Why are they on the fast track? Learn from them. They guided him and introduced him to the right people that can give him the job. It’s a very straightforward process but people need that clarity.
Slide 5 (Start with the purpose, the why)
You need clarity of purpose, with objectives and tasks, dynamically calibrated with your own long-term career vision and mission. This helps you to align with the company’s long-term vision and you’re seen as a strategic contributor, which further puts you up the ladder. We find this is a very important process, like in John’s case, he really couldn’t answer this three months ago, now he can tell you in one minute.
Slide 6 (The right change thinking discussion)
This is the second tool amongst the list of templates we use that you can re-use with your friends, because they are free on the web. There are rules in every company, every industry, every client environment; every team has its subculture of rules. Understand those rules, influence them perhaps slowly, but don’t waste your time fighting and being angry. John was very unhappy with his current company because he could see he contributed more, but their compensation structure didn’t allow for him to earn more, so their rules made John earn less.
It turns out that he can influence the rules, we prepared him to influence the rules in the meantime, to say that I am experiencing stress, but show that I care, show that I respect, how do we go forward? He then proceeded anyway, without the rules being changed, he didn’t waste time, he played where he can make decisions. He played where he has influence and it’s known, he started contributing more and communicating better. He’s moving his line to where more becomes known to him, so his space for production grows and he’s now very much a strategic player. That is the other alternative, where his current company may treat him in a way where it will not be practical for him to leave. At least he has all these choices.
Slide 7 (The approach to engage people should be)
Let’s look at a simple way that you can use right now. John identified the people that he admired and why he admired them, he went to them with clear respect, recognition and acceptance. All of us love respect, recognition and acceptance. One of my favourite professors always said: “Applause, applause, anything for applause!” Everybody is a sucker for that. Use it, but be genuine, if you go with false thank yous you will have problems. When you have a plan, you’ve done your homework, you’ve talked to people around you, you’ve prepared, then you approach the people with open and closed questions. All of this detail is available free on the website; use it. The reason we made it free is that you need these tools to talk to people around you, it’s critical that you can freely engage the people around you. They can also watch the videos and do it free. We come into the game when we can accelerate you and add extra value. Let’s look at the website quickly. There are specific, measurable, accountable resources, time and rewards.
When you look at the website, you will see the tools and the resources. We have organized each block of tools on the website to focus on a specific area of a stress or growth opportunity. When you look at your career choices, we go to CareerPlanning and Performance. To demonstrate the free tools that is available which John also used in his coaching. We’ve bundled them into big, logical groups where you can look at various career level changes, resumes and the smart goal setting, which I want to point out specifically. You must have specific, measurable, accountable resources time and monitor, planning, performance etc. Every aspect is organized into groups like this. When we look at approaching people with open and closed questions, it is part of that group of tools.
Slide 9 (I have too many choices, how do I choose?)
Having too many choices, how do I choose? Let us summarize the whole process. People normally have perceptions of difficulty of choice and the solution is: get more information, talk to more people, get clarity and get rid of any fears and uncertainties. Fear just stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Fail just stands for First Attempt in Learning. Everything that we have learnt we learnt through trial and sometimes losing some skin in trying to ride a bicycle. It never stops, but as we go higher, we get more concerned about what people will think. We get more worried about coming across as someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. The process is simple and clear and it avoids most of those risks.
The process is: know what you do, prepare to communicate what you do, engage influencers and communicate to them. I find very few people can tell you their store of assets and their expertise. In John’s case, his top skill is probably that he has a very good interface, people enjoy being around him, that is a core skill for him. He was very uncomfortable to put that in his CV, so we got nice examples, now it’s in his CV. The other thing that he had difficulty with was his golden thread.
The golden thread leading to your key to success is simply where John made decisions in the same direction from a very young age. A service to people, a great curiosity to understand things, that’s what’s been driving him since school days. He never realized that he could put in his CV that he’s been consistent in how he made decisions. He had quite a few job changes, that is why we had to show consistency with the golden thread, this is built into the stories on the site. He had an awesome asset list that only became clear when he talked to clients, colleagues and friends. This caused him some discomfort, but he now has a very powerful story to tell around his CV.
He realized his external resources, the number of people who were prepared to help him and introduce him, introduce him to people who can introduce him, all of that and learning some skills that he now requires knowing where he wants to go. It’s all available, he just had to have a plan and engage. He’s building his own staircase and climbing it, which could be scary, but we explained that fear and risk could be managed.
Start with exploring, preparing, engaging and in the process you will grow like John did. Your job, company and industry must align while growing your asset list. Secondly, you must align your job, work and career. You are continuously in charge of your future; you keep on doing preparation, exploration and engagement. You will always be secure and safe, and a desired employee. You will get huge increases, like John, in a time when nobody around you will get increases. John ended up with insight, knowledge and confidence because he had a plan and a clear story. John moved from the perceived boxes and too many choices and uncertainty to absolute certainty about where he’s going next, how he’s going to use and grow his asset list.
Slide 10 (Business toolset, personal toolset)
Having too many choices and choosing comes to down the business toolset and the personal toolset that I’ve shown you on the website. Please watch out for the next Career Maker System email. I hope you’ve enjoyed it and I hope you will realize the privilege of having too many choices deserve that you go and explore, prepare and engage these choices to get absolute clarity about the one that will work best for you. Thank you for listening.
Do you like your job, but it has become a bit boring? Feel like you need more challenges? Let master career coach, Unre Visagie show how to use your current job and get access to greater opportunities.
Slide 1 (My job is great – I am ready for more challenges)
We are talking today about ‘I’m ready for more challenges’, that very privileged position where I have choices; I can choose which challenges I say yes to, and which challenges I say no to. It is interesting that people always have perceived limitations, and if that is removed through information and a certain process, they get to a space of unlimited opportunity. This is all about choosing the challenges, that wonderful thing ‘choice’ that is the spice and the wealth of life. So few people ever feel they have choices in life.
If we break free from those perceptions, you can see these perceptions as cages or prisons, situations where they don’t have the key to move forward and nobody else is going to come and open the door. It’s always you that has the key, you only need to know that you have it and how to use it. If you move to opportunity experiences people see that with this system they get 15 – 30 percent increases within six to eighteen months by communicating differently to different people. Saying yes to the right things, and no to the things they should. There is a quote: “No is the most profitable word in the English language.” I find there is a lot of truth in that. This is the secure, safe and certain way to get to the ideal challenges for you. Get hold of them, make them yours, it will grow your career like a rocket, and never again will you feel in a perceived box.
Slide 2 (What can be done to get rid of the trapped feelings?)
Now we have established that you are ready for more challenges. Remember that when we work together, we invest and benefit together. If you take to other people what they want you will definitely get more of what you want. It always works; it’s also called delayed gratification. When you work hard in a direction; the better you plan it, the better your insight and clarity, the better chance you have of collecting in the end. How do you move forward? Waiting for others is never an option; they are busy with their own stuff as each of you know.
How do I communicate what I already do, understand and value? Which challenges I’m keen on, why am I keen on them, what am I prepared to do to get the challenges I want? From these I will gain hugely, apart from the fun, you will also earn money. It is simply a matter of communicating correctly to be paid right for what you do; the decision makers must understand what you do. If we can manage to look around the molehills that are in front of us and appear very big, we can see the blue mountains beyond which we can go and climb. The problem is the molehill is right in front of our nose.
