career development – Dutra Associates

6 Keys to Managing Your Most Important Work Relationship

March 6, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

While all work relationships are important, there is arguably one that is most important. That is the relationship with your manager and it’s often overlooked. Sometimes this is referred to as “managing up” which is primarily concerned with how effectively you work with and can influence your manager.

What makes this relationship especially important? Your manager ultimately determines the types of projects and assignments that are on your plate. Additionally, your manager has influence on your career path and can help connect you to resources within the organization to help you reach your team’s goals.

Here are six keys to help you strengthen this relationship:

Ensure you are clear regarding your manager’s expectations. The job description for your position may provide you with the formal performance requirements for your role, but your manager will likely have additional expectations. Have a discussion with your manager to ensure that you are aligned on the key measures of success, the priority initiatives to execute, and the principles and values that should be reflected in how you carry out your role.
Get to know your manager. What communication style does your manager prefer? What is important to them, both personally and professionally? In what way do they want to receive information and updates from their team members? What types of things are a natural source of frustration for your manager? If you are aware of the answers, you will be better positioned to help your manager be successful.
Look for the good. As humans, we have a natural tendency to be on the lookout for danger, which can cause us to focus on traits and attributes in managers that we don’t like. Even if your manager can be difficult to work with, focus on the things that your manager does well. Look for the opportunities to learn from your manager and acknowledge their contributions and support.
Consider how you can adapt to your manager’s behavioral style. For example, let’s say that your manager is someone who drives for results and you are more of a process-oriented person. It would be important for you to learn how to present your ideas and other communication in a quick, high-level summary format.
Make your manager look good. Doing something that reflects poorly on your manager is a quick route to damaging your relationship. What might you do to increase the level of trust, respect, and confidence that your manager has in you?
Discover ways to free up time and reduce the hassles your manager deals with. Doing so allows your manager to focus on what’s most important and supports their success. So, take the initiative, be solution oriented, provide possible ideas for resolving issues that you must escalate. Be a leader!

The only behavior you can control is your own. Don’t leave the full responsibility for the relationship in your manager’s hands. Some managers are amazing at creating relationships with their team members. Others, not so much. Regardless of the type of manager you report to, being proactive in building a strong relationship with your manager will not only help their success, but also yours.

For more ideas about how to improve relationships and alignment up, down, and across your organization, contact us at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Career Reflection in Times of Crisis

July 7, 2020 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Since the pandemic began, I am finding that many professionals and business owners are stepping back and taking a hard look at their careers. The questions and concerns they are raising range from deeply questioning “Is this really what I want to be doing?” to a vague sense of “I’m feeling bored and restless.” Perhaps you have been having some of the same or similar thoughts.

Reevaluating one’s life during times of unprecedented change and upheaval is quite natural. When you get shaken to the core, any vague or significant discomfort you have been feeling in your career suddenly smacks you in the face. You recognize that life is short and you may choose to stop tolerating or settling for the current situation. During such pivotal moments that jar you out of your comfort zone into foreign territory, you are called to check in, reflect, take a pause, and explore what creates a sense of satisfaction and engagement for you. Being truly engaged in any aspect of your life is fundamentally based on how satisfied you feel. When you’re feeling satisfied, you’re happier, more fulfilled and more productive. What if you had the key to unlock the secret to your personal success? What might be possible for you?

Identifying and creating strategies to meet your core needs is the secret to your personal success. What are core needs? They are the types of energies that you need to have in your life. When your needs are met, engagement occurs. When core needs are not met, you become disengaged, drained, unhappy, perhaps even stuck. Unfortunately, you usually have no idea why you feel this way and, as a result, you are at a loss about what to do next.

Examples of core needs include accomplishment, creativity, teamwork, recognition, fun, contribution, and autonomy, to name just a few. In working with clients, I’ve found that the number of core needs that an individual might have can vary widely. Some have 8, others have 20. How few or many you have doesn’t matter. There is no perfect number. Rather, what is important is working through the process of identifying those that are the “must haves” for you, the ones that give you energy.

So how does someone identify their core needs? It’s not as simple as looking at a list and choosing what stands out. When there are many options, it can be hard to hone-in on the most important. Instead, we look to your actual behavior in practice as a better signal for identifying your core needs. To do this, we explore top experiences in your life and what made them so great for you. To facilitate this process, I use a tool called the Core Needs Navigator™ that gives you the resources and knowledge to allow you to feel fulfilled, productive, effective and satisfied in your work. You uncover your core needs and explore how they are working in your present work life and how they may best be attained moving forward.

The beauty of this process is that it allows you to step back and look more objectively at your needs. This broader view allows you to see more and gain greater insight into your core needs and what specifically is necessary for you to feel that need is being met. Armed with this information, you can develop strategies that will help you improve the match between what you really need and what you are getting.

