I just had to give a pep-talk to a young man at our office who was put on a 30-day action plan by his manager for poor performance. One thing I value about our company is total honesty and transparency. We’ve done this young man a great service early in his career, and I hope he turns things around.
I like to speak to young men about the transition from high school and college into a career. Our education system does a terrible job, and young men without significant work experience in high school and college are at a serious disadvantage. My perspective when I speak to young men is to give them the same advice I’d give my kids, and I’d like to repeat that here.
Here’s what young men need to do to be successful in their careers.
- Be Honest
Honesty is the highest virtue to which a man can aspire, in my opinion. You need to consistently demand honesty of yourself. Don’t ever lie, it’s never worth it. A man who won’t accept lying as a solution will develop better solutions to problems and become immediately more valuable. Trust is everything, don’t lose it by lying.
- Know Yourself and Where You’re Going
One of the biggest mistakes young men make is chasing money in a career for which they are ill-suited. Don’t make this mistake. Know your personality, likes, and abilities, and choose your profession to suit those traits. You can make money doing anything, there’s always a way. If you don’t like people, don’t be a salesperson. If you hate spreadsheets, don’t go into finance. If you hate conflict, don’t become an attorney. The amount of people who hate their job is incredibly high, and it’s generally because they put no thought into having a career path that suits them. Again, you can make good money doing just about anything, make sure it suits you.
- Get Serious
Are you waking up at 8 am, eating Fruit Loops, cruising into work at 9:15 or so, leaving at 4:45 if you can get away with it, and playing video games all night? If so, you’re not serious about life, and you can’t expect to have a good career. So many people start off their adult life this way and wonder why they’re broke, fat, and unhappy when they reach 40. Get serious!
Get up early (5 am minimum), work out every day, eat healthy, and put in 10 hours of work per weekday minimum. When you get home, read, do something active, and get ready for the next day. Get serious.
Yes, leisure is fine, but realize that the discipline you demand of yourself will ensure more freedom than you have now. If you develop skills, advance in your career, and become valuable, you’ll still have plenty of downtime, but will have the resources for more virtuous pursuits.
Life is a competition, whether you realize it or not. You’re competing with others for scarce resources, and you’ll fall behind if you’re not serious. Don’t wake up when you’re 40, 50, 60, and wish you’d taken things more seriously in your 20’s. Most people make that mistake.
- Add Value
Ask yourself every day how you can help your employer serve customers better and make more money during this workday. That’s the value. How can you add value to your job? Ask yourself that question every single day.
Do you walk into your job every day and not care if your employer is successful? Many people do, and it holds them back. You need to hold yourself accountable every day for serving customers to the best of your ability, regardless of your role, and helping your employer earn more. If you can’t adopt that attitude, you’re bound to fail, because you don’t care about adding value.
- Develop Yourself and Your Work Ethic
How are you getting better today? This comes in many facets, mental, physical, skill set, attitude, etc. What are you doing today to improve on yesterday’s version of you? Are you improving your mind by reading books? Are you taking classes and watching online videos to improve your skills? Are you going to the gym and eating right everyday to improve your physical appearance and presence (which really matters, no matter what society says)? If not, you’re falling behind.
One of the things to note about work ethic is that it must be developed daily, and can be lost if you lose focus. Just like weightlifting, you should look to get a little better at your work every day. This means a little more focused, a little more knowledgeable, a little more valuable. This won’t happen overnight, but small incremental improvements will have huge long term effects on your value and earning capacity.
- Distraction is your Enemy
Focus is a key factor in becoming more valuable at work. Distraction is your enemy, and the biggest distraction you have right now is your phone and social media. My recommendation is that you get off social media. There’s no value living in a virtual world, and you’ll have much great success in the real world by stepping out of the silly virtual existence that is social media.
At the very least, if you’re distracted at work, take steps to reduce your distraction levels. This could mean leaving your phone at home or at least in your car. It could mean exchanging your phone for a flip phone, which will automatically limit your usage. Does that sound silly? Will people think you’re crazy? Who cares, you’ll be more productive and make more out of yourself. Don’t fall victim to distractions, especially the virtual kind.