Slide 3 (The solution to break the traps and get rid of the frustrations)
Working together, investing and benefiting together there is a solution to break out of those perceived limitations, perceived meaning they don’t give it to me, I go and take it. You have to know what you currently do for whom and what you want to do next. You have to prepare and communicate what you do and what you want to do appropriately to influencers and decision makers, giving them what they want, it’s often as cheap as a thank you. Then engage and communicate the work and the value as you see it going forward. That will engage you in further input to make the right choices, that you choose the challenges with higher value and more certain arrival. It’s very important to know that if you keep on doing the same thing you will probably end up with less, because the effort goes in, the days goes by, and you don’t make the gain you deserve. Einstein made the statement that to expect different results doing the same thing borders on insanity.
Slide 4 (How does the system work for all of us?)
A brief review of business; you are a cogwheel, either driving or taking energy. The new challenges must enable you to drive harder, to fit better, to choose different places to fit in the engine, giving the executives what they need, aligned with strategy, giving the shareholders more return, which gives you more capital and more opportunity. Working with a team from week to week at agreed tasks, making sure you say yes to the right things and no to the things that won’t work for you. Delivering great value to a client when he comes shopping, remembering that the client brings the value that keeps the whole engine going, including getting you growing in your job and choosing the right challenges.
Those challenges that you choose must be aligned with the company strategy, the internal system, the client and there must be a clear line of sight to the shareholders, so they get more and you get more toys to play with. That will definitely make a big difference in moving you from the perceived boxes to the great spaces of choice and almost limitless growth.
Slide 5 (Know what you currently do for whom)
Let’s look at moving from the box to the great spaces. There are three steps. One is: know what you currently do for whom. On the website careerdevelopmentplan.net, you will see there’s a whole range of tools available to help you along and give you an idea of the value of what you do. In my coaching and the many companies I’ve built I’ve never found anybody that could articulate the value of what they do. Yesterday I was with executives from a company that has a three billion dollar turnover and the executives couldn’t articulate the value of what they do in that simple model. Understand it and discuss it, know what you do more of, know what you are going to do less of, and communicate clearly how that is in the interest of all the stakeholders.
Slide 6 (Prepare to communicate to influencers)
This you can do in groups around you and selected people, change them often, don’t get stuck with the same people. That gets back to more of the same equals less, you have to keep on moving. It’s a lot of fun, you make a lot of new friends. This preparation you can do in your groups, all the information is on the web for you, we can also make a contribution where necessary to accelerate you. You discuss, you prepare, you identify and you practice. Practice by yourself, even in a mirror, it is much cheaper that practising where it counts.
When people start playing golf they don’t go directly to an eighteen-hole golf course, since that would become a very long day and a very long walk. You want to practice first on the driving range, maybe get yourself a teaching pro. We recommend that you use the people around you, that you use identified people, those are your teaching pros; they can observe and give you feedback. They will make very sure that you stay on track.
Slide 7 (Engage & communicate your work list to the decision makers)
Let’s look at the third step. You have now identified the people who can influence and assist you to gain access to the challenges that you want. The challenges you’ve chosen, why you’ve chosen them, the benefits of those challenges are clear and you’ve practised them. People love a man with a plan. I’ve never seen companies turn away a man with a plan. At North-West University in South Africa where we do a lot of pro bono work with Prof Japie Kroon we found that when students approach companies that they’ve chosen with a plan they always get the job they want. It’s extremely exciting to participate and see the excitement in their faces.
We recently had a very senior person earning $200 000 having the same experience, when he did the steps and he went back to his own environment he had a bit of a problem. He got six job offers and he’s having a very hard time deciding which one to say no to. What a nice problem to have! He sometimes gets frustrated with the choices, but I insist that’s it’s a super problem to have. You ask and you share, you use sharing and questioning skills, you respect, acknowledge, and say thank you. With a clear plan, nobody will refuse you if you have this approach. The supporting information is on the website for free.
Slide 8 (Fear and Fail and Risk)
To summarize the process; people often have fear, fear of failure and perceived risks. Fear stands for False Evidence Appearing Real and fail stands for First Attempt in Learning. All our lives we have learnt that way, why stop now? It seems to me the higher up we go, the more scared we become. We learn a lot quicker when we are young; we learn impossible things and sometimes break an arm. Know what you want to do, prepare, engage and know your store of goodies. You have a long list of assets.
We find that people find it very hard to articulate their own assets. Relationships are one of the most valuable ones, just talk to the people around you, they will tell you things that you won’t believe. There are also a lot of free tools on the website to help you articulate the value you have already accumulated and earned. The resources outside are almost limitless, if you use this process to engage those resources they will never say no to you. You will be amazed at what is available if you engage in an organized and planned way.
It’s like making your own staircase and climbing it. I know that’s a bit scary when you are in a safe place and you want to move. To make and climb the staircase at the same time may appear scary but if it’s a clear system it’s secure and safe. You explore, you prepare, you engage. In the process of going external and bringing it internal you already accelerate and grow your store, as people doing the process have found. The executives agreed that if they do this process they will grow their own careers and their company.
In the process you align your job with your chosen company, which you can change, and your chosen industry, you can change even that. The more you change, it just takes a bit longer, but you use your current store, current position to make sure you make that transition safe and secure. Then you align the work you do with the job and the career you want long term. I find very few people have a long term career aim or beacon; they just do the job and hope to get paid more. Now you know you’re going to get paid more. You end up being in charge of your future and your career aims, they are aligned, you have a plan. This gives you clear insight, knowledge and an absolute confidence which people just love. You will see that it attracts people. You will move towards the great spaces from the perceived limitations, boxes, where it’s like a glass plate, you can see it but you can’t touch it. The glass plate simply disappears. The examples around us are very heartening and it is part of my passion to see people take wing and fly. It’s such a joy to see their eyes light up, that’s what makes my life today.
Slide 9 (Start with the purpose, the Why)
We build in that you have a clear career purpose, job purpose that is aligned with the company’s vision and mission. Your objectives and short term goals, the tasks that you do daily, should dynamically be kept in line with changes in the vision and mission. It is very important to us that people realize that any career is almost the same as a business plan or project plan. It has similar elements. It is worthwhile to use the tools.
Slide 10 (The right job thinking discussion)
Let’s look at the rules. Many people spend their time resisting, fighting and querying the rules. Accept the rules, you can always influence them later. Know the rules. Align your decisions to thrive in the rules, whether the rules are good or bad don’t really matter that much. Also move along by asking other people, by engaging other people, you will open up the space of the possible. This is where you’ll probably find your new challenges. You will move the line along to increase your productivity space and move.
Slide 11 (The approach to engage people should be)
How do you approach these people? The key thing is to ask questions and you have to understand how to ask open questions, exploratory questions, and closed questions. All this information is available free on the website. If you practise this information with your friends while aiming in your own direction, discovering and exploring, by the time you come to the influencers you are ready and confident. Remember a man with confidence is always welcome.
Let’s take a brief look at the website. Specific, measurable, accountable goals are critical. If you look at planning your performance you can see there’s a whole lot of business and career tools available here. We’ve bundled them in groups to address specific situations, not like a library, although they are also available as a library. You can look at a whole lot of issues under Performance Management on the site. There is also Career Success and CareerMentorship. Let’s look at CareerPlanning and Performance as an example, we have bundled a whole group of tools that are applicable to that specific career performance. This will support you in choosing your next challenges, communicate your value, and become a strong driving cogwheel in the business model.
