by Mary Lloyd,   CEO, Mining Silver

A while ago I wrote a piece on how being good at what you do is the best job insurance you can ever invest in.  Being good at what you do makes you too valuable to let go.   It makes you the best candidate for the new, bigger challenge.  And it makes you want to go to work–and enjoy being there.

Sounds like that should be it, right.  End of helpful suggestion, friendly advice, or whatever you want to call it.  However, most of us assume we are good at what we do without ever bothering to work at it.  And without looking for feedback to confirm our comfortable assumptions.

You don’t want to believe that you’re one of those, right? We all do it.  So the first step toward being really good, instead of just thinking you are, is to adopt an ongoing attitude of wanting to improve.

Perhaps you’re thinking that’s just not worth the effort.  When the economy is sour and pink slips are flying like snowflakes in January, the ”safer” inclination is to keep your head down.  To do what you are told and not try anything more.  Out of sight, out of the axeman’s mind, right? 

Not really.  The more you do to help the company make it through the bad times, the better your chances of being there–and on a fast track–when things improve.  That’s true whether you’re 23 or 63.

So…what can you do to be better at what you’re doing than you are today?  How can you know more–about the product, the customer, the competition?  How can you gain better skills–at telephone communication, writing effective e-mails, calling only essential meetings?  How can you do better with the paperwork?

Even in the perfect job, there are things that aren’t exactly bliss to accomplish.   If you’re good at what you do, you get them done timely anyway–without anyone having to hound you.  People who are good at what they do prepare.   And they follow up.  Are you an ace at all of that?

It doesn’t make any difference if you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the volunteer who gives cookies to donors once they’ve given blood, being good at what you do makes whatever you are involved in better for those you interact with.  That’s one payoff–people like working with you.

It also makes whatever you are doing better for you.  The phrase “half-hearted effort” says it all.  If you don’t care about what you are doing, doing it leaves you with half a heart.  It’s a case of prostitution in a way.  You’re selling your effort to something you don’t care about for some other benefit–money, social acceptance, being considered “holy,”  whatever.  

If you don’t like what you are doing, you need to find something else to do.  Something that you WANT to do–and want to be good at.

There are many aspects to this quest for excellence, but the first one has to be that you WANT TO BE GOOD AT IT.  You can be ten years old with your first paper route or ninety-two and playing roles as a patient for med students at some university–or smack dab in the middle of an “ordinary” career with too much work and not enough resources.  It doesn’t make any difference where you are when you decide to honor yourself by seeking to be outstanding at what you do.  It just means that you have found a path that will sustain you for your entire life.

Being good at what you do gives you traction externally, by being a valuable resource to the compnay and its customers.  It also give you more power internally because it helps you feel competent–and confident.   

So that’s the first step:  WANT to be good at what you’re putting your effort into.  I’ll offer more in the next few weeks on ways to do it–finding good resources, getting accurate feedback, and staying the course after a not-so-stellar performance. 

No matter what your age, being good at what you do is worth the effort.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

This article originally appeared in the Oct 2009 edition of Barbara Morris’s online newlsetter Put Old on Hold

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This idea that we must focus exclusively on advancement as a career path needs an overhaul.  We sacrifice “out” into a broader life experience and “around” into a more meaningful context when all we worry about is  “up” in our work lives.

A while back I did a presentation about giving older workers a way to keep working on a flexible basis.  That’s important, but it’s only part of the picture.  A wise 40-year old who spoke to me after the speech hammered this home when he said “You need to do something for those of us standing in line who deserve a chance to lead, too.”  He’s right.  This is not  just a case of letting the venerables of the company show up when they feel like it.

“Career” entered the corporate lexicon in the 1960’s.  Since then, the assumed career path is “Work hard, climb the ladder.  Work harder.  Climb higher.  And higher still if you can.  Then retire.”  And fall off the ladder instantly.

The going-up is full of stress and the going-down is WAY too abrupt.   Why do we keep doing it this way?
 
The current economic mess makes us yearn for the up….up….up.  But is a rocket the best analogy for fashioning a career?  It assumes one launch and then a climb into the stratosphere in a steady trajectory to great things–and then oblivion.  We miss so much using this image. Careers can have any shape.  The best is allows you to live the rest of your life at the same time. 

So back to the dilemma of giving retirement-aged workers meaningful opportunities AND young lions the chance to prove themselves as leaders.  We need to do both, but to get to that point, we need to change our sense of career trajectory.  A good career is not just a case of going up and up and up.  It also needs to include a well-thought stage of coming back down.    The way we currently do it is an  ascending straight line with a precipitous fall once we get to retirement. 

An inverted “U” with salary changes in sync with workload would be far more effective.  This would be good for employers who wouldn’t be paying fulltime salaries to people who are starting to throttle back unconsciously.  It would be better for employees since they could stay involved longer abd not deal with the abrupt changes and resulting physical and emotional perils of the traditional version of a career end.

Eventually, companies large and small will use their most experienced people as mentor and coach long term so the company gets the most benefit from their extensive experience.  Then younger leaders shouldering top roles will have access to wise counsel in their decision-making and fatr more extensive resouces for learning what their new roles involve.  At the same time, older workers will know their expertise is valued even as they are paid for fewer hours.

We need to get rid of the idea that throttling back implies a demotion to make this work though.  Cutting back on workload–with a resulting reduction in pay–in late career should be an assumed part of a career path.  If we were REALLY good at this, going to half time when kids are young or to care for a sick loved one would also be accepted practice.   We need to learn to value this kind of flexibility rather seeing it as a flaw or mistake when somone adopts it.

But we’re still fixated on rockets—launch, go into orbit, and stay there.  In reality, careers are more a series of attempts with varied outcomes and additional launches.  Consciously deciding what level we are shooting for each time we launch would be so much smarter.  With a young family or an ailing loved one, we shouldn’t shoot so high.  When we’ve already achieved a lot, moving from leading to giving wise couns–and making room for other things in your life–can be energizing.

A career is more like the space shuttle than the booster rockets that get it into space.  Yeah, there is a big deal launch, and a lot goes into getting ready.  But a shuttle does more than one mission.  It handles the garbage as part of its return duties.  It corrects problems it didn’t create.  And sometimes it gets into dilemmas that weren’t supposed to be part of the mission.  But most to the point, it’s really good at COMING BACK DOWN. 

We need to learn to come back down as part of a career path.  To throttle back as needed so that the rest of life occurs for the entire trip.  We need to launch more than once and when something doesn’t work, launch again without any of the current “failure” mindset. 

The ultimate value of a career is not in the height of the trajectory.  It’s in the quality of the life you lived while you were in it.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  Her passion is in capitalizing on the potential of those over 50.  Her website is http://www.mining-silver.com.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.