…. Will You Be Home?  First in a Series

By Julie Adamen

In my business I have the pleasure of helping others achieve their goals – or providing stepping-stones for them to reach their goals. There is nothing more satisfying for me than working with candidates and employers who see and understand opportunity when it presents itself, act upon it with intelligence and prudence, and move forward towards their ultimate professional goals. These people, as you can imagine, generally move up professionally with humor and grace, are the ones others turn to for counseling and advice, become Vice Presidents, business owners or large-scale on site managers.

Unfortunately, many people I talk to are antithesis of the above: They just can’t get there from here. They cannot see, for the life of them, opportunity staring them in the face. It’s frustrating for the candidate, who doesn’t understand why they can’t move up or on in the business. The myopia makes me want to pull my hair out! And all this made me think: What exactly is it that sets the “High Achievers” apart from the herd? And here it is: The Achievers are able to recognize and act upon opportunity as it presents itself.

There are many reasons why some people are unable to see and understand opportunity. Often times these people are “overwhelmed by the now,” i.e., so caught up in the day-to-day emergencies that so rule their lives they are unable to see beyond them. These are the people who look wistfully at others saying, “Gee, I wish I could have done that! What a lucky break they must have received!” In reality, luck has very, very little to do with professional success. Professional success is predicated upon a person being able to recognize and act upon opportunity when it presents itself.  This crucial ability does not come from out of the blue, but requires that a person be professionally and personally prepared to recognize a given set of circumstances, evaluate them fairly quickly and comprehensively, and, if the opportunity is positive, make a move towards that opportunity.

Do You Hear the Knocking?

From my experience I have learned that the tools for recognizing opportunity and making that opportunity reality are comprised of certain elements, these are:

• Professional Development
• Professional Fortitude
• Personal Fortitude
• Flexibility
• Attitude
• Family Support

All of these elements are crucial for any person to recognize an opportunity as it presents itself and turn that opportunity in to reality. You will notice each of these elements is intricately entwined with the others. One leads to another, which leads to another, which directly affects an aspect of all of them, which circles back to the beginning. If opportunity is presented to a person who is missing any one of the critical elements, no matter how attractive or beneficial the opportunity actually is, it will be passed by. In our business, we cannot let one, let alone more than one, opportunity pass.  The world is very competitive place, and those opportunities are few and far between. Let’s look at the elements, or building blocks, in detail and how and why they help us achieve our ultimate professional goals by opportunity recognition.

The Building Blocks to Recognize Opportunity and Act on Opportunity

Professional Development.

As with any job you have to do, you know you feel a lot better about the results if you are prepared for the job by having the right tools. Ongoing Professional Development leads to professional competence, which in turn leads to personal and professional self-confidence.

Education. I cannot stress enough how important professional education, in all its forms, is as the foundation of the ability to recognize opportunity. If you are skating by, just taking the minimal courses to remain “certified” or, worse yet, whining because you can’t get your employer or association to pay for your education (and I hear that a lot) you are being myopic. Yes, yes, I know that the classes can be boring, that you may already know all that stuff, that it’s real inconvenient to take a day off and go to a class, or, worse yet, climb out of your bubble of comfort and travel somewhere to take a class or attend a seminar – but your failure to do so hurts no one but you. Education builds not only your professional self confidence, but helps to build the higher skills necessary for you to carve out the job you do obtain in to what you want it to be.

Experience. Think back to when you were a child – and you had your very first sleepover at someone else’s house. It was scary to be aware from your folks for the first time all night. But once you did it, it wasn’t so bad. After a few years, you could go to summer camp for weeks at a time and be ok, and then off to college. Even though each of these is a different experience, they are all based on the fact that you were confident in your ability to be ok without your parents there, even if you didn’t know exactly what to expect with each situation. The same is true in your professional life. Experience teaches us, more than anything else that we can handle what is thrown at us, because 99% of the time each problem is a variation on a very familiar theme.  Through these experiences, we develop a professional ease and confidence that allows us to see problems as challenges.  So, although it’s very comfortable to stay in our little trenches, digging away, looking at the same dirt, all day long, year in and year out – let’s look up every now and then and see if maybe we’d like to drive the earth mover for awhile – just for the view – and the experience. 

Contacts. Making, establishing and keeping open contacts is the third leg of Professional Development. You make those contacts at classes, trade shows, industry functions, etc. You keep those contacts – by continually attending those events – and others - continually widening your circle of professional affiliations. Over a period of time, you will, just by attending functions, know far more people in the business than you would otherwise – thus casting your professional net ever wider. That wider net will continually feed you information about your industry: What others have as professional duties, what they are compensated for services, how their compensation package is either above or below what you would expect, where they are going professionally, where they heard great opportunity might be developing, and where you may see a great opportunity no one else does. Professional Development does not come in a vacuum. Contacts = Information. Information is the most powerful tool in recognizing opportunity. 

Fortitude.

“The strength of mind that enables one to endure adversity with courage.”[1]

Professional Fortitude. When you have professional fortitude and are presented with an opportunity, you don’t have a long and unproductive inner dialogue about what could go wrong and how because you do not fear the challenge. You don’t worry about whether or not you’ll be able to handle the new situations the opportunity comes with, you don’t worry that it will be an unfamiliar Board, unfamiliar co-workers and other “people I don’t know.” Professional fortitude – having come forth through continuing professional development – allows you confidence in dealing with “new” situations.  Of course, those with professional fortitude know that there really aren’t many “new” situations. In fact, they are much like others they have dealt with in the past, with just a couple of little twists. And those little twists are what keep your job interesting and challenging.

Professional fortitude, maybe better described as professional courage, put quite simply, means you have an innate understanding of, and confidence in, your abilities and you use those abilities to your advantage in whatever situation you are thrust. Thus – opportunity is never shunned out of fear. Professional fortitude allows you to be confident enough in your professional abilities to act on any given opportunity.

Personal Fortitude.  In our experience, personal fortitude is a major stumbling block for the average person who may recognize opportunity, yet is unable to act upon it because of personal issues.  These people are so untrusting of themselves and their judgment, and fearful of the unknown, they are crushed under the weight having to make even the smallest change in their personal lives because they are paralyzed by “what ifs?” 

Most times, in recognizing and then acting upon opportunity, you are faced with making a life altering decision – one that may or will affect your income, living arrangements and family arrangements. You will probably hurt someone’s feelings, step on some toes (real or imagined), find yourself out of the box that others have carefully placed you in, and generally out of sync with what you and others thought you were, at least for awhile. This can and must be ok with you. Because you know that new friends will be there for the meeting, new homes waiting to be lived in and new locales to be explored.   There is no doubt that the ability to knowingly and willingly make a life altering decision, allowing you access to an opportunity, takes a certain strength and personal fortitude.

Personal fortitude is forged through personal peace of mind, by putting your personal life in order.

This month we have talked about some of the key elements to understanding and recognizing opportunity when it knocks. We see finding opportunity is not a matter of luck, but of developing and utilizing the necessary skills to not only see the opportunity, but to act upon it. We’ll continue next month with Part 2 and examine the following significant elements:

• Flexibility
• Attitude
• Family Support

All parts of seeing, understanding and being able to act upon opportunity when it presents itself and move forward towards our ultimate professional goals.