Carrying on from yesterday, as part of celebrating National Careers Week, #NCW2020, I am continuing my week of blog posts about some of the key the people and events who have inspired my own career journey. Hopefully this will guide and inspire young people looking to start out in their career journeys and qualified professionals looking to make changes to theirs.

 
 

I wrote a #LinkedIn article a few months ago about some research on Millennials and what they look for in a career, including the search for meaning in the work they do. I think whatever your age, a crucial part of a successful career is in understanding your values, the culture you want, how you like to work with others. This is common sense but something that often gets forgotten about in the day to day business of working life.

 

The fact that we are all different was brought into stark reality for me when I attended some Psychometric profiling a couple of years ago. I am a #DISC theory and #MBTI practitioner and both have taught me so much about my own approaches to things and those of others. It was whilst training to become a Practitioner for one of these that I and the other delegates discussed a difficult scenario of a problem employee and how we would deal with it. Whereas I wanted to couch the issue in some positives first, another member of the group was beyond horrified that I would waste her time. She wanted it straight, direct and with both barrels. The look on her face of sheer disgust that I wanted to make this a nice friendly conversation, whilst also addressing the issue, has really struck with me. I think people who like direct conversations are easy to spot and now, whenever I see someone like that, I will always try and take a more direct approach. It is really hard for me to press ‘send’ on an email that I feel is so abrupt it is rude, but I have learned over the years that this gets great results. By engaging with people in the way they like, they have stood up and taken notice of what I have to say, and it has helped me move on projects and my career itself, without question.

 

What is your approach to dealing with people who have different styles of ways of working?

 

(If you’re interested in how learning about your MBTI profile could help you then please get in touch now as I have a special deal one MBTI at the moment!).