Slide 12 (Business toolset, Personal toolset)
For those who are ready for more challenges, that very privileged position, moving from the perception of limitations to the great space there’s the business toolset that I’ve just touched on, there is also the personal toolset that is aligned. I want to invite you to look out for the next Career Maker System email and we hope you will enjoy it. Congratulations if you are in this position where you have a great job and all you now have to do is to know which challenges to say yes to and which to say no to.
Feel like you are not getting paid enough for the work you do? Let master career coach Unre Visagie show you what to do to change that as soon as possible!
Slide 1 (Getting paid right for what you do)
I’m not getting paid enough for what I do. This is something we hear often in our coaching and big businesses. At all levels of employment people sometimes feel that they are not paid enough. There’s a simple solution to get paid right where you are for what you do. Let’s look at the getting paid right process correctly.
What happened to Andre in one of the companies, he was really working hard and he felt cheated when he didn’t receive an increase. He made it known that he was looking, got a very good job offer and in the process he got a 40% increase in his existing company. Very uncomfortable situation, nice choice though. How could Andre have avoided this?
He could’ve turned this into a super opportunity and a fun experience. Today this process is packaged in the Career Maker System to always get paid for what you really do and getting paid right. We call it the secure, safe and certain way to get paid right, with the right solution and the right approach.
Slide 2 (Why should I be paid more now or soon?)
The question is always “What should you be paid for more?” I’ve had many people in my companies come to me and say “I need more money”, “I need to be paid more”. The question is always what do you do, and what is it worth to whom? You can earn and be paid according to your production, provided you can communicate your production. You will rarely get paid more if you wait, so waiting is not an option. You’ve got to do something about it.
How do you do it? Firstly, look at how you currently communicate the work you do. How you say yes to work and how you say no to work. Yes, you do have a choice if you know how to say yes and no. Each one of us does. Let’s look at the decision makers. If I ask you “Do they understand what it is you do and the value of what you do?” In Andre’s case, he worked so hard that they never noticed him. He felt it was very visible, but other people have their work and don’t notice. All that’s needed is they must become aware of what you do and how valuable it is.
Slide 3 (The solution to be paid right for what you do)
If that is true, what is then the solution to always be paid right for what you do? And even be paid forward a little bit because you stretch towards higher targets. There are three steps we will look at. You have to know what you currently do. Choose the people to communicate to, who are the real influence decision makers? If I look at Andre’s situation, he didn’t even consider his decision makers and the people that must make this decision, how much of the production is his. They just didn’t notice.
Slide 4 (How does the system work for all of us?)
To recap how Andre was working in the company, he was working very hard, but he didn’t make sure that his gears fit, that while driving the system he fits the system’s needs. A little bit of awareness, a little bit of appropriate communication and I can assure you his increase would have been even bigger than 40%. The executive management must know what he’s doing, why he’s doing it and agree on the value. Yes, you can manage your own success factors, your own tasks that are always aligned with the expectations of the shareholders.
You would ask what the shareholders have to do with my job. Understanding the purpose and the returns the shareholders expect and communicating that with management and your team, you become a more strategic contributor in your company, you become visible; you discuss higher end things with your managers. It makes all the difference. Fitting into your team and keeping the customer in mind. The customer is the one that comes shopping, that must pay us. When the customer pays us and my value to the team and the team’s value to the client is clear, how can you not be paid right when you inform the people upwards? We find that when you inform up, you use the management to do your work for you. That’s a different discussion.
Slide 5 (Know what you currently do for whom)
When you move from the box across to the great spaces, this is where you get paid enough, you get paid right, then things are right, therefore the great space. Know what you currently do for whom, why you do it, what is the value, when is it complete, those are simply things to clarify. I found in coaching and in all my companies that people can’t really answer this question. So step one is to figure out the answer to that question. In the process you will engage other people.
You will know the value, you will know what to do more of, and you will know what to do less of. When you engage other people it becomes very clear. We found that almost nobody can do it by themselves. We recently did this process with a few professors and they couldn’t answer it either. Their life changed when they communicated and they started saying no to some things and yes to others that were beneficial. When Andre saw this model and realized that he actually has a choice thing started changing.
Slide 6 (Prepare to communicate to influencers)
Let’s look at moving from the perceived boxes, because they are perceived, they are not real, moving from there to the great space, what is the process? The second one then, prepare to communicate to influencers. You want to identify them and understand who the decision makers are. What are their priorities, when do they deliver, and play the game. Inform them, choose the right tasks, and prepare with people around you, friends, family, you can even get professional people to help you prepare, but you want to be prepared.
You want to practice the communication. Discuss with selected people, prepare and seek more information, identify and go forward into practice, repeat this process a few times, the more you repeat it the clearer it will become. Now you are prepared and you know who the influencers are.
Slide 7 (Engage & Communicate)
You are now ready to engage. You engage these people with their priorities first, you engage them saying thank you to them. When you engage people with a little bit of respect and acknowledgement they never say no, they always enjoy it, a little bit of recognition, a little bit of saying thank you, say “Wow, it’s great what you do!” You can always find something, I know in some cases it’s very hard to find something to say thank you for, because there are many things that bug you. Andre never did that; therefore people never knew what he was doing, He never informed them, that is where the problem came from.
Slide 8 (Fear and Fail and Risk)
Let’s look at the process in summary. The perceived boxes are about fear and failure. It’s also about risks, how do I know they will treat me right? Will I do damage to my career if I risk this? Each of us are concerned about that. Remember that fear stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Fail stands for First Attempt in Learning. Sometimes you do make mistakes, but you go back through the process, figure out what is right, and do it again. You cannot but succeed if you focus and the fear goes away. The process is: know what you do, prepare and engage.
Another thing we find in our companies, and with coaching etc. people rarely know exactly what their transferrable skills are. What is my experiences worth in the company? What are their natural aptitudes? Which relationships do they maintain bring to bear and how valuable are those relationships? In the process of knowing, preparing and engaging that becomes a lot clearer, because other people can see what is very difficult for us to know by ourselves.
In the process of exploring, preparing and engaging, you realize that all the resources are available, provided you engage them, engaging them with respect, showing people respect, having respect for what they do well. You can engage any knowledge or resource that you may need on the road forward. It’s like climbing your own staircase. I know making and climbing a staircase at the same time is the origin of a lot of fears and perceived risks. If you have a clear process, a clear system, this becomes a lot of fun, very exhilarating.
So you start by exploring, you prepare, you engage, and in the process your store is growing. In the process it also guides you to align your job with your company and your industry. Your skills, your expertise applied in the switch pot, makes you grow personally, you add more value and you are aligned in your job, industry and company. The same alignment applies to your work, job and career, where it is aligned with industry and company. The end result of the process is you get in charge of where you go, what you say yes to, what you say no to, how fast you grow, how big your increases are, where you work, with whom you work.
This gives you a whole lot of insight, knowledge and confidence. A man with a plan is never refused when you look for resources. People don’t know how to engage a man without a plan, so you just won’t get the resources from outside to bring it inside. You end up in a great space, having moved from the perceived boxes to no more fears, just great energy forward.
Slide 9 (Start with the purpose)
Inside the Career Maker System we have a whole lot of models we like to use to keep it simple, so people can visualize it and make it theirs very quickly. One of them is the clear career purpose, the clear job purpose with your short term objectives and tasks you are executing you keep them aligned with your vision and mission. If Andre did that and this was clear to his manager’s communicator he would never have had that stressful period of not getting paid right or not getting paid enough.
