Ten Career Limiting Moves for Executives

As you move up the executive ranks, there are certain behaviors that will give you a boost, and others that are very career limiting moves. Here are some of the career limiting moves and how to avoid them.

1). Getting too close to your boss. This may seem counter-intuitive, but don’t let yourself get too close to the boss. It is especially important not to be friends with the boss. Be friendly. Invite the boss and his/her spouse to dinner (preferably at a nice restaurant). Accept any invitations given to you. But never, never think that the boss is your friend. S/He isn’t. If the choice comes between you and losing his/her job, which do you think will win? And letting the boss know your personal life challenges can only lead to disaster.

2). An office romance. There is an old saying that applies. “Don’t dip your quill into the office inkwell ‘cause someone will come along and cut your feathers off.” Crude, but true. As soon as you enter into an office romance, you are a target.

I tried to tell this to one young friend of ours who started to go out with a senior official of her company while she was consulting there. It didn’t last. Neither did she. If you absolutely must date someone you’ve met at work, one of you should quit and find other employment if it looks promising after 3 or 4 dates. Otherwise there is a very large hole in your armor.

3). Dishonesty anywhere. If someone is dishonest with me they’ve just been dishonest with someone who has a very large Rolodex and isn’t afraid to use it. A moving company did something dishonest to my widowed mom. They didn’t want to deal with it when I brought it to their attention. I let my network know what they’d done. The next day they received over two hundred phone calls from people. They wound up making a fairly large settlement.

Honest disagreements will happen. But cheating someone, stealing from them, or defrauding them will get around very rapidly and ruin your career chances. I know one gentleman who had to move out of town because of a bad reputation. Great guy, but had made a few judgment errors. Run your life and your business with integrity, or you’ll pay the price.

4). Letting your network lapse. I see too many of my clients let their networks lapse once they get employed. This is a very large mistake. In fact, the lack of a network is how most of the transition executives I deal with got in the position of needing to utilize my services in the first place. Keep up your network!

5). Losing focus. Everyone has life issues that arise. There are deaths and illnesses and other unforeseen cosmic noogies that surface from time to time. Take a few vacation days, deal with it as well as possible, but then focus on your work again. Don’t get sidetracked with volunteer work, family issues, and so on.

6). Identifying with the company. One of my clients was a true company man. He had a company shirt, a company ball cap, a company cup, and even a company crest ring. Yep. He was a good company man right up to the time he was laid off. A goodly portion of his identity was temporarily taken away. You work for a company, you don’t live for a company, unless it is yours. Even with the fact that my wife, Nicole, and I are in practice together and our name is on the letterhead, we don’t live for the company. We live for life and work at our company. But we’d still be us if we didn’t have the company. You should take the same attitude.

7). Taking the part of employees. Don’t get too close to your employees. I made this mistake early in my executive career. The employees had some legitimate gripes, and I went to bat for them. That was a very big mistake. Don’t make it.

Do what you can to look like you’re on the side of employees while making sure that your superiors know that you are pushing the corporate agenda. If you want to right injustices, join the Peace Corp or start your own company where you can put your ideals into effect. But don’t try to reform corporate America. It won’t work and it annoys the powers that be.

8). Thinking you know all the answers. One of the most rapidly growing careers is that of Executive Coach. Why? Because intelligent executives know that they need to have an independent sounding board to bounce things off of and some independent advice. If you don’t have one, get one. But watch yourself. Make sure that the individual you’re contracting is experienced and skilled. Often times your company will pay for this.

9). Isolating yourself. Keep up. Read. Watch CNN and other stations. Talk with others outside of your company. Join associations and groups where you can, not only network, but also meet like-minded people.

10). Mixing personal and professional life. Keep the office at the office and the home at home. Don’t let anyone see much of your personal life. I rarely invite clients to my home. My home is my home.

I used to have an office in my home (in Highlands Ranch at the time) where I’d see clients. This did have some advantages. But it also let them see too much of me and my family. It is usually a mistake to bring the office home or the home to the office.