Keep in mind, you may discover that all that’s necessary is a small shift. It may not mean a career change or a move to a new company. Once you are in touch with your needs, you realize, perhaps for the first time, what is truly creating dissatisfaction and now know what to ask for that can make a huge difference. In other circumstances, you may realize that, in fact, a bigger change is in order. Yet, with your core needs as the compass, you have clarity and a decision-making tool to guide your next career steps.

The Core Needs Navigator™ can be conducted virtually for individuals as well as for groups. If you’d like to learn more about how you can create a fulfilling career that meets your needs and identify the next steps to get there or help your employees become more engaged and satisfied, please contact me for a complimentary coaching consultation.

Building Your Personal Brand – Part Three

September 10, 2019 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

In this final segment on Personal Branding, we’ll cover steps 9 – 12 which are focused on messaging, image, consistency and visibility.

As a quick review, in Part One we looked at the importance of a personal brand and the initial steps to defining how you choose to be known in the world. In Part Two, we built on your initial foundation by exploring what makes you valuable, unique and impactful.

So, bring out the work you’ve done so far and let’s put on the finishing touches.

What is your compelling message?

There are several key messages that you’ll want to create. If you look to the work you’ve completed up to this point, you’ll find that you already have a head start on this.
- First, create a simple statement that quickly identifies who you are. The formula we used in step 5 serves this purpose, “I help X get Y.”
- Second, if you own your own business, it’s important to have a tagline that, in one clear phrase or sentence, defines who you are. One way to come up with this is to reflect on why you do what you do. What is it that gets you up every day? Michael Port, the author of several books including, Book Yourself Solid (https://www.bookyourselfsolid.com/), has become known as “the guy to call when you’re tired of thinking small.” This tagline clearly demonstrates his desire to “help people think bigger about who they are and what they offer the world.” What’s your tagline?
- A third component is to craft a brief story – no more than 30 seconds – that describes your greatest achievement. Start with a short description of the problem, then move on to the actions you took and finally speak to the results that were achieved. This demonstrates the value that you offer.
- Finally, it’s important to craft an overall marketing message that allows you to talk about what you do in an interesting and compelling way. Keep in mind that, if you completed steps 1 – 8, you already have most of the components for this. Michael Port offers a 5-part formula for creating this message.
  1. Summarize your target market in one sentence. Who do you help?
  2. Summarize the three biggest and most critical problems that your target market faces.
  3. List how you solve these problems.
  4. Demonstrate the #1 most relevant result you help others achieve.
  5. Reveal the deeper core benefits that they experience (e.g., financial, emotional, physical, spiritual.
    Put this all together to develop your message. For a firm that provides tax services, it might sound something like this: “I’m a tax advisor. I help small to mid-size business owners protect their wealth. You know how business owners are looking to maximize their profit while minimizing their tax liability but often complain about how complicated the tax code has become? What I do is get to know my client and their financial goals and work closely with them to create a strategy to achieve those goals in a cost-efficient way that, at the same time, helps them to sleep at night knowing their tax return is submitted correctly.”

10. What image aligns with your message?

- How do you actually embody the brand? Consider everything from how you personally present yourself to your logo and marketing collateral to the types of groups and associations that you will align yourself with. How well do these various components align with who you are and what you do?

Be consistent.

If you’ve ensured that you’ve created an authentic message throughout this process, then consistency should be easy. Be yourself, in alignment with your brand, wherever you go and with whomever you encounter. Be clear about how you want each person you interact with to experience you. What behaviors do you need to modify or adopt to create this consistency?

Be visible.

You might have the best brand in the world yet, if it’s also a best kept secret, it won’t have its intended result. Determine how you want to gain that visibility.
- Networking is a key strategy for building and expanding your connections.
- Social media is another important strategy to keep in mind. Pay attention to the platforms where the people you want to meet hang out. For example, LinkedIn is critical for anyone in the business community. A strong profile along with being an active member through posting, participating in LinkedIn groups, etc. is a must.
- Look for ways to participate. This could include a leadership or committee position in the community or with a professional association that allows you to meet those in decision-making roles.

Call to Action

So, as this series opened, I ask again. Who needs a personal brand? Essentially everyone who has a career. Whether you own a business, serve others as an independent consultant, or work inside a company, personal branding is a powerful tool to help you further your career goals. I encourage you to set aside some time and work your way through this personal branding process. It’s your opportunity to establish how you want to be known in the world.