Slide 10 (Influence direct synergy)
Let’s look at one more example. A lot of people fight the rules instead of understanding them. The rules tend to be known and you don’t have an influence on their reality, slowly maybe, but not quickly. Spend no time fighting the rules; spend a lot of time understanding the game, playing the game where you can make decisions, where you can make a contribution, where you have influence, where it’s also known. You make your space bigger in this process of engaging people and preparing, you grow your options, you get to know more. The more you know, the more options you have, the more you can do and the quicker you grow. It’s such an obvious process. Interesting enough so few people do it.
Slide 11 (The approach to engage people)
We attempted to put a system together that came out of our multi-million dollar companies, we’ve built big incubators, we’ve done lots of coaching and a whole lot of pro bono work at universities, schools and communities. The approach to engage people is I respect and I say thank you. This gets the attention of the other person. What does the other person want? What the other person wants and needs must be first. If you give others more of what they want, I guarantee you get more of what you want. It works every time to say thank you.
There are two styles of questions we use extensively in this process, open exploratory and closed questions. On the website there are models for questioning, communication and interaction. To assist people with quick models that they can grasp and remember, they must share with people around them, which enable them to get a lot more information a lot faster. At the time, Andre didn’t have this tool, he used this but he never thought of using these tools for his own career growth. He used it in his family, in sales, but never in his own career, now of course, he does.
What should you do more of? What should you do less of? Which projects can you expand? In the model it all comes down to career project management. To that end there are a whole lot of models on the website. I want to demonstrate the website to you quickly (careerdevelopmentplan.net). There is a whole list of items related to careerplanning and performance management. We have grouped the tools around specific focus areas to make it easy for you to use the group of tools to address this one issue. There is a whole range of specific topics.
We would like your feedback at the bottom of the pages to improve these clusters. These clusters have been developed in a very large incubator that went from zero to $120000000 at the time in less than six years. We’re fairly proud of it, and we didn’t do all these things so well so the incubator didn’t keep growing at that speed. That story is on my personal site. You can see that the clusters of tools should make it easier to address each issue, as you may need it.
Slide 12 (Business toolset)
In conclusion, looking at ‘I am not paid enough for what I do’. This happens often, many people don’t even know that they are not paid enough for what they do. If they do this process, nine times out of ten they are paid more. Remember, you can come on the site and get our direct coaching, but more often than not, working with family, friends and work colleagues you can do it all absolutely free. We believe if we help a little it does accelerate. There’s a business and a personal toolset. Please watch out for the next email. Hopefully we can walk this journey with you, as we have done with many, to keep on increasing your salary in a practical, logical way every year.
Struggling to create a list of career change ideas?
Follow master career coach, Unre Visagie as he teaches a simple process to identify career change ideas that will fit your unique situation. Career change can be a scary thing, but if you approach your career change using a simple, safe and secure system, it all just falls into place. Check out the video below to start generating some ideas for your next career!
Careerdevelopmentplan.net offers the foolproof Career Maker program. As part of this we offer a process for career change ideas to stimulate you to organize your career change ideas into segmented elements. It works extremely well when you concentrate on a specific area at a time. The idea is to move from ‘I have a job and earn money’ to where you live in a great space with everything you want and money. Only one part of us consists of work. We are also social, spiritual, and physical; we are also friends and parents. We are many things. Only a small part is work. Let’s keep that in the back of our minds.
We would like to show you how these ideas move you from your current situation to the work of your choice, the job of your choice, the company of your choice and the industry of your choice. Many people argue with me that you can’t choose them all at the same time. That’s correct. You start with choosing your work and you have a clear career aim. In order to design your clear career aim it’s a good thing to start with as many change ideas as you can. You first go wider, you explore, and then you use the explored information when you are ready to engage.
There are always three steps in each element: you explore, you prepare and you engage. Look at your past experiences, the work you’ve enjoyed doing, what you have enjoyed at school and what you have enjoyed anywhere. Look at your past and look at what may be, what you think will give you joy. I will discuss all of them at the same time but first make notes on explore. Let’s look at specific transferrable skills. People find it hard to look objectively at all their past activities, the projects they were involved with, and the teams they were involved in. The idea is to focus on specific elements related to transferrable skills. The same with aptitudes, you can see from your past involvements where your aptitudes are. You can also get feedback from the people you were involved with. We will give the specific model to ask feedback.
There are models; some published, some not yet, on the web to assist you will these tasks. When you look back at your past activities your interests become clear. Many have to look at both their past and their desired future at the same time. Know what you believe and what you value. It’s very important to know that there are no right and wrong beliefs and values, there are just beliefs and values. If you choose an area of work, job, company and industry, that align closer with what you believe and what you value, it becomes a lot easier to thrive in that environment. If your values and beliefs differ a little from your chosen environment it becomes tough. So what do you believe? It’s good to ask why you believe it, but much later in the program we’ll get back to why.
Our beliefs and what we value were often not freely chosen, they are a product of past experiences, family, community, work, etc. All of those formed what we believe and what we value and why. We encourage you to go plus plus so you expand. It’s very important to keep your roots and grow your roots and expand from there.
Lastly, one of the most valuable things is who we relate to and the relationships we have formed, who and why. These relationships were often formed out of past activities and not freely chosen. You will see that freely chosen is a very important concept that keeps recurring. What’s more, there’s a process to go about choosing freely what suits you, why you relate to people, what you add to them, how you add to them and how you build relationships.
It’s a very clear process learnt at Hewlett-Packard way back, applied in all our multi-million dollar companies that we were privileged to build. All of this comes from the people in those companies who managed them to maximum productivity. Thereafter we did a lot of pro bono work at universities, schools and communities, under social ventures. We also did a lot of professional coaching at companies and with people, to grow their careers and grow the people; this is how you grow a company.
Relationships are critically important. Very few people realize that the people they relate to relates to many more. And those relate to many more and this never stops, until we are six levels away, fifty to the power six. We assume everyone knows fifty people that we don’t, then fifty to the power six are more of less all of the people on earth. So six levels away you can reach anybody on earth. It is simply a process or a model that explain how to achieve this.
Who and why? If you look at it segmented in this way you will arrive at a very long list of where you are and what your assets are. Just like a company has assets, a person has assets. Going forward, you take this initial process and engage with the people around you. This could be at home, with friends, at work, anywhere where you know people. If you check these things with them you will find that your list grows very quickly. You understand your assets much better. We haven’t met anybody who is not pleasantly surprised when we do this segmented process and they check it with the people around them. They also prepare the message and we are very excited about the power of stories.
Take this prepared message and engage the people you’ve identified, people who do similar work, people who do similar jobs, people in the companies you have targeted and people in the industry you’ve targeted. All of a sudden these relationships explode and you will get more career ideas. Recently, Ken, somebody we are coaching, couldn’t believe how many people he knows and when he was prepared, when he approached them, he got so many career opportunities, and even job offers that could double his $100 000 plus salary. It is an amazing process; nobody goes through this without getting new job offers, university students as well. We even had younger people that got sponsorships once they’ve done this process.
The key thing to remember is to keep your career, your work and your job aligned. If your career area grows, your work area grows, your job area grows, the overlap with the company, the industry and value-add grows. You want to move up the pyramid of production, from where you were a person at entry level, you grow into the teams and you keep on growing. You have to accelerate and arrive at a strategic level.
