It certainly is challenging to navigate today’s cloudy, sometimes threatening, corporate environment, and yet, I know you can, and once you conquer the storms, you’ll thrive to generate an awesome career.
Check Out the Skies: When it comes to predicting weather-fronts, looking up isn’t a bad idea; and it is the same in companies. More often than not, your senior decision-makers are barometers revealing organizational stressors. This tenet is why building relationships throughout the business, but notably with the senior-most executives of the organization, is advantageous. Why? Gaining an inkling concerning the plans of the company has you strategizing earlier rather than later, so you can face the adverse weather armed with the appropriate gear. Advanced warning is the answer to saving lives as destructive weather approaches, and it is the same, in your corporate life.
Test the Winds: If the currents of change are swirling riotously in your organization, check-out how powerful, damaging, and turbulent they are. As often as I counsel speaking up is a leadership quality, the reality is there are times that demand you seek a safe place to hunker down. You see the other side of leadership is recognizing hurricane-like storms and if you can’t do anything to stop its destruction, get out of the way. When the winds have fully swept over you, the time is ripe to step out of your storm cellar to be the leader who brings your company back from the brink of disaster. So, stick out your proverbial finger and test the wind.
Measure the Rain Levels: Rain is good for the land producing abundance for everyone, but too much is too much, saturating and wearing away the ground under you. What would rain be like in the corporation? Could it be insincere, effusive praise? Could it be ineffectual leadership that sets the corporation adrift in a sea of indecisiveness? Yes, rain is good, but too much softens the earth just as too little structure erodes employee engagement leaving devastation behind. Demonstrating healthy leadership, no matter the environment will only enrich your future.
Rise Out Of the Ashes: In Australia, there is a wonder called the Spring of Fire, which is a time when the land burns and then, in the spring blooming flowers erupt out of what appears to be barren soil. This phenomenon only happens once never to occur again… that’s until another fire erupts! Blazes befall everyone’s career at some point. Awesomeness bursts forth out of the ashes. Remain, on track regardless of the inferno flaming around you.
Gauge The Snow Fall: Interestingly enough, those who live outside the cold weather states may not appreciate the full benefits of snow, but it is far more essential to the land than for the fun activities of skiing, sledding, snowboarding, etc. The snowpack is critical to the water level for the following seasons. Just as in corporations, fun, uplifting experiences are far more critical than one would think. In fact, such times nourish the employee’s heart through the good and bad seasons. What climate can you create to find joy and satisfaction in the work you do every day, so you’re filled with reserves to meet the hard times sure to come? Cultivating your attitude-pack is your job.
There’s no question an awesome future rests in your hands. It’s determined by how you pilot your career through the good and bad atmospheric pressures of your organization.