Your Career Is Important. Grow It. Part 1, By Segun Mojeed, FCIPM, HRPL, FITD*

 Forewords

By God’s grace, this passionate venture of writing a column in newspapers under the name People Matters started years ago through the encouragement and support of my wife, Molara, and the indefatigable Baaroyin Global, Deacon Shola Oshunkeye, 2006 CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year. The column, People Matters, started running in the defunct The Spectator, moved  to Sunday Sun (Nigeria), before cruising to The Sun of Ghana. It currently runs in The CrestNG.com. Part of this venture’s benefits is the book, Growing People, which has now been adopted as the title of this reinvigorated, expanded, and enhanced column.

In this episode, I crave your indulgence to let me reiterate a bunch of snippets and nuggets on the subject matter which I had shared with friends on my WhatsApp status in the last few weeks with some constructive feedback. Before then, let me say upfront that this subject and some of the nuggets shared and embellished here were inspired by Ed Evarts’ 2020 book, Drive Your Career. You may look for it on Amazon and Amazon Kindle.

My intention for doing this title is to make you a better captain of your career and make positive progress at work no matter whatever stage you are, including the ‘departure lounge’. Reading through Ed Evart’s book, my entire career, spanning over three decades was playing out before me like a well-directed movie. A major motivation here is also the fact that lots of us are eager and pumped up to achieve group goals and organisation objectives without pausing to ask what are my career goals which must also be achieved as the organisation grows. We seem at times to just bury ourselves in the work oblivious of the goings on, reservedly saying something like “I’m not interested in politics”. Politics is good. Only bad politics is undesirable.

So, the first ‘smart tip’ is, A positive relationship with your boss. Please develop and nurture it. You may want to call it managing your boss 101. Not to intentionally do this is a career-limiting error. When you are well related with your boss, good things happen, your life is easier. We spend the larger part of our adult lives in the workspace and you don’t want to spend that chunk disgruntled or bellyaching. Author Ed Evarts gave the acronym H.E.L.P to drive your engagement with your boss and move your career forward. H for harness. When you maintain a positive relationship, the boss helps you in harnessing your skills and focus them on the most impactful areas of the business. E is for evolve. When you stop growing, you start to decay or die. Your boss can help ensure that your ideas grow and evolve beyond your little corner, then you are seen organisation-wide, and this helps your career. It is called authentic visibility. A case in point is when I wanted to join Vmobile in 2004. Right at the job interview I shared the idea of a cooperative society with the hiring manager, Chris. He showed interest. I got the job, and immediately I resumed work, it was one of the first projects he supported me on. It became huge organisation-wide and benefited lots of people, and still thriving till date.

L is for learn. You must seek learning opportunities, keep learning and applying your learning. With positive relationship, your boss would expose you to more learning opportunities. Permit me to mention Chris again. My first ever foreign trip was a series of training in the United States – Dallas to Little Rock, and Little Rock to Los Angeles. A training passed down to me when I was barely six months in the organisation. It was meant for my boss, but he passed it on. A worthy gesture and an experience I can never forget. It was on that training I first read Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan’s Execution – the discipline of getting things done. I got hooked on purposeful execution. P is for proactive. Proactivity is the mastered art of foretelling the future, vision, and preparing your team for the ever changing market place. By the way, vision is the V in VUCA plus. With good relationship with her, your boss would put you on your toes to master the art of proactivity, and this is career-enhancing. The ‘good thing’ is we all have bosses.

The next smart tip is simpler, I guess. “No one knows you better than you…” These days, one seems too busy, so involved in the ‘rat race’ of programmes, goals, objectives, meetings, deadline-driven projects that one hardly spends time with the one who knows him or her most – herself, himself! Only a few of us are actually aware of what we know about ourselves, and self-awareness is a crucial emotional intelligence – EQ skill. A high dose of EQ is needed to manage your career effectively. Spend time with yourself to increase your self-knowledge, regulation, and motivation, less busyness please. For some, it is called quite time. Ed Evarts calls it ‘thinking with yourself’. I call it ‘conversation with me’. This habit is curative, creative, and action oriented. Also, you would heal, regenerate, manage your behaviour and maximise your impact.