The process applies whether you have an expert career or whether you are on a management path. The expert path is somebody that grows in expertise and is very valuable to everybody in a company; we have a very specific process to manage that path. The management path differs a little in content. If you arrive here and you are clear with your message, it’s like a beacon that shines for you. You have access to a whole bunch of new opportunities and your store is growing in this process.
If you look at career change ideas, you can change your career, change the work that you do, change the job that you want or move your job in the company, or to another company. Even consider another industry that might excite you more and grow faster. Each one of the segments generates new ideas, your experiences, your transferrable skills, your aptitudes and your interests. It’s simply a process to generate ideas. I would like to add actual ideas to stimulate your thinking. Remember another person’s ideas can never be yours; it’s only yours that are relevant. I hope it helps you to engage in this process to generate career change ideas, to apply them and to engage to create huge opportunity, grow your relationships and grow your asset store. If you have any difficulties with this please ask us below. If you have comments on this, please engage us.
Let master career change coach, Unre Visagie, show you how to approach your career change for maximum gain. People that follow the Career Maker process typically earn the same and sometimes even more after their career change. This happens because they clearly communicate the skills, resources and attititude they bring to their new job, career and company.
Watch this expert video from Master Coach, Unre Visagie below:
We are talking today about careerdevelopmentplan.net and its product: Career Maker System. This is a safe, secure, proven and now foolproof system on how to change careers. Change careers safely, securely, calmly and with a plan. The issue is the plan can only come from you. Or shall I say the content of the plan must come from you.
We have found over the years that the thing that stops most people is fear, fears are from perceptions, they are not real, they are just perceived. It’s really important to know that these fears are never real. FEAR simply stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear generates perceptions of risk, huge risks, and the risks are perceived since the fears are perceived. One of the many fears is fear of the unknown and fear of failure.
Fear of failure, where FAIL is a First Attempt In Learning. During everything we’ve learnt in life, from walking, talking, bicycle riding to driving a car, we have failed, and we have learnt from this failure. The Americans in California call it very nicely failing forward. With bicycle riding you even lost some skin. What happens to people is that they feel safe in some job or career, and they perceive that change is going to mean losing that safety, instead of the view that change creates new safety. You can see it as a box that you’ve got to escape, or a prison, and all you need is the key because the key to success can only work from your hand opening the door from inside. It can never be opened from the outside.
The other way to look at this whole safe career change is to realize there’s a lot you can see up here that you cannot really touch. It’s the glass plate principle, you feel you can touch it but you bump. What you bump against is that glass plate or the box or the prison that consist of these perceptions and fears which are not real. When you look at career change, midlife career change, change at 40, it is an issue of the work you do, the job within which you do the work, the company within which you have the job, and a company is always part of an industry. If you can get this aligned to suit you, life must be very close to perfect.
We like to break into a second area where your work aligns with your job and then with your long-term career aims, and if that aim is clear it’s like a beacon you put out there. You can publish it on linkedin, you can tell your friends, you can send letters, and all the people you know who know people can send it, because you are clear. That brings us to the challenges of career change in this model that I have briefly touched on.
The first challenge is to reach this clarity, and that is why part of the process is to search for information, prepare the information, and choose where you want to be engaged: job, company, industry. Make sure it lines up with your long-term career, so that you continuously aim for your career beacon. All of us can do that.
We have achieved this with thousands; thousands in our companies, because we realized that when people have this alignment and they have sufficient new challenges their productivity jumps. We also realized that if we can get people productive quickly it is very beneficial for the company. It was very expensive to hire new people; we had to get them productive quickly. This is where these processes were born.
The processes have been honed during the last 12 years in coaching at a high end but we have engaged in a lot of pro bono work at schools, universities and communities as well. I must admit the communities were the toughest, that is where the processes really got simplified, and became foolproof. Clarity is critical. That clarity must be prepared and communicated and the alignment must be kept. Through communication you clearly engage the company and industry, you engage the teams you work with, and you communicate and engage with the people around you.
A young lady, Laura, came to me and said: “My husband says if I keep on working in this company I’ll be stupid, I must leave immediately.” I sat down with her and we went through this process, we looked at the plusses in the company and we look at the minuses in the company, we made a balance sheet. She went home and told this new story to her husband. As it turns out, she was mostly focussed on the issues and problems that she had, and as we addressed a lot of the problems, it helped clear the minuses. Afterwards they said that if you leave this job you’ll be a fool.
It is a change in perception, using the information, preparing the information, communicating the information. You will hear those three steps in many different models and guises, but it’s always just the three steps. Get hold of new information and facts, organize the information, and communicate what you’ve organized.
It’s always just three steps to maintain alignment, provided you know what you really want, what makes your eyes light up, what makes you happy to go to work so you never feel like you work a day in your life. I sometimes almost feel a bit guilty to acknowledge that for nearly 25 years I’ve been working in that space where I never felt for a moment that I am working. 20% to 30% goes into work I would like to delegate. I try to delegate since I believe if I don’t delegate I steal somebody else’s work, but you can’t always delegate so a percentage will always be tough.
You can view this alignment and clarity as overcoming the challenges which makes your fears disappear. It’s not as if you address them, by getting clarity and information the fears simply go away.
The following is an equivalent model that you can use. The purpose of your career, your career aim, your career beacon during the short term is to choose the work you do, in the job you do, for the company and the industry you want to do it in. This should align with your long-term personal wishes for earnings, career, how much you work, where you work etc. That means that strategically you keep your long-term career aim, it’s your long-term career vision and mission, almost like a company vision and mission. In the short-term your objectives and your tasks always align with your strategic plan.
That plan, just like in any company, you must be able to communicate succinctly: why and what about your career, why and what about your job, why and what about your industry and why and what about your choice. All of this is about you; you are the centre of this always. However, if you put yourself first you come last.
What is important is the service you’re going to deliver to the team around you, your company and your industry, and back home. From that service you will get your returns. Always look at what you can contribute, how you can grow what you contribute. Look at your store of goodies that you can use to be productive, that store will grow very fast. You can choose where you apply your store, who buys in your store what you offer.
We hope we’ve made it clear that a career change at any time in your life can be a safe and secure process and your fears could disappear, provided you realize you’ve got to be aligned, you address the challenges, you communicate with the people around you, your purpose of career, your career beacon and your career aim is clear. You can have a long-term plan to keep you aligned with your work, job, company and industry. I hope I will see you again down the line in our Career Maker System which is foolproof.
In our coaching we have found that people want to make a midlife career change for very specific reasons. We have made a short list of these initial midlife career change triggers. To help you get started with a successful, safe and secure career change, please view the video below. In the video master midlife career change coach, Unre Visagie takes you through an introduction of the top reasons.
In careerdevelopmentplan.net we offer the foolproof Career Maker System, which helps people during their midlife career change. I have been there myself and so have many others around me. It takes you from the perceived box on limitations right through to a successful place where we typically see a 20 – 30% increase and we see big moves towards doing work people enjoy with confidence. We would like to see this for everybody.
I have the privilege of having lived there for almost 25 years now. Let us take a brief look at what drive these career changes. We have created a list and we ask you to please consider each item on the list below and start on the road to your successful midlife career change. Should you not find your reason for your midlife career change on this list, which is possible, please help us to help you and others by posting a comment about it and we would love to address the reason with a specific answer as soon as practical or possible. We hope that your change process could start with understanding and defining these reasons, what we call triggers that drive the need for a midlife career change. Once we have found these triggers, you can identify and design a solution that best fits your unique situation.
