Developing Personal Resilience at Work
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This week is about career advancement, development, and grit.
Essentially, what do you have to lose?
When it comes to asking for a raise, networking inside your company with executives to make connections, or negotiating salary if you're offered a job internally or externally, what have you got to lose?
If there's one thing that I could do, I would love to imbue everybody with a little bit more confidence around these things. I think a lot of people are afraid to ask for what they want because they think that the consequences will be really terrible.
Okay, some context, of course.
I also understand there's context to this: Yes, some bosses are terrible and some workplaces retaliate. But for the most part, if you are a great, intentional employee, you cannot lose your job by asking for a raise. And if you've applied for a position, gone through interviews and you've been offered a position, they will not rescind the offer because you ask for more money or you negotiate with them. That's not a consequence that will happen.
The other thing that I think is important for career development and advancement is to network with executives inside your company and higher-level leaders.
Not to be a kiss-ass or play politics, but go to that person, sit down and say, “Look, this is where I want to go in my career. How do I get there? What is the fastest path to that? What are the skills and things that you need to see from me? Or if I want to have your job in ten years or five years, what is the path to get there?”
Make those connections and network inside your organization, just have those conversations. They don't have to be nervous and weird. It can just be set up in a way where you’re approaching them for advice.
To culminate all of this in one single piece of advice:
To put all of this cleanly in one bite-sized tip for your career, it is this:
Never say "no" on behalf of the other person.
I see a lot of friends, colleagues and just hear lots of stories and this resonates with me at times in my career as well, where people don't apply for the job because they believe they wouldn’t qualify. They don’t ask for a raise because they think they won’t get it.
Are you crazy? Again, don't ever say no on behalf of the other person. Go and ask. The worst thing that can happen as they say no. And then you're in exactly the same boat as if you hadn't asked. But so many times, it could turn out in your favor. Do not break that rule for yourself, let them be the one to say no.
If you adopt that mindset and if you go and ask more and try for more things, apply for more jobs that you don't necessarily think you're ready for, it will turn out sometimes in a surprisingly positive way.
Grit plays a huge role here
It requires us to embrace resilience as a mentality and behavior for yourself. It requires a little bit more grit, because if you go and ask for things that you could potentially hear a “no” from, you're going to hear more no's.
You're also going to hear some yeses, that are great. But you need to adopt a certain amount of resilience around hearing a no that you go and ask for something and you get rejected.
You will be unstoppable if you can go from set back to set back or rejection to rejection or failure to failure without losing steam and just believe it’s one single no.
It is one word in one sentence in one paragraph in one chapter of the book of my life, is never a huge deal.
Build tactical skills to help you.
One last point that I want to make about this that will also help you is some of these things are not things that you are skilled in and born knowing how to do, like negotiating salary if you've been offered a job, or asking for a raise. There are countless hours of free advice on YouTube to learn how to do these things, to interview well, to ask for a raise, to negotiate salary, go and gain those skills.
Before you have a round of interviews, you can go spend an hour on YouTube and have a ton of language and word tracks and things to say that will help you in that process.
Take that upon yourself to feel empowered.
Go and ask for it. Have some more confidence, have more resilience and grit so that you can hear a no without feeling totally deflated.
Educate yourself, gain the skills, gain the knowledge, learn what are the most effective ways to ask for a raise or negotiate a salary. And never, ever say “no” on behalf of the other person.
Want more?
This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop