What Is Success? And, How Do I Get There?

By: Shari Lindner
Associate Director, Graduate Business Career Services,

Zarb School of Business, Hofstra

As a Career Coach and Mentor I am often looked at to provide strategies to individuals to be successful in their professional journeys.  Often what people don’t realize is that the success of their professional journey is linked to their personal experiences and learned behaviors. By being aware of your strengths, areas in need of improvement, and personal motivators you can better maximize your output in the professional sphere and soar to the land of success! So, how do you get started?

1. Improve Your Self Awareness. Being aware of what you bring to the table is key to your success, as well as to the success of the organization.  This is by far the most important component to success, because if you're not aware of your abilities then how can you maximize your output to be successful? Strategies to improve your self awareness are asking for performance feedback from your manager and/or peers, and following up on any areas that need improvement. I also highly recommend that you keep notes from your performance evaluations as they can be useful when practicing for an interview or even creating bullet points for your resume. Next, talk to your friends and family members who know your true self, and ask them for feedback on what they believe your strengths and values are? You can also take self assessments such as Career Leader, PRINT, or similar, which are available online. The key to being self aware is not only knowing your individual attributes, but continuously working towards improving them throughout your lifetime. As we get older these attributes may shift and change based on our life experiences and learned behaviors, so your task is to periodically assess yourself to maintain your self awareness.

2. Don't Get Comfortable. When we think of relationships one of the natural progressions that occurs is the increased comfort level with our partner, and similarly this happens with our jobs. However, when we get too comfortable in our workplace we sometimes relax our standards and tend to accept certain behaviors that we would not usually accept. So, how do you avoid the workplace rut? You need to continually challenge yourself, make your voice and ideas heard, don't accept the bare minimum, and don't stick to the status quo...challenge it! Try thinking strategically about how you can individually contribute to the success of the office and then create tangible steps to get there.

3. Think Innovation. Having had conversations with colleagues and other professionals on this topic, being creative and developing ideas which support the organizational mission motivates work performance.  As a thought leader in your organization, being innovative can enable you to make a greater impact. Creativity and the ability to not only visualize the big picture of your organization, but also create action steps to get there is key to being a thought leader.  Please note though that having a great idea, and strategy to execute it, does not automatically mean it will be adopted. The key to you being successful in this process is overcoming the challenges that may face, show tact in your delivery, and if you believe in your ideas, then DON'T GIVE UP!

4. Manage up. Its critical to understand how your manager works and how to communicate respectfully and efficiently so you can be the most effective employee and bring value to your organization. So, how do you react when you may have a great strategic initiative that you would like to implement, and your manager says “No”?  Understand that an emotional reaction will not lead you to the right solution. Take a step back, ask clarifying questions, gather your thought process on how to accept this decision and think about moving forward with a revised initiative.

5. Listen To Your Thought Partner. Everyone should have one person in their lives that can be a sounding board for their ideas, successes, and challenges. This thought partner could be a spouse, parent, co-worker, or friend who is able to actively listen and challenge your way of thinking and provoke you to be innovative. People who engage regularly with their thought partners tend to achieve higher levels of performance and success. So, who is your thought partner? Identify your thought partner and get to work!

Success is measured differently by everyone and there is no 100% perfect solution to success. Each journey we take, both personal and professional, will have pros and cons. The question you need to ask yourself is, “Do the pros of the experience outweigh the cons?" If so, then you have been successful in your journey! Get excited, get motivated, and be proud of what you have accomplished!

I hope this has been helpful :)