Reflections – September 2018

Sep 30, 2018 Jordy Zagdanski Category: Reflections

Here at Reflectivity, we are avid readers. Here are our recommendations for the month of September, along with our reflections on them.

How to Advance in Your Career When Your Boss Won’t Help

“But in my experience, having a career-supporting advocate is an uncommon find in our direct managers. Supervisors too often lack people development skills or organizational influence. Or they are too protective of their own status to risk elevating someone else.”

What do you do when you when your boss doesn’t support you? More importantly, how do you grow your skills to become a boss that can support your employees?

Why I Encourage My Best Employees to Consider Outside Job Offers

A strange phenomenon about working at a company is that employees hide they are looking for a new job. Employees are almost always afraid that their company will find out.

Why are they afraid?

Pressure to stay? Retribution? Being fired? Losing out on opportunities?

Instead of keeping the same old routine, companies should encourage a new mindset in their employees.

Companies should focus on workplaces where employees thrive. When they leave, the former employees become their best recruiters.

Most Managers Don’t Know How to Coach People. But They Can Learn.

The purpose of coaching is for the recipient to understand and apply the information across varied circumstances. However, for most people, coaching is presenting information with little consideration of the skills involved.

Some skills for effective coaching:

Tailor information to the audience
Follow-up at points during the coaching to see progress
Provide further instruction if required

The Key to Career Growth: Surround Yourself with People Who Will Push You

“When thinking about how to develop in our careers, most of us tend to focus on promotions, projects, courses, certifications. We seek out expanded roles, more senior titles, extra money. We overlook one very key piece of the learning puzzle: proactively surrounding ourselves with people who will push us to succeed in unexpected ways and, in so doing, build genuinely rich, purposeful lives of growth, excellence, and impact.”