We have been successfully coaching people through midlife career changes for the past 30 years. In our multi-million dollar companies we were privileged to build, then through professional coaching, also pro bono work at universities, schools and in communities. The process is now really foolproof. In Career Maker Systems we see it as a bridge for people to move from triggers of discomfort and perceptions or interpretations, like being behind a glass plate. They then identify and take the right actions and they never stop moving again. We have people that we have coached for over 30 years, and it never stops.
The solution will be your identified choice of the best work, job, company and industry, to build your ideal, enjoyable career where you never have to feel that you have to work very hard a day in your life, yet you add great value with great income. That’s the goal. We have found three types, three main categories of changes:
The ones that are so urgent they burn
The ones that are just getting warm: “I want to change.”
The ones we can see that will get warm in the future, we know change will be good.
Let us start with urgent change. This typically comes from companies that downsize and industries that change; the key thing is the job may disappear very soon. “I better make a plan before it gets too urgent.” The other way of thinking is:” I had enough of this job.”, “My job sucks.” That’s what we often think. I often found that it isn’t the job so much that sucks; it is the work that sucks. I had situations of people coming to me at work, in my companies, that say: “My husband says that if I don’t change this job soon, he is going to kick me out of here.” We went through the detail, they go back home, they tell a different story, the next day they come back and say: “The husband says I will be a fool if I leave this job.” It is merely a change in thinking.
It is often the work or the way we look at the work that sucks, but something sucks, it has to be changed. Let us look at one of the most urgent needs in our 40’s: I really must earn more money right now. It typically comes from the fact that many issues drive that change. However, what we found more often than not, people are responsible for a whole bunch of upcoming people, they are responsible for people seeing their life out, and even somewhat responsible for people in their current generation who’s not doing so well. The responsibilities at 40 and after 40 could be quite daunting. If you simply want to change because you’re not paid enough, it is often a very simple communication problem, and I like that one because it’s the quickest to address.
Another reason: people frustrate me. This can be for many reasons. Often we find that looking at things a bit differently solves this problem, but often it has gone so far that changing company, or at least changing the vision in a company is practical.
People stay in the same circumstances; mostly they just realize they are not happy, the travel bugs them, the workplace bugs them, the industry bugs them, and there are so many possibilities. They just feel they carry a very heavy weight. To get rid of this weight can be done in a number of ways. A change of company may be necessary, but often it is just a change in perception and looking at things differently.
Let us look at people who are really happy in their job, career and industry, they just need more challenges. This is also a very straightforward process, typically achieved in a few months, that usually leads to a 20 – 30% salary increase within 18 months. Making the change and communicating properly with a proper plan.
There is also the natural change; it’s just a restless feeling, I can do better, I can do more. The other one is that the job has become too easy, it’s repetitive, and repetitive is never good for us. We always say repetitive is like a groove, there’s an old adage that says the difference between a groove and a grave is just the depth. It’s like you are not alive anymore and you need to change that, you need to get out of the groove. It is simply a process that follows the same steps as the others.
In each of these cases the solution consists normally of three broad steps. We apply each of them for change, growth, issues etc. It’s to one way or another identify the root causes, prepare a lot of information and facts, think of possible alternative solutions, communicate that with the right people, and you have a fantastic solution. We find that when a man arrives with this clear insight and a clear plan, he is never refused.
Six years ago at North-West University in South Africa they couldn’t find practical work in the industry for students. Today 700 students find their own practical work simply because they know where they are going, they know why they want it, they can say why and what about a company, why and what about an industry and they talk to the right people. What makes it so exciting, about a third of them get jobs at companies that didn’t even have a position, but when they meet this enthusiastic, sorted-out person they create a job for him.
In summary, I would like to say that a career change can be an exciting experience. The Career Maker System makes it so clear and so easy. It’s not always quick, but it’s always clear and always easy. We call it a secure and safe way towards your ideal work, job, career, company and industry. I really hope you will make your choice and I hope that you will identify one of the items on the list below or please communicate with us, challenge us to see whether we can answer you. I hope one of the videos on the list below will encourage you to stay in the process, and complete it.
Let master career coach, Unre Visagie, guide you through the process of getting started with a career change. If you apply these steps, you will create an effective and peaceful start to your midlife career change.
Watch the video below to get started with your career change at 40…
We are looking at the subject of career management and career change at the age of 40. I have gone through that myself and looking back at my life I would never have started all those businesses, I would have managed my career towards wealth, fun and profit, if only I knew how at the time. Let us look at typically what defines the age of 40.
If I remember all the people and myself in our companies it is an age of big responsibilities; where we are busy helping the new generation, being responsible for the current generation and its difficulties and we are helping the old generation on its way out. It is something we want to do. It is also the time I am forced to look at the rest of my life, we have found that it always happens around age 40, plus or minus a few years.
We are mid-career when we are in our forties and we have to look at what we are going to do for the rest of our working life. We are often in a trap where I have become my job title and my job title defines me. Whereas I am actually many things: I am a friend, a parent and so many other things. Work is just one of the things I do; it does not define me.
What I am, what I think, what I feel and what is within me define me and work as a small part of me. What I would’ve liked to see when I look back, I would’ve like to have seen that my work was more aligned, with nice challenges, while having fun, earning more money and building wealth. I would have liked to see that I have grown in myself, in what I do, with whom I do it, where I do it, and that I had more choices about it. Choices really are the spice of life.
Let us look at a quick process to define and start your career change at 40.
What I would have liked to do differently for all the people in the companies I built over the past 30 years.
What have I done in coaching since then have been very successful.
Typically, the people that follow this process grow their salaries by 20 or 30% over 18 months.
They look at work differently, they approach challenges differently and always respond in any situation to grow their options and increase their choices.
You always have a very big in internal “store” consisting of:
Your natural talents,
Your work and personal skills
Your work and personal relationships
You have built this big store using external resources and internalized it over time. To increase our the process all we have to do is identify what we enjoy doing, what the current situation is, what we feel and what we perceive. We can turn those into prepared action with the aim to engage, it only takes a little bit of effort. We talk to friends, do a bit of research, think about it a bit and then talk to people around us, remembering it is all externally available. All you have to do is get it and make it internal. The actual process consists of:
Identify
Prepare research
Engage, communicate with the world
Where I personally coach people through the Career Maker process, I regularly work with people who never realized that they had choices. I recently had somebody who has so many choices and never realized that he had all these choices. All the choices threatened him, because he saw them as difficult choices to make. When we turned it around and aligned the choices with what he wanted, the choices quickly reduced to two or three. These we investigated and he engaged. He is on his way to double his salary from $150 000 per year to probably $300 000 per year by just looking at things differently, he went external to trusted advisors, and he internalized the advice they gave him. He is now comfortable that the road forward is clear, he knows what to do next.
The outcome is that you are organized, you take action and you ensure your growth. Everybody loves a man with a plan. Everybody loves a man who is positive, clear, committed, who finds joy and things to do and contributes. For whom there is always a solution, but at the same time, he clearly knows what work to say no to.
Change is so fast today that you may have to choose again in five years. When you have applied this process a few times, change becomes a simple and fun matter. If you look at your career, the company you choose, the industry you choose, yes you can choose them all, that is for sure. It is just a process of identify, prepare and engage. Go external, bring it internal, and at 40 you typically have most, if not all, of these skills and access to these resources.
When considering a career change at 40, you do not want to jump ship. You want to progressively change ships. Most people at 40 have big responsibilities. You need to view your career change as a process, rather than a moment’s choice.
