A warm welcome into my 6th instalment of the A to Z of career success series where we have now moved onto the letter F.

Feedback 
 
Feedback is vital to your career development. It clarifies expectations, helps you to learn from your mistakes and builds confidence. Positive feedback is always great to get; however, constructive (negative) feedback can be harder to receive.
 
Adopting a Growth Mindset helps. This is where you believe your talents can be developed, rather than having a Fixed Mindset where you believe there is limited scope to improve.

Action 

• Ask for feedback. How did I do? Could I have done anything differently?

• Take time to understand the feedback and then come up with a plan on how to improve. 

• Turn the feedback into goals that you can use to improve your career.

Focus
 
We currently live in a very ‘noisy’ world with a lot of distractions, demanding so much of our attention. The number one culprit seems to be our tech and our devices - phones, tablets, etc.
 
Taming your distractions and learning to focus at work is a critical skill.


Action

• Turn off those notifications – phone, email, etc

• Get your workspace organised

• Take regular breaks

• Make an ‘Action’ list for each day and tackle the tough jobs first

• Work in timed bursts, I use the excellent Pomodoro technique

Forward Planning

Great careers don’t usually happen by themselves; forward planning is essential. 
Understanding what you want to achieve and identifying the steps that will bring you closer to your goals is the way to go.
Of course, this is an ongoing process that needs regular attention.

Action

• Take a good look at where you are in your career right now

• Where do you want to be in your career?

• What are the next steps you need to take?

• What can you do today to plan your first actions?

Faith in yourself
 
Learning how to have faith in yourself will help you to stick to your career goals when times get tough.
You might find this a challenge as many of us have been conditioned to doubt ourselves. We must, therefore, have faith in ourselves to dispel our fears and self-doubt and instead build self-esteem and self-confidence.

Action

• Believe you can have a successful and enjoyable career regardless of what anyone says or where you are in life.

• Visualise how you would like your career to be

• Act as if. Always act in a way that is consistent with where you want to go in your career

• Take action towards your goals. Do not let fear stop you; nothing happens in life until you take action.

As always, hope you find these tips helpful and wish you happiness and good health always. Drop me a note and let me know how you are getting on. Please also forward this email to anybody that you think might be interested in the content.

Kind Regards

Mark

Mark Crossfield
Bravo Coaching