- Do the Simple Things Right
Our HR Director has a list of 10 items on her dry erase board that are simple things that don’t take any talent to accomplish but will make you an extremely valuable employee. What’s interesting is that she’s commented that some employees have claimed to be “offended” by the list. That’s a sad commentary on the state of employees, particularly younger employees.
I want to repeat the list because I think it’s just perfect.
10 Things That Take Zero Talent, but Lead to Success
- Be on time.
- Work ethic – “I can”
- Effort – “Try”
- Body Language
- Energy
- Attitude
- Passion
- Being coachable
- Doing extra
- Being prepared
There’s the list. Nothing fancy, nothing crazy. Make sure you’re doing everything on that list.
- Take Pride in Your Work
Your work is a reflection of you as a person. If you don’t care about your work product, you’ll be less of a man, to yourself, and eventually to your wife and children. Men are put on the world to work (in part) and there’s something cosmic about it. Take your work seriously and have pride in the product you put out.
If you don’t have pride in your work right now, you’re probably in the wrong career. Again, know yourself and where you’re going. If you can’t take pride in your current vocation, find one where you can.
- Take the Ball and Run With It
One of the best traits you can develop is to be a person who can drive results in a business without having to be given every step of the process. Too many men are “tell-me-what-to-do-guys”. They wait around for someone to tell them what to do during their workday. They don’t figure out problems in their company, and then figure out solutions, on their own. This is a mistake.
When you’re given any task, make sure you take a step back and try to figure out what your boss is really looking for. You should learn more and more about your business, so you can add more and more value to your work product. Find unique insights to provide your boss that can help him drive results. You won’t provide much value here at first, but keep at it. Make sure you’re trying to drive results, and you’ll drive more and more over time.
It’s been really interesting to see the development of some of our younger workers in the office. At first, their insights were very basic and not very valuable. But over time, they’ve learned more about the business, and have been providing me with better and better insights.
As a boss, I try to encourage our employees to point out things, give insights, add value, wherever they can. If you have a boss who always shoots down your ideas, it’s probably time to look elsewhere.
- Train Yourself
A lot of people complain about the training they receive at their job. Their complaint is that their employer doesn’t provide enough training. This is a farce, and shows a terrible attitude that holds a lot of people back. Yes, there is some job training at every good company, but it is going to be company-specific. It’s your job to get yourself trained about how to be a better employee who adds value. That’s an important distinction.
The training a company offers, by and large, is going to be specific operational training to that company. Some companies, including ours, try to go beyond this and offer developmental training, such as management training, but even that by its nature is going to be tailored to company operations.
It’s your responsibility to seek out further education on how to be successful, add value, and progress in your career. Don’t rely solely on your company for training, because your personal development is crucial. The good news is that it’s also very cheap. You can get a ton of great books on subjects like goal setting, time management, business theory, etc. A reader is always developing into something greater than the present, and it’s crucial you develop this habit to always be reading something.
You should particularly focus your self-training efforts on the three pillars of business success, management, finance, and sales. These three skill sets are what you’ll need to develop in order to progress further in your career.
- Be Direct
One of the biggest flaws in any company, and this exists to various degrees, is a lack of communication due to ambiguity. People, for a variety of reasons, are not as direct and blunt as they could be. As a result, information is not passed in a truthful manner, and cannot be used to advance the common goals of the organization.
Here’s a goal you should work to achieve. Be brutally honest, while developing a compassionate approach to delivering that honesty. If you’re dealing with a flaw in the business, you must be courageous enough to identify the flaw and communicate it to company leaders in a way that they’ll receive the news positively. This takes a bit of sales talent because you must communicate your insight in a way that leadership will see the value of moving forward with your ideas. I personally love it when people come to me with problems in our business they’ve identified. I do push them to think through their analysis and I try to communicate factors in decision making that might not be on their radar to see how that changes their thinking. If you’re in a company where leadership does not value your input, it’s probably (a) because you need to develop better input (always assume you’re not performing well enough before blaming others) or (b) a bad company and time to move on.
