By : Larry Wang
Another common characteristic among the highly successful executives I know is that they also take a proactive approach to leveraging situations and opportunities that allow them to learn and improve. Rather than sit around waiting for something to come their way, they seek out ways to get involved and participate. They try to be as active as they can and have a fundamental understanding that the more they do, the faster they'll learn and the better they'll get.
As a result, beyond just taking greater accountability for your own career development and success, your ability to DYFET is also about taking greater advantage of the situations and opportunities around you to develop the key capabilities you need. This is something that anyone can do in their company situation, regardless of how good or bad that may be. It mainly requires some resourcefulness and initiative on your part.
Especially if you are working in a multinational company, it is likely that you have exposure to a variety of situations and opportunities that can help you to learn and improve. To benefit from them, however, you need to make a proactive effort. The level of effort is not as time consuming or difficult as you might think. It mostly involves pursuing your development objectives within situations that you're already a part of and utilizing resources that are already available to you.
For instance, each week you have to attend certain meetings. But what are you getting out of them? Making the effort to participate in rather than passively attend a meeting allows you to gain more from a situation that you are already a part of anyway. Similarly, you have to eat lunch each day. Why not make some of them more productive by inviting out and talking to people who can improve your knowledge of different topics, or who allow you to build new relationships and resources for yourself?
Go Beyond Your Company's Training Resources
Although there is a growing commitment by multinationals in China to develop their mainland staff into senior managers and future leaders for their organization, the execution of this is still inconsistent, even within the same organization. For instance, with corporate cultures in the mainland so results-driven, not all managers in a company pay the same level of attention to the development needs of their staff. Department and business unit heads carry many responsibilities, only one of which is to develop their team members. In addition, with so many opportunities to pursue in the market, many managers have little time to spend on coaching and mentoring their people.
No doubt, it's a big advantage having a boss who takes the time and has the ability to give you good feedback and career advice, or if your company can ensure your smooth career development through regular training opportunities. But if such resources are not available to you, does that mean you can't improve in those areas that are critical for your career development? Of course, it doesn't.
There are many ways for you to practice those things that will help get you closer to your future objectives. They mainly require you to make them happen for yourself. Anything that involves engaging people more, paying greater attention to situations, participating more, or taking greater initiative and accountability is going to be good for your professional development. Ultimately, the more you can take advantage of the situations that you are involved in each day, the faster you will develop yourself in the ways that you need to achieve your career success.
It's How You Apply What You Learn That Counts
This point was highlighted in a training workshop I delivered for a client that was launching a new, two-year leadership development program, where 45 high potentials were chosen from over 300 internal applicants. The program was a significant investment by the company to develop its next generation of management leaders.
At the program's kick-off event, the country manager for China came to address the participants with a few remarks. He began by congratulating them for their being selected. The message that he spent most of his time delivering, however, was that he wanted them to understand clearly that although their participation in the program was an excellent opportunity for their career development, it was not a guarantee for their success in the company. What would determine that was how well they applied the concepts emphasized in the program to their day-to-day work.
"As comprehensive as the training in our leadership program is designed to be, we are realistic as to how much affect it can have on the development of those participating in it," the managing director explained to me later. "What their ability to be promoted into future roles will be based on is their willingness to change and the daily effort they put into improving themselves. That's the same for any employee who is looking to accelerate their advancement in our company."
Learn How To Learn
In helping mainland professionals pursue their professional development and expand their approach to learning beyond the formal training situations they may encounter, Bob Aubrey also emphasizes the need to be more active in seeking out opportunities to practice and improve. "There was a famous study done in the mid-70s that showed that when it comes to a person's development, only about 10% of what we learn takes place inside a classroom and through books, even in the best situations," describes Bob. "However, the overwhelming amount of the skills and knowledge that we acquire, the other 90%, comes from our experiences and our exposure to situations and people. For your professional development, that's from things like your level of involvement in your work, your interaction with others, and even the difficulties you encounter and mistakes you make when taking on new tasks and challenges."
Utilize Those Opportunities Available To You
Leveraging daily situations and opportunities in the workplace is something that our global clients constantly tell us that they want their mainland employees to recognize and do more. In one example, the sales director of a mobile communication products company in Beijing told me of a situation in his department where several of his staff were always asking him if and when the company was planning to sponsor them for an MBA.
"They all seem to think that getting an MBA is the only way for them to improve themselves and get promoted to the next level," he described. "Although sponsoring staff for an MBA is something that we do, I tell them that with only a couple of openings available across our entire China operation each year, the odds are very long that they might be chosen for the program. Those selected must be exceptional in both their current performance and their potential as future executives for the company."
From the sales director's point of view, his staff were placing way too much emphasis on an MBA degree for their success in the company. "There are so many things they could be doing in their job each day that could help them improve their performance and deliver better results for the company," he continued. "Instead of being more involved and active in their current situation to practice in the areas that will prepare them for the roles they seek though, too much of their attention is directed at those things that are not easily accessible to them."
Kent Hambry sees the unwillingness of some mainland staff to even explore opportunities to develop new skills. "I once had a staff that I told about a position I had heard about in the company and that I thought might be an excellent opportunity for her to pursue," he recalls. "I gave her the name and number of the hiring manager and told her to contact him to find out more about the role. I even let the manager know that she would be calling him soon with some questions about the opportunity.
"When I happened to run into the manager a week later and asked him how his conversation went with my staff, he said that he never received her call. That was very disappointing. Nobody was talking about making any type of commitment at this stage. It was just a chance to gain some knowledge about an opportunity that could potentially further her career development. To me, mainland professionals need to step outside their comfort zone of familiar roles and situations every once in a while. In this case, there was absolutely no down side to just talking to the hiring manager."