You will use your current work base to gently shift careers. You do more and more of the work you want to do, and less of the work you do not like doing. I found in my coaching that many people can make small changes in their current careers which leads to them becoming very happy right where they are! They never had to change careers, just recognize the opportunities they already had in their current jobs differently.
If it turns out that someone really must make a career change at 40, they have no obvious opportunities in their current jobs, I coach them to use their current job platform and reach out to external sources of knowledge and opportunity. They do this while they stay at their current job and steadily build connections to the right people and places.
In both cases we need to align the work you want do with the job you want to do in the company you do it, even if you remain with your current company. There are some very simple, easy processes to delegate what you do not like. Well-executed delegation frees your time so that you can focus on the work you want to do. View delegation from the perspective of “Others must grow, do not steal other people’s work”. While you delegate the work you do not want to do, volunteer for the work you want to do. Also, get further expertise outside of the company, in specific places, investing in yourself, or just participating for the benefit of those you want to learn from; grow the skills that let you move the job progressively to what you really want and what aligns with you.
When you are clear on your career, company, industry, work and job in the company, you are on your way to building a long-term career, remembering a job is just something you do on your career road. If you look at a career aim once you are clear about industry, company and yourself, it is so simple to make your career aim visible. Use online tools like LinkedIn to make your career aims visible. You will find that jobs come to you to fit your career aim. The real change happens when in a few months you announce your career aim, your support structure: your family and friends are with you and you are prepared for a career change. You have done your thing, you have engaged, and you are ready with the resources, to move in the direction of your career aim.
Remember that career aim is something that keeps on moving, because our environment keeps on changing. However, at any one time, you must have a clear career aim. You are going to adapt it to embrace change, love change; change is so exciting for the prepared. Change is so threatening to people who are not prepared, remember that fear of change at 40 is simply facts that present themselves as if they are real and they are actually perceptions. Therefore, if you overcome fear, that nasty four-letter word, you overcome the risk you perceive and the risks are never real.
If you move progressively, you identify, prepare, and engage, you never take a big risk. It is an incremental process, you move towards your career aim. You should probably aim to align your career every two to three years; that is about the change cycle now. New opportunities arrive as the industries move, some disappear and some industries arrive. Humans always need a challenge, a change, remembering that change is as good as a holiday. I hope we have shown you that at 40 there are typically these things happening in peoples’ minds. They can align with what, who, where. They can do a quick start, moving from their basal store, they can organize, take action and grow, and they can align perfectly towards a long-term career aim.
A carefully crafted cover letter gets your resume noticed. A carefully crafted resume gets you the interview. Having your story straight, with examples, in the interview lands you the job.
It does not matter how old you are or if you little industry related skills. It is more about what work experience you bring with you. Scroll down to watch a video of Master Career Coach, Unre Visagie explain how to craft your career change cover letter.
The career change cover letter is meant to get you the job you’ve chosen at the company you’ve chosen, in the industry that you’ve chosen. We’ve found that if the cover letter is clear it demonstrates that the man has a plan and he is clear on the why and what about the industry, the company, the job and himself.
If this is clear then invariably people get hired and we even found that with this clarity people get jobs at companies where no jobs existed or was planned, because they see wow, this man is enthusiastic about my industry, my company, his job and himself. I have to have such a person in my company, I cannot let him pass. I know I don’t have a job right now, but I’m going to make one for him. This happens with about a hundred students a year under Prof. Kroon at the North-West University where we’ve been developing and running this program for seven years.
This happened after we used the process to build our companies. We’ve used it for the last ten years in our pro bono community work where we’ve empowered people to get jobs starting from nothing. Today young people with very bad home conditions and education are fully qualified mining engineers. The process truly works. It also works for several people we coach at a $100000 plus level that gets 30% increases in the jobs they want towards building their career; it’s always aimed at the long-term career.
If you look at a cover letter it’s you choosing the job, the work you want to do, choosing the company you want to do it in or with, and the industry you want to operate in. When you look at a company you must be very comfortable with the company’s clients. You must be comfortable with the way they serve clients and the way they approach clients.
If you then look at your career change cover letter, it must have a maximum of three paragraphs; it cannot be more than three paragraphs. You must state that you have a plan, that you are excited; it must contain facts about the job, the company and the industry. Job, company and industry always stay together. The second thing that your cover letter must show is that you have a clear thread in your past decision making, to actually get you to this point. The cover letter must then state any TRUST. Trust is about four elements: reliability, acceptance, openness and congruence and openness. It must be clear in your cover letter. To get it clear, be ready with factual stories, remembering that we are still a story-telling society.
The Power of Storytelling
I think we must add something about the power of good stories. A clear, good story has awesome power.
You require stories that show your manageability, stories that show your willingness to be involved, stories that show commitment, commitment to results, stories that show initiative. These are the things they interview for. They will ask you three sets of questions in the interview. They will ask open questions, for which you must have ready answers. They will ask you closed questions, for which you must have facts or one of these short stories.
Here is a link to Peter’s book “Tell to Win”:
Q: You must get ready for the interview in your cover letter?
A: Thank you, very importantly, I would advise that you have this clear because what I found is that this has a huge input in the words of the cover letter. The main reason for doing it at this time is to ensure that you are actually backing up your cover letter. This back-up gives you absolute confidence. The company may have a process of pre-screening: telephoning etc. If they call you and you are not ready, you’ve lost. We’ve worked through thousands of CV’s and interviews in our companies and if there is a lack of clarity it goes to the bin. The people who stated clearly in their cover letter why they wanted to work for our company in our industry they got an interview without exception.
Q: These stories, are they supposed to be long? How would they look in the cover letter? Are they paragraph stories?
A: No, the stories don’t get into your cover letter. The cover letter gives a strong indication that you have the stories. The words in your cover letter reflect your confidence, that’s why you must gain the confidence. That’s why you must get your stories ready. Written is better, but if you are like me writing is not always easy. Keep your stories ready.
If your stories are ready and you can tell me why the job, why the company, why the industry and why you, I’ve hardly ever seen anybody fail to even create a job where none existed. That is the power of a well-constructed cover letter. Getting somebody to craft you a clever letter which is not your words is a very dangerous thing. We can assist you, or many other coaches can assist you to help you find your words. On the website you will find further techniques to help you get your words.
Secondly, what I find people have great difficulty with is that most of us can’t talk about ourselves, we get totally stuck, so I find that you’ve got to have a soundboard, somebody you trust that is able and capable. In recent examples for instance, the best soundboard we found for a guy that’s earning $140000 was one of his clients. Why would a client help him? It’s a simple technique, to go and say thank you to the client, and to say wow, it’s really great what you are doing and I want to ask you a weird question today. What do you think I do differently, what do you think my next career should be.
What does that show to the client that you approach? That you recognize him, he’s a significant person and you really respect and accept him. When you approach people for advice and input, those three things are the most important. Significance, recognition, acceptance and respect are the most powerful approach to humans. Hardly anybody can say no to that. When we get the younger or older people that we coach to get into companies and jobs that didn’t even exist, this is one of the things we prepare them with. To approach with the right approach, only you can help me because you are so great. That comes back to gratefulness. When you approach the person you’ve got to be extremely clear on what you want.
Q: Why would I approach a client and ask them how am I different? How does that relate back to the cover letter?
A: It is for you to understand and communicate your possible contribution, your unique approach, why you are a valuable addition. It’s very hard to find this by yourself. It’s a bit like a brain surgeon doing brain surgery on himself; not a good idea. And very often, constructing your own stuff is like doing brain surgery on yourself.