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business growth and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Choosing Your Path to Career Fulfillment

January 7, 2019 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Award winning American poet, Mary Oliver, once wrote, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I love this line from her poem, “The Summer Day”, as it invites introspection and calls us to live our lives on purpose. If we apply this to our work lives, this can be a daunting question and one that leaves us overwhelmed with selecting the “right” career. As children, we begin to demonstrate areas of strength as we grow. Well-intentioned parents, teachers, friends and others may encourage us to become a nurse or teacher if we excel at helping others, an engineer or accountant if we have strong math skills, or an artist or musician if we display a creative streak. You can see the pattern and may have experienced it yourself. Yet, this linear path can sometimes lead us astray. Simply because we are good at something doesn’t necessarily mean that it will bring us the career fulfillment we desire. There is something deeper we must explore to be fully engaged in our work.

Employee Engagement Survey Data

The 2018 Gallup Study indicated that, while employee engagement has risen slightly in the U.S., we still have 66% of the workforce in a state of disengagement. 53% of those studied are not engaged, which means that they don’t have much of a connection to the work that they are doing and are likely to do the bare minimum in their roles. 16% of those studied are actively disengaged which means that they resent their jobs and have a tendency to complain to those around them and impact the morale of co-workers. Do you find yourself among the 66% who are disengaged? While there are multiple factors that impact employee engagement, there is something that you can do to begin to shift the tide and help you get on track.

A Key Question

A key question to ask that will guide you toward your career fulfillment is “Why?”

What is the “why” behind everything you do – your purpose?

I truly believe that each of us has a purpose in life. Finding that purpose allows us to stay aligned, doing what we love while accomplishing things that are meaningful to us. Your level of happiness will always tell you when you are aligned with your purpose and when you’re not.

To help you get started, here is a resource that will help you to explore your passion and purpose. Click here to read Jack Canfield’s 10 Life Purpose Tips. As a Canfield Certified Trainer in the Success Principles, I have seen the positive impact on clients when they are able to tap into their purpose and express it in the world, both through their work and in their lives in general.

Next Steps

If you are feeling less than fulfilled by your work, I invite you to follow the 10 tips and take responsibility for creating a career that you love. You might find creative ways to express your purpose in your current role or you may find that your purpose exploration starts you down an entirely new path. Whatever your path forward, remember that it’s up to you to take the first step. No one cares more about your career than you. As Mary Oliver wrote, “You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who believes we each have far more potential than we typically tap in to. She helps you learn how to step into your full potential so you can create consistent, optimal performance for yourself and your team with less stress and more enjoyment. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Key Tips for a Successful Career Conversation with Your Boss

September 25, 2018 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Take Ownership for Your Career

No matter where you are in your career journey, it’s clear that many employees run into similar roadblocks. “How do I have an effective conversation with my boss about the next steps in my career? Will I come across as too pushy? What if I’m told I don’t have what it takes for the role I’d like to have?” Whether you are an intern looking to move into a full-time position, an individual contributor who’d love to become a supervisor, or a mid-level manager desiring an expanded role in leadership, the process is the same.

That process starts with a key principle that Jack Canfield shares in one of his many books, The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Principle #1 states: Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life. In a nutshell, this principle is about taking ownership. It’s about recognizing and accepting that if your circumstances or experiences are not as you’d like them to be, that it’s up to you to do something about it. It means giving up on making excuses, blaming others, or listing all the reasons why you haven’t taken action in the past. Forget the past. You have from this day forward to make a different choice. As this principle relates to your career, own what you want and take responsibility for your career growth and development. No one cares more about your career than you.

Now that you’re in the driver’s seat, let’s take a look at some key tips to help you prepare for and conduct an effective career conversation.

Key Tips

Schedule an appointment with your boss. Find a good time on the calendar to schedule 30 minutes over a cup of coffee. Regardless of how much your boss has on his/her plate, they can find 30 minutes to talk with you. In your request, be sure to share what you want to discuss so they can be prepared and know what type of support you’re seeking.
Prepare for the conversation. Do your homework in advance. Find out as much as you can ahead of time about what your desired next step role requires. Take an inventory of your accomplishments, skills, and experience and match them up with what is required in the next role. Taking the initiative in this way demonstrates your professionalism and your commitment to growing your career.
Conduct the conversation. Share your goals with your boss. Discuss your thoughts on where you believe you’re ready and the gaps you need to fill. Ask for feedback. How ready does your boss see you? What specific skills and abilities will you need to develop? What opportunities exist for you to take on a special project or stretch assignment to gain those skills and abilities? Ask for what you want and be ready to commit to taking the necessary steps to get there.
Agree to next steps and schedule a follow-up meeting. Ensure that you wrap up the meeting with specific next steps to take to begin working toward your career goal. Ask for any support that you need from your boss. Draw up a specific one to two-year plan and schedule another time to meet to discuss and finalize your plan. Monitor your progress and continue to ask for feedback and guidance along the way.

Having a career conversation with your boss will help you clarify the next steps in your career and start the momentum toward achieving your goals. Remember, the ownership for your career is in your hands and reaching out to your boss for support and direction is a great beginning.