by Solange Lopes | Oct 29, 2014 | Career |
Opportunist-quote – Photo: itsfunny.org
Up until recently, I thought opportunism, especially in the workplace, was distasteful at best, and frankly offensive at its worst. Well, I got to think again, and after years in the corporate jungle, came to realize being an opportunist can actually be a good thing at work (when done the right way)…
Granted, there are always those people whose opportunism irks the pink socks out of you, and who should be dealt with in a certain way. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an opportunist is defined as “someone who tries to get an advantage or something valuable from a situation without thinking about what is fair or right.” Doesn’t sound terribly positive, does it now?
Yet, although one should not act in a manner that is unfair to others, at work or in life, mastering the art of taking advantage of opportunities can prove crucial to building success:
1. Learn to identify opportunities, especially untapped ones! Helping out on a project that would look great on your resume or Linked In profile? Take advantage of the work you’ve done and skills you’ve acquired! Is there a big review looming near you could go ahead and ask to perform first! Why not?
2. Deliver, deliver, deliver! Forget about the “under-promise, over-deliver” adage! Focus on delivering above and beyond all the time! Always dig deeper, question the status quo, and deliver aggressive, strong results!
3. Use your environment! You have countless untapped resources around you, from gifted co-workers to optimal systems, not to mention the abundant learning opportunities offered by technology. Use them, respectfully yet ruthlessly! Learn as much as you can, ask questions, pick your higher-ups and co-workers’ brains. In the end, advancing yourself does advance all of us, even if only by example…
Are you an opportunist at work?
The Corporate Sis.
by Solange Lopes | Oct 13, 2014 | Career |
Do you need office street-smarts – Photo: essence.com
My friend F. is a successful banking manager. When I asked her how she managed to get her last promotion, and do so well at work while raising two kids, maintaining her marriage and never losing her biting sense of humor, she simply replied: “Girl, you’ve gotta be street-smart, degrees are all well, but you’ve gotta work it smart!”
According to the Free Dictionary, being street-smart means “having the shrewd resources to survive in an urban environment.” Well, I would slightly disagree with this definition. In my book, street-smarts does mean having the shrewd resources to survive not just in an urban environment, but rather in any environment, especially in this corporate jungle called work. It makes the difference between those who are ready to successfully tackle the job market, vs. those who really need more office preparedness. Just last year, according to the Wall Street Journal, while nearly 80% of college students said they were “very” or “completely” ready to put their organization skills to work, only 54% of hiring managers agreed with the assessment.
Wall Street legendary trader Ace Greenberg was himself a perfect example of the fact that “degrees and pedigree aren’t a substitute for hard work and street smarts“, as “Greenberg was rejected from a few Wall Street firms before landing at Bear”. Does a formal, even prestigious college education, matters for career advancement? Certainly, yet what matters even more, is what you do with it. Many are the examples of successful moguls who never made it through college, from Dell computer founder Michael Dell to Microsoft founder and Harvard dropout Bill Gates. They made it with the insight, intuition and resourcefulness they possessed, and frankly some of that is seriously missing from the workplace these days.
As the pressure to obtain more and more degrees and engage into more and more continuing education mounts, not enough emphasis is being put on cultivating career street-smarts. From shrewd networking skills to creativity in solving problems at work, to how to navigate the political landscape of our careers, not enough resources are readily available to help.
So do you need career street-smarts more than book-smarts to advance your career? One does not necessarily need to outweigh the other. Yet as you further your career and get ready for your big break, keep in mind you’re going to need just as much street-smart material than book-smart to make it….
The Corporate Sis.
by Solange Lopes | Sep 15, 2014 | Career
Cartoons are great for your career – Photo credit: http://abcpartyideasforgirls.org
I watch a lot of cartoons, much more than I ever thought I would. Not because over time, my taste drastically changed and I evolved from Sex and the City to Doc Mcstuffins. I just happen to be a mom of toddlers.
Yet, have you ever wondered what cartoons had to do, if anything, with your career? In an era where work appears to be (and not so seamlessly so) integrated with our lives, what could seasoned professionals learn from a bunch of cartoon characters?
I believe all our experiences enrich us, and the different areas of our lives happen to all work together to make us who we are. And that also would happen to be who we take to work and expect all kinds of successful achievements from…So if we can enjoy Doc McStuffins, or sing along Frozen’s lyrics, why could we not leverage our cartoon acumen all the way into our careers:
1. Cartoons remind us it’s OK to dream…Actually, it’s recommended to dream, especially in our careers. It’s because work has lost its ability to make us aspire to bigger and better that we stop trying as hard. Or maybe because our aspirations have changed? Our baby boomer parents worked for their white picket fenced-homes, now under water. What is our generation of millenials dreaming of? Are we even dreaming any more?
2. The Impossible is really disguised Possibility…In the midst of all the career strategizing, professional path charting, planning and predicting, we often forget to make room for some good ol’ faith in the seemingly Impossible! We forget we CAN have the career of our dreams, we CAN look forward to work, and we CAN make a difference, yes, at work…
3. Good guys do finish first. Last but not least, I believe the most important career lesson of cartoons is just that. Good guys win! Even though it seems they’re destined to lose, they do end up winning, and saving a whole lot of people in the process. It wouldn’t be as much fun to watch the hypocritical financier, or the corrupt investment banker, win and screw everyone over, right? Well, then maybe we should keep those same values, good ol’ Integrity, Honesty and Hard Work as part of our corporate jungle too…
The Corporate Sis
by Solange Lopes | Feb 11, 2014 | Career
beat the competition – madamenoire.com
The corporate world is not your neighborhood’s annual barbecue fest. There’s a reason why it’s often called the “corporate jungle”. It’s tough, and to succeed in it, especially as a corporate sister, you’ve got to be able to roll with the punches. And not even that is enough…
I once worked for a great Director who would consistently outline in my reviews the following: “It’s not enough to solve problems when they present themselves; you’ve got to anticipate them”. Really? I just racked my brain trying to figure out this huge reserves variance, and now you want me to have been able to anticipate it. Am I supposed to have sensory powers to predict the future state of the Company’s financials too?
