Now let's talk about the significance of your career and why getting good advice really matters.
Well, actually, there's a number of reasons why we're not
necessarily working off the best information possible right now.
And the first one actually starts with ourselves.
Do you know that we actually lie to ourselves in various ways
about how things are going now as it relates to our career?
We avoid uncomfortable truths, maybe truths like how we're performing today,
what skills we need to build, how our reputation is, and
because of that, we're often not making the best possible choices.
We'll talk about how to overcome that.
The second reason that we sometimes are not acting on the best
possible advice is that we sometimes gravitate to advice that is simple.
Maybe it feels good, but it can often lead to bad outcomes.
Often that advice is incomplete.
Sometimes the simplicity is by using one person as an example.
We can read about someone famous, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates.
But unless we're Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, we won't have the success that they have.
The advice is compelling, but it's way too simplistic.
And finally, there's one challenge with the place that you might think of
would be the normal source of great advice, and that's our organizations.
All the reality is sometimes our organizations are actually withholding advice. Promise.
Our own view is that sometimes the training provided by organizations or the conversations,
career conversations they're having withhold certain realities about career, for example, the politics of
organizations, all of these things get in the way of us having the advice.
We need to have more of what we want at work.
So you need advice.
The question is what type of advice and where do you look for good advice? There is
no shortage of advice. There is abundance of it, but much is contradictory, incomplete or misleading.
For example, work will speak for itself.
Well, that's not always true. Just like as good things come to those who wait, well, you can
be waiting for a very long time while those who advocate for their own career are getting ahead.
Or another advice, Be authentic.
Doesn't that sound nice? Be authentic. Well, you know, toddlers are very authentic. They pee themselves and they laugh about it.
The whole process of socialization is so that we are less authentic and more compliant with
what's expected of us when we're acting according to the rules and the expectations. Well, the
chances are greater that will be giving those options and opportunities that are typically associated with
career success and fulfillment. So there is a danger in relying on those outlier cases that
Angela was talking to you about. Like, like, like, like Steve Jobs.
It's Great to be inspired by them. But those are
extraordinary people. And what we advocate for is learning from
examples of an average successful person. Think about it.
An average successful person. Who is an average successful person in your
organization? What do they do? What can you learn from them?
Or in your environment, among your friends and
your family, who is an average successful person?
So don't rely on universal advice. It's also advice given by others.
And we don't want to live by others expectations of us.
We want to live our own lives and our own careers.
Recently I've had a conversation with a person and we were talking about how she could
get more of what she wants and how she can get the next promotion. I asked
her if she was considered a high potential in her organization and she said, yeah, yeah,
I'm in the green box. And that was meant, okay, she was considered a, a key
talent, a person earmarked for promotion. And we started talking about what's important to her.
And she talked how in her family she was always the golden child, the poster child and
everyone would always use her as an example. So the expectations of her were much greater. Okay,
at least somebody in the family has achieved that. Oh, we have such great expectations for her.
And then she looked at me and she said, Sergey, I. I don't want to be in that green box.
I'm done.
I just want to live a comfortable life.
And that was a realization that living by the expectations of others
can take you far away from the career on your terms.
And Sergey, let me comment on why it is so important that we don't do that.
There is an abundance of research that demonstrates the importance of being satisfied
at work and the repercussions for those of us that are not satisfied.
Some of it we would get to. Just logically, we spend about 90,000 hours of our life working.
It's about a third of our time and half of our waking hours.
Well, just intuitively we would want to be happy doing that.
But the science confirms it's not just our happiness that's at stake.
If you want to improve outcomes, for example, for your physical health, work in a great company doing work that you love.
The science is clear. You'll have lower incidence of heart disease, things like
blood pressure, things like diabetes, or all of those things are worsened when
we're not in jobs that we love, when we're not satisfied at work.
And it's not just our physical or even our mental health, other things are impacted.
If you want a better relationship with your family, with your partner, with your children
with your neighbors, work in a great company doing work that you love.
The science confirms all of those aspects of our life
are better when we also report satisfaction at work.