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Self Development of your Skills to Enhance your Career Prospects.

By: Geoffrey Norman Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Does anybody know you well enough to take your hand and drive your career forward? Probably but they are too busy, they almost certainly rely on you to help get their job done. If this is the case you have to do it yourself. You need to be so blinkered that you even astonish yourself about how focussed you need to be. The only problem you have got is the fact that you need help. Some guidance as to how you actually position yourself.

I started off wanting to rule the world, I felt sure I could but then I was young and fanciful. I ended up in industry and loved nearly every moment of it. I also wrote a lot of notes and it is from these notes and programmes that I am able to offer some self help tips and advices. Also some knowledge.

For instance have you ever thought of the difference between Leadership and Management? Read on. Can you think of ways to manage people? I hope not because it is almost impossible. You can instruct them and have them work by prescription rather like the armed services in part. I suppose that is managing them but it is poor practice do you not think? Actually you probably already lead your people and call it management... What about things though, like atmosphere or computers or furniture. you sure cannot lead them can you they have to be managed. There you have it then. You lead people and manage things. Or you lead people to manage things for you. There is a whole lot more to this and once the techniques are learned you should publish them and get a paper out in your name across the Company for your benefit.

Go on stick your head above the parapet and see where it takes you. Publishing your own work is the most positive step you can take for yourself, providing that the specific body of work was carried out of your own volition. Do a serious benchmarking exercise and publish the results of that. See where that takes you.

How about understanding the tough nut of making presentations to people of varying intellect or experience or role. It is an old cherry that has worried speakers and presenters for ever. Try this. There is an adage for presenters that says "you get out front, tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you have told them and them then get off". The trick is during each of the three 'tellings' is, you do each in a slightly different way. Each of the three ways will appeal to a different part off your audience. Perfect this technique with practice and then publish a paper and broadcast it across the company. Keep your head above the parapet.

There are many, many exercises that a creative people can do to pop their heads above the parapet but how many times have they just given their creativity away? Good creative work is greedily swallowed up in large companies and often not even noticed. It is absolutely essential that your creative work gets recognition in order for you to advance your career on merit. If there is another way to advance it can only be because a person can show 'promise'.

It is amazing how very often people with promise fail and nothing is done by management above and why that happens goodness knows. It is probably through weak management and there is plenty of that. So you start with the end in mind. You work back from there and you will find that there will be natural steps that have to be reached or achieved. Plot a step by step path to your goals and reward yourself when it is achieved.

Remember, good people are good at doing what they are given. Excellent people are good doing what they are given also. The difference in the two is that excellent people create their own work by giving the Company something it does not have and then being recognised for it. Be one of those, go on, I dare you.

I have been in senior management for many years and have no illusions about the development of a management team. It is done when we have time... What all directors and other senior managers pray for is that someone will poke their head above the parapet and shout, "here I am, I am good and ready to move forward" It rarely happens though. Internal programmes are written for the benefit of the business and rightly so, after all they are paying the training and development costs. They are very controlled because the training department has to show a return, even to the point where the course director will be asked to compile a report on the relative performance of each delegate.

Generally people do not have the capacity to drive their career ambitions and this is probable not because they cannot be bothered or they cannot find the time but usually they don't know what to do. Even if they do now what to do, how to do it is another thing.

There is a natural order of things within a company, how many times have you heard in conversation who is next in line? Yes it is the succession ladder, the steps to success, one that you know you are on but not sure where or who is front or behind you. So what we have to do is examine our current position, find out who is in front and behind and out perform them.

Then the party gets spoiled.Why is it then that someone can pop up out of the ether and overtake us on the ladder. What makes them so special that they can upset the order of things and overtake you? It probably is not luck, it is or could be because that person had the courage to do something special and rise above the parapet.

Copyright (c) 2009 Geoffrey Norman

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

About The Author: If you are a driver and you believe that your future is best served by your own effort use the guidelines in How to Build Your Managers Muscle. Your energy will be diectly rewarded as a result of exceptional self applied additions to your reporting. Astonish your Manager educate your ompany. Go to www.my-bookworm.com