As much as his comment always rubbed me the wrong way, I have to admit in hindsight that he was right. The best competitive advantage is gained right at the onset, and preparation is KEY to turn each day into a success and beat your competition before it even realizes what’s coming their way or had their second cup of coffee..:, even before 9 am:
- Learn from your day: In order to start strong, one’s got to reflect on their successes
Learning – pjmclure.com
and failures. On a small scale, what this means is being able to examine how your day went and take away those things that worked, and those that…well, did not work quite so well. Are we talking about an hour-long introspective process cutting into all our deadlines and to-do’s? Not quite, we know there’s not enough time for it. Yet getting in the habit of (quicly) mentally re-assessing your day will help you register what worked well (like that inpromptu meeting with the otherwise uber-busy Controller), and what did not work so well (like spending 2 hours preparing or analyzing the wrong sales forecast…arrghh, it happens!). And the more you get in the habit of continually assessing and re-assessing your day, the easier it will become to tailor your work responses and habits towards increased effectiveness, which brings me to my next point…
- Prepare your “to-do” list for the next day the night before: One of the most
To-DO-List – bentbutnotbroken.org
effective ways to successfully confront daily challenges is not just to prepare for them, but also to anticipate them. Carving out at least a half-hour to an hour towards the end of every day, based on your prior (quick) assessment of how your day went, is a great way to get ahead of your competition at work. Besides, it has been proven that making a to-do list the night before allows your brain to methodically churn out the best ways to accomplish your goals and objectives for the next day…And it also gives the Universe an opportunity to put the right people and situations in your way to get these goals accomplished…
- Start the next day big…or small: While there are two schools of thought when it
start-small – coreexcellence.com
comes to how to most effectively start your day, either with smaller tasks you can rapidly check off your list, or with big tasks that will consume more time and energy, you still need to pick your approach. I personally believe that how you start your day is better suited to the type of personality you have. I tend to struggle with procrastination, so the best approach for me is to tackle big tasks first and get them out of the way instead of leaving them for last. For those who are better off gaining confidence first by tackling small tasks and checking them off their to-do list, the second approach may work better. Whether you decide to start big or small, commit to starting well…
How do you beat your work competition by 9am?
The Corporate Sister
by Solange Lopes | Dec 30, 2013 | Career
Photo: dreamstime.com
For us corporate sisters and minority women in a sometimes hostile and challenging corporate environment, and despite our most valiant efforts at keeping positive and unbiased, it is hard to get away from the race factor in the workplace. From noticing how very few of us there are out there in the corporate jungle, to struggling to decipher or simply face signs of sexism, racism, or both, there is no denying that, in the corporate game, the “race card” is hard to avoid. “Playing the race card” is commonly described as the exploitation of racist or anti-racist attitudes by accusing others of racism. And we’re not talking about this popular, common, negatively connoted “race card”….What we’re talking about is the other Race card, the somber, dark reality of negative bias faced by minority women in addition to the traditional gender inequality.
While some of us wonder if it’s all in our heads, or why we keep hitting a dark glass wall despite our best efforts, others tend to internalize the resulting professional struggles, failures and setbacks as a sign of our own inadequacy. As Dr. Cornell West put it so well, race matters, in the corporate landscape as in everywhere else. And despite not believing in New Year’s resolutions (check out our article on why you should not make New Year’s resolutions), one decision we have made this year in our small group of corporate sisters here is to dig out the “race card”, the other one…And it’s not what you may think it is…
While the intent is not to play an ineffective and demeaning game for all parties involved, it is necessary, as we look at our careers and professional paths, to have the courage to dig out all the racial realities, connotations and implications associated with these. As we devise career strategies, plan for opportunities, and prepare for professional success, we also need to consider the invariable variable, the “elephant in the room” that is seldom talked about: the Race factor!
In the era of “leaning in” and women empowerment, as Sheryl Sandberg confidently ushers all women to sit at the corporate table so that “there are more women in leadership roles giving a strong and powerful voice to [women’s] needs and concerns”, minority women (fortunately and unfortunately) get lumped into an ideal that negates reality. The reality that at Corporate America’s table, the gender equality game is still missing a card: the “Race card.” Without confronting the meaning and implications of race in the corporate space, and without a real, hard look at how we can challenge this “race card”, gender equality has only meaning for a select few. And if equality is not equal, it’s not really equality, is it now?
The “Race card” (the other one) is a tricky one, a difficult reality to confront and even more challenging to address. Yet without it, the corporate game is but deceptive and misleading, especially for us. Good or bad, the realities that this “Race card” reminds us of are the same realities we need to understand, confront and make others face, for a better tomorrow. And while it’s not a card that should be played maliciously, it is one that should be openly laid on the table for all to see, challenge and ultimately correct…
Will you be digging out the other race card this year?
The Corporate Sister.