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Another common characteristic among the highly successful executives I know is that they also take a proactive approach to leveraging situations and opportunities that allow them to learn and improve. Rather than sit around waiting for something to come their way, they seek out ways to get involved and participate. They try to be as active as they can and have a fundamental understanding that the more they do, the faster they'll learn and the better they'll get.
As a result, beyond just taking greater accountability for your own career development and success, your ability to DYFET is also about taking greater advantage of the situations and opportunities around you to develop the key capabilities you need. This is something that anyone can do in their company situation, regardless of how good or bad that may be. It mainly requires some resourcefulness and initiative on your part.
Especially if you are working in a multinational company, it is likely that you have exposure to a variety of situations and opportunities that can help you to learn and improve. To benefit from them, however, you need to make a proactive effort. The level of effort is not as time consuming or difficult as you might think. It mostly involves pursuing your development objectives within situations that you're already a part of and utilizing resources that are already available to you.
For instance, each week you have to attend certain meetings. But what are you getting out of them? Making the effort to participate in rather than passively attend a meeting allows you to gain more from a situation that you are already a part of anyway. Similarly, you have to eat lunch each day. Why not make some of them more productive by inviting out and talking to people who can improve your knowledge of different topics, or who allow you to build new relationships and resources for yourself?
Go Beyond Your Company's Training Resources
Although there is a growing commitment by multinationals in China to develop their mainland staff into senior managers and future leaders for their organization, the execution of this is still inconsistent, even within the same organization. For instance, with corporate cultures in the mainland so results-driven, not all managers in a company pay the same level of attention to the development needs of their staff. Department and business unit heads carry many responsibilities, only one of which is to develop their team members. In addition, with so many opportunities to pursue in the market, many managers have little time to spend on coaching and mentoring their people.
No doubt, it's a big advantage having a boss who takes the time and has the ability to give you good feedback and career advice, or if your company can ensure your smooth career development through regular training opportunities. But if such resources are not available to you, does that mean you can't improve in those areas that are critical for your career development? Of course, it doesn't.
There are many ways for you to practice those things that will help get you closer to your future objectives. They mainly require you to make them happen for yourself. Anything that involves engaging people more, paying greater attention to situations, participating more, or taking greater initiative and accountability is going to be good for your professional development. Ultimately, the more you can take advantage of the situations that you are involved in each day, the faster you will develop yourself in the ways that you need to achieve your career success.
It's How You Apply What You Learn That Counts
This point was highlighted in a training workshop I delivered for a client that was launching a new, two-year leadership development program, where 45 high potentials were chosen from over 300 internal applicants. The program was a significant investment by the company to develop its next generation of management leaders.
At the program's kick-off event, the country manager for China came to address the participants with a few remarks. He began by congratulating them for their being selected. The message that he spent most of his time delivering, however, was that he wanted them to understand clearly that although their participation in the program was an excellent opportunity for their career development, it was not a guarantee for their success in the company. What would determine that was how well they applied the concepts emphasized in the program to their day-to-day work.
"As comprehensive as the training in our leadership program is designed to be, we are realistic as to how much affect it can have on the development of those participating in it," the managing director explained to me later. "What their ability to be promoted into future roles will be based on is their willingness to change and the daily effort they put into improving themselves. That's the same for any employee who is looking to accelerate their advancement in our company."
Learn How To Learn
In helping mainland professionals pursue their professional development and expand their approach to learning beyond the formal training situations they may encounter, Bob Aubrey also emphasizes the need to be more active in seeking out opportunities to practice and improve. "There was a famous study done in the mid-70s that showed that when it comes to a person's development, only about 10% of what we learn takes place inside a classroom and through books, even in the best situations," describes Bob. "However, the overwhelming amount of the skills and knowledge that we acquire, the other 90%, comes from our experiences and our exposure to situations and people. For your professional development, that's from things like your level of involvement in your work, your interaction with others, and even the difficulties you encounter and mistakes you make when taking on new tasks and challenges."
Utilize Those Opportunities Available To You
Leveraging daily situations and opportunities in the workplace is something that our global clients constantly tell us that they want their mainland employees to recognize and do more. In one example, the sales director of a mobile communication products company in Beijing told me of a situation in his department where several of his staff were always asking him if and when the company was planning to sponsor them for an MBA.
"They all seem to think that getting an MBA is the only way for them to improve themselves and get promoted to the next level," he described. "Although sponsoring staff for an MBA is something that we do, I tell them that with only a couple of openings available across our entire China operation each year, the odds are very long that they might be chosen for the program. Those selected must be exceptional in both their current performance and their potential as future executives for the company."
From the sales director's point of view, his staff were placing way too much emphasis on an MBA degree for their success in the company. "There are so many things they could be doing in their job each day that could help them improve their performance and deliver better results for the company," he continued. "Instead of being more involved and active in their current situation to practice in the areas that will prepare them for the roles they seek though, too much of their attention is directed at those things that are not easily accessible to them."
Kent Hambry sees the unwillingness of some mainland staff to even explore opportunities to develop new skills. "I once had a staff that I told about a position I had heard about in the company and that I thought might be an excellent opportunity for her to pursue," he recalls. "I gave her the name and number of the hiring manager and told her to contact him to find out more about the role. I even let the manager know that she would be calling him soon with some questions about the opportunity.
"When I happened to run into the manager a week later and asked him how his conversation went with my staff, he said that he never received her call. That was very disappointing. Nobody was talking about making any type of commitment at this stage. It was just a chance to gain some knowledge about an opportunity that could potentially further her career development. To me, mainland professionals need to step outside their comfort zone of familiar roles and situations every once in a while. In this case, there was absolutely no down side to just talking to the hiring manager."
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