If you’re managing someone, you must complement their strengths, and be very direct about their shortcomings. You must also be very direct about your goals as a manager, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what must be done to be considered a success. Be very blunt and direct, and leave no room for confusion. The worst thing you can do as a leader is to allow a report to continue with unsuccessful behavior in a way that will hold them back. You have a moral responsibility to those left in your charge. Don’t let them fail.
It’s a little trickier when you’re dealing with someone you don’t have authority over. You still need to be direct, but here’s where sales skills become important. You need something done, but you must communicate that in a way where you get the other person to see the value of your input. This means you must think about what you’re asking from their perspective. Be sensitive to the fact that you’re interrupting their day and taking up their time. By the same token, make sure you’re able to communicate the urgency of what you’re suggesting. It’s important to stress that you must develop the skill of adding value in order to be taken seriously. If you’re someone who has a reputation for insights that add value within the organization, you’ll have a much easier time leading others to help implement your guidance, even without any direct authority. If you have a reputation for foolishness, no one will help you implement your ideas. Again, always assume you suck and make sure your insight into your business gets better and better. This is why self-training (see above) is so vitally important. Be one of the people everyone listens to because you add value.
One of the big mistakes men make when delivering criticism is a harsh tone. No one wants to hear that they suck. But they need to hear it nonetheless. Be direct, but be compassionate as well. If you’re harsh, people may know you’re right, but they’ll work to thwart you nonetheless. You must be understanding of the shortcomings of others because you have a ton yourself. Jesus once said something to the effect of “before you point out the speck in someone else’s eye, pull the log out on your own”. Wise advice that goes far beyond carpentry situations.
- Be Someone I Can Count On
If you want to develop and progress within a company, there’s no better insight I can give you than to be someone your manager can count on. When given a task, be the one who sees it through to the end with a minimum of instruction and input from your manager.
This means that you’ve got to figure things out and be able to work on your own, with a minimum of instruction. If you think you’re right, be confident, and present your work as right. Don’t ask for a review at every single stage of a project.
Also make sure that when things go wrong, you’re there to fix it, and are willing to work late to get things right for tomorrow. I need to know that in those times where there’s a major issue, you’re going to help get things fixed.
There’s a balance here. I’m a firm believer that human work and life suffers when work takes up more than 50 hours a week. Maybe some humans can work 60 hours a week, but that’s pushing it. Make sure you’re not in a job where you routinely have to work late every single day, that’s just a poorly run business.
- Watch Who You Hang Around
Every business has A-players, meaning that the top 10% of the workforce that really makes the business run. Make sure you try to hang around these types of people, both at work and in your personal life. You’ll find that your work ethic, morality, and every facet of your personality is directly shaped by those with whom you surround yourself.
Choose your associations very carefully. If you’re constantly hanging around lazy, complainers at work, you’ll drift into becoming a lazy complainer. It’s an easy slippery slope to slide down, so guard yourself carefully. It’s better to stick to yourself than hang around losers.
- Assume It’s Your Fault
A final point, and perhaps the most important (although I feel that way about the other various points at times) is to assume everything is your fault. When you assume everything is your fault, it gives you the power to take control of your life. This is true both for work and personal life.
Assuming problems are your fault forces you to focus on how to solve those problems rather than just let the world happen to you. That phrase “let the world happen to you” describes 80% of people, and is responsible for their lack of success. They muddle through life with no direction, no goals, and no aim. It’s always someone else’s fault, and problems are someone else’s responsibility. Don’t let that be you. Take more responsibility, and assume everything is your fault.
A good indicator of adopting the trait (of assuming everything is your fault) is that you will no longer complain. If everything is your fault, why would you complain about yourself? People who complain about their lives are letting someone else control their fate. You need to avoid this.
This is not an invitation to avoid conflict. There’s a big difference between complaining and honest feedback to someone who’s reducing the quality of your life. Open, honest communication, with bosses, spouses, neighbors, etc. is the key to effectiveness and is just a good practice in general. Don’t use this philosophy as an excuse to be passive and pretend you’re just taking on extra responsibility. You cannot be responsible for the misbehavior of others, so don’t try.