These, of course, aren’t the only career-limiting moves that executives can do, but are a few of the big ones. Watch for my upcoming book Highly Cynical Career Management to be published around the December holidays. In the meantime, watch your back and watch yourself!

Figure Out What You Want and Go For It

The most important challenge for a rising executive is to figure out what he or she wants in his or her career and life. Until this all-important question is answered all of the career moves, the politicking, and the climbing of the ladder remain unimportant.

There are three vital questions to ask in this — and in this order.

1). Who am I? There is an old saying that if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. It has a great deal of truth to it.

Executives (and everyone else) must first know what they’re made of. What is it that you’d die for? What do you live for? What will you do if faced with a conflict between your job and your ethical/moral system? Do you have a price? What is it, and can you look yourself in the shaving or make-up mirror afterwards?

It is vital to know your values and your mission in life. What did God send you here for? If you’re uncomfortable with the “God” term, substitute your own question there, such as “What am here this time around for,” or “What purpose does the Universe have for me?” They wind up as the same question. Why the heck are you here.

When I ask some of my clients that question I get some pretty scary answers. They include “To build a comfortable life for me, my wife and kids.” Really? Really? The whole Universe has planned to have you here so you can have a nice house and two SUV’s and the money to buy gas for them? Wow…what a wasted life.

I would hope that the talents, skills and brains that you’ve been given give something better back to humanity as a whole than your wife and kids being able to shop at Needless Mark-ups (Neiman Marcus) and go on European vacations and drive a nice car.

What are you here for? A nice life is a nice perk, but it isn’t a Life Purpose. Who are you? What are you going to give back to humanity — and I’m not talking about the $10 bill you slip into the Church collection plate the once a month you show up. I’m talking about what Service you’re going to do for the world. Think about it.

(If you truly think that your highest and best purpose is to make you, your wife and kids comfy, you probably are just going to get very angry reading this blog, as you’ve probably figured out that I think having that as “life purpose” is incredibly shallow.)

2). Where am I going? As J.R.R. Tolkien had Biblo write, “Not all those who wander are lost.” But most are.

If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to get there? What would you like people to say about you at your funeral? Being the wealthiest person in the graveyard is not terribly valuable…unless that wealth is in people you’ve helped and those who you’ve loved and who have loved you.

If you’re going to the top chair, why do you want to get there? Do you think you can make a difference as a CEO in people’s lives?

Most of my “C” Level clients wanted that position to make people’s lives better. They wanted to see their employees treated more justly, see a better product made to serve their customers, ensure excellence in ethics and communication, or some purpose that has a bit of nobility to it.
Many others choose to leave that path and pursue a path of making a difference in other ways.

Which path are you going to choose? Why?

3). Who do I want to go there with? Few of us walk totally alone. Figure out if you’re a hermit or if you want to walk with a large group of people.

Then figure out what kind of people you want to have around you. Do you want to work for a large company, or a small one? Do you want to start your own company? Figure out who you want to go with and then stick to your guns. Don’t be swayed by money. Take it from one who knows, money comes and money goes. Money is like the rain. It is here today, but maybe not tomorrow, and it doesn’t matter how much you have. But you can always make more. Making money is easy. Finding a group of people with honor and integrity is tough.

Find a group of people to walk with who have honor and integrity and the dollars (and millions of dollars) will, to some degree, take care of themselves. Align yourself with dishonorable people and/or become dishonorable yourself and it won’t matter how much money you have. A millionaire jerk is still just a jerk. Live with honor or improve the gene pool by leaving it rapidly.

Remember what Mom and Dad used to say about the company we keep and the friends we have? They were right. We are known by the company we keep. We are also known by the Company we work for.

Figuring out with whom you will walk your life path is absolutely vital to your happiness. Choose wisely. Think of the gas and time you’ll save by not having to visit any of your friends in Club Fed Minimum Security doing 10 – 15.

These three questions are essential ones for any individual at any time, but absolutely vital for those climbing the executive ladder. Know who you are, where you’re going and choose carefully with whom you will go and success will follow. Ignore any of these and you’ll fall off that ladder sooner or latter — usually sooner.

All the best,

J.