Q: And specifically in a career change situation? You’ve got to now indicate what your skills are, because you bring a skill set, it’s not like your bringing industry knowledge as such, because you’re making a career change. But you bring who you are to the company.
A: Then you find an advisor in that industry, the one that you want to change to, that is how you engage in the industry. Be clear about the how and what. The how and what process must be applied to every phase. Your cover letter must show why you are excited. How are you going to show it if you don’t engage people in the industry, read the magazines, go to some trade shows? You may even meet your next employer at a trade show.
Q: And the reason you want to spend this amount of time on your cover letter is that your cover letter gets your CV into the interview bundle?
A: Yes, you’ve got to get your CV out of a huge pile into a shortlist, survive the shortlist and then get into an interview.
You have to spend time on this. Otherwise you will appear like everyone else. You are going to keep on begging and pleading, and no-one will understand you. They want to help you, but you don’t allow them to. That is why we say the door to success has a handle on the inside. This process of having clarity on the how and what of each element we call the golden key to success. It’s your golden key. To craft the key, to make the key is effort, but it’s the rest of your life. And today is the first day of the rest of your life. Can you put too much effort into this? I don’t think so.
We find that people with this clarity are very successful in our second process, where once you have done this, we can assist you to get into companies that don’t even advertise for a job. If you want to really join accompany and you are clear on this, there’s a process whereby you hook yourself in. You go with respect, you go with knowledge, you go with enthusiasm you are irresistible, and you have it in you. I haven’t met a person that doesn’t have it in him.
Are you seriously considering a job change in the very near future?
Let career coach, Unre Visagie show you how to manage your current situation to your greatest benefit!
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We are here today to look at careerdevelopmentplan.net, the Career Maker system that assists people to move from perceived career boxes all the way to great careers as we will see in the next ten minutes. We’re specifically here today to look at your career direction and possible job change; you’ve had enough of the job and the way it works at the moment, we have agreed that something must change, and soon.
Typically what creates this perception of a career box are all kinds of fears from which follow many perceived risks. There are the fears of failure and the fears of change looming large for most!. If we just look at fear itself, it is simply false evidence appearing real, it’s rarely got substance to it, and even if it’s got substance, it can be managed. These perceived fears are the well spring of perceived risks and therefore risks are not real. Of course there are the fears of failure. In this situation we are just going to look at failure as a first attempt in learning. You have learnt this way all your life, from walking and talking to everything you can do today, it all went through a process of trial and error until you succeeded. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle; all we’re doing is holding the bicycle a little bit during this process of change. Safe bicycle riding; you shouldn’t lose any skin.
There are three situations we would like to look at:
People can sometimes just change their job in the company, or even just change the way they approach the job.
Some of you may be in a situation where they need to change the job and the company.
Sometimes we find, and some of you may have today, where you want to change the job, the company and the industry you are currently working in.
Now where do we change from and what are we changing to?
We begin with the store each one of us here has; a store of assets. We can typically look at those assets as experience, expertise, industries, aptitudes and relationships. Those are things you’ve accumulated and we find that very few people can articulate these experiences into identifying which job it will fit, which company it will fit, which industry it will fit. Therefore we start by looking at the external world, where all the resources are available that you could possibly imagine. There must just be a process for you where you can take these resources and internalize it, we will show you here. To achieve this process view it like a staircase. Each of you is going to make your own staircase. You’re going to then climb you own staircase, hence the perceptions of big risks.
That is what we have learned from the people in our companies, that we have coached since to professional master coach; that this scary process, once it becomes known, all fear, all risks disappear. Career Maker system makes it clear and real and straightforward. Let’s get started by exploring your exact needs today. We typically like everybody to go through a review, even if you know you want to change your job. You may be any of the three situations. It’s still very good at this time to just do a proper exploration, re-check each element, and by checking it you grow anyway.
The second step is to use this information you’ve accumulated and state clearly why and what you choose each item of information. You typically discuss it with some people around you. It’s all part of your preparation. Then you go to respected people; I know each of you have respected people that you admire. With a clear plan you’ll be able to approach them. They are then the people you want to engage to take you on your next level, job, career direction, the company and the industry. Also the work you choose on a daily basis. This process grows your store.
You already grow in your various assets, you become more visible, and more people know that you are ready for this new thing. By the end of it you align your job with the industry and the company clearly. You can tell anybody that asks very quickly: “I like this company because…” “I like this industry because…” “I like this job because…” You’ve got to be very clear. It’s just like selling a product; in this case, you are the product. You’ve got to be clear, or they can’t help you. If you are clear everybody wants to help you.
Secondly you do the same process in your current job, you are clear about the work you like and this process is to align your work, do less of some, and do more of others. You will see the process in the next inbox. You aligned that within your job, so you moved your job a bit. Most jobs today are portfolio jobs, I realize all of you do things outside your job definition and some things in the job definition are done by others. That is how the concept of the portfolio job came about, that everybody talks about today. With this alignment and clarity of your process, you now have a clear career aim, you can even call it a career beacon, and you can put the beacon anywhere, and you can see it and other people can see it and you can aim directly for it. You end up in charge of your future.
Never again will you be worried that you can lose your job. Losing your job is almost an exciting thing. You will never be scared again that you will not be paid for what you do, because you will learn how to ask for what is due to you. It’s all part of the process in the next inbox.
You end up with clear insight, knowledge and confidence. The confidence comes from being able to say who am I, what is the job, what is the industry, what is the company, where’s my career going, what tasks do I like doing. This clarity you can call a man with a plan. A man with a plan we found is welcome everywhere. Prof. Kroon couldn’t get holiday jobs for his students six years ago. Today 700 of his students get holiday jobs using the process. All Prof. Kroon does is; he helps the students become clear about the company, the industry, the job, which they approach with clarity, and all of them get their own internship or holiday job, which is part of the curriculum; they must gain experience.
You can’t fail to get the job you want and hopefully you will never in your life use the words again: “I had enough of my job.” You will know how to move from that box, because we see it as a box, all the way through to this great process. We find that people walking the road with us typically get 30 – 40% increases in the next 18 months to 2 years. Several of our people in the program during the last few years got between 20 and 30%, even recently when the company gave no increases, they laid some people off; the people who knew where they were going still got their 30% increase. It’s quite amazing.
It is now as near full-proof as we can get it. Let’s look at where we go from here. Moving from the career box to the great space, with your great asset list, never again using the words: “My job sucks.” Because you will be in charge, you will choose the job you like, how can such a job suck? Change then becomes the excitement it should be with the Career Maker System, the clarity of steps, the ease of execution, the assistance, makes it very straightforward. The next step towards your midlife career change to a job that doesn’t suck will be in your inbox tomorrow. I hope you watch out for it and you are with us forward.
Llewelyn VenterCurrent Professional Coaching Student
"Roughly 3 weeks ago I was in a terrible place. I was frustrated, full of fear, had run out of options, and felt I had nowhere
left to go - a really BAD space. Unre, within 6 hours, kickstarted a process of turning this completely around - through what
I like to think of as an "intervention" of sorts - solid situation coaching and making me aware of options I didn't even know
existed. 3 weeks on, and my life has literally taken a 180-degree turn for the better, I feel relaxed, in control of my life again,
confident and full of positive energy. The journey has just begun - here's to my coach, mentor and councillor - thanks Unre!" Click here to view my Linked-In Profile...