The power of a Pause. This ‘smart tip’ is a bit related to the one above. Please pause occasionally. It is powerful. For clarity, to pause is not full stop or working slowly or taking forever to decide or a time spent to over analyse with the resultant analysis paralyses. P for pause is a strategic activity that allows you to activate your ‘thinking-ability’ for your agenda, relationships, etc before ‘making that call’. Pausing is all about thinking first and acting second. It helps your effectiveness as a team lead or member in avoiding costly mistakes. You know what? Pausing helps in moving faster. Any attempt to circumvent this strategic activity by trying to move too quickly may end up in spending valuable time repeating things you already explained to team members, albeit hurriedly, apologising for avoidable service errors, etc. Is your pace too fast or too hard for others to keep up with? Calm down! There is a saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with people.” Author Ed Evarts added: “If you listen to others first and move forward purposefully, you’ll see better results for yourself and your team.” I concur.

People, people, and good people. This ‘smart tip’ is a no-brainer. Organisations are made up of people, however, we are not all the same. Some are excellent, deeply committed to the organisation’s vision and ‘raison d’être’ while some just show up for the pay cheque. It would help your career if you were not too focused on just your own deliverables, forgetting to reach out. Colleagues are your best resource, especially your tenured colleagues, those with valuable experience. You do not need to reinvent the wheel, reach out and leverage on that experience. As the saying goes, show me your friends… Reach out to those who will add value to you, and those who give constructive feedback. Avoid naysayers and the ‘natives’.

Before I wrap this up, let me share one more ‘smart tip’. Neither fold nor bellyache. Please permit me to share a personal experience to drive this home. In 2001, I joined one of the three banks I worked for in my illustrious career spanning over three decades. Situation on ground was not as rosy as promised during the interviewing process and the one-on-one with the Chief Executive. I was almost folding and throwing in the towel until my boss ‘yanked’ me off that lane with a stern warning that sounded like “you better stop bellyaching and face your work”. He added “no one shaves your head in your absence”. Ed Evarts calls it, ‘playing the hand you are dealt’. In other words, if things are not as desired, if your company is not a great place to work or the workplace culture may have robbed off badly on you, you cannot throw your hand up in surrender, you cannot go around mopping as if the world owes you. Rather than fold or bluff, now is the time for action. Look up, look inward, and look around you; what can you do differently today to ensure that you have a better experience in your workplace. That was what I did! Yes, I became intentional about my career, about getting results and getting fulfilled. Oh, what was the outcome for me in that bank? The Chief Executive stood by me. I bounced back, got promoted while still on probation and with the team went on to execute the first ever graduate trainees’ programme (this was rare in those days) in the then sixty-something years old bank. People support helped me then and still helping me till date.

Lastly, please remember TGF (the God factor), and always PGF (put God first).

(To be continued…)

*Segun Mojeed is an alumnus of the prestigious Yale School of Management. A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management, and the Institute of Training & Development, respectively. He is a certified World Kirkpatrick Learning Effectiveness Evaluator, and an accredited Kolbe, MBTI, and Assessment Centre consultant. He is also an accredited Centre for Management Development (CMD) consultant. Segun is an author. His latest book: Growing People is on Amazon Kindle. He is the Executive Consultant/Group Head of Practice at BezaleelConsulting, the HR Company.

Acknowledgement/Sources of Resources for this article:

1. Olusegun Mojeed: Growing People – Experiential Essays… Digitech Creative Publishers, 2019
2. Ed Evarts: Drive Your Career – 9 High-Impact Ways… Excellius Press/Page Two Books, 2020
3. People Matters: A compendium of Talent Management & People Skills Essays by Olusegun Mojeed. BezaleelConsulting Group’s Library bezaleelconsultingrw.com