The (not so) Secret Formula for Success, Part 1
Hello, I’m Andy Temte and welcome to the Saturday Morning Muse! Start to your weekend with me by exploring topics that span leadership, business management, education, and other musings designed to support your journey of personal and professional continuous improvement.
What’s the formula for career success? There are endless consultants and prognosticators who claim to have the golden ticket to success. I’ve thought about this many times throughout my career, and with nearly 40 years of experience under my belt, I can boil the formula down to two interrelated concepts: relationships and results. If, at first glance, this framework appears overly simplistic, it is. Each of these words encapsulates numerous competencies and take years, if not decades, to hone and perfect. So let’s spend a bit of time diving into the nuance behind this formula—today we’ll be focusing on the first part of the formula—relationships.
Before we dive into the topic of relationships, it’s important that we discuss a Critical Precondition to Success—Know Thyself
The formula for success sits on a foundation of self love, self-appreciation, self-awareness, and personal planning (purpose, vision, desired future state, etc). If you’re unsure of your purpose and haven’t done any personal planning, I’ve written a guidebook to help solidify your foundation. You must be okay with the unique human that is you and be able to define what success means to you. If your foundation is shaky or undefined, then you’ll just end up chasing shiny balls, the next new thing, and definitions of success that are someone else’s and not yours. The definition of success must be authentic and customized to you. Authenticity matters.
“It’s all about who you know”
I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase many times before and some folks get caught up in its exclusionary, old boy’s club, elitist undertone. “Oh, I’m never going to make it because I was never part of the cool kids club,” goes the common refrain. Yes, there are examples that we can all point to where a friend or acquaintance received the “family-connections fast pass” into the world of work—that so-and-so got her plum job out of college because mom, dad, or uncle Stewie connected her with the hiring manager at company XYZ and pulled a few strings.
These stories get stuck in our minds and make us feel inadequate and left out—conjuring up all sorts of FOMO memories from high school or college. But these instances that are burned into our psyche are less common than we are conditioned to believe. Instead of getting wrapped around the axle of feeling sorry that our parents weren’t as well connected as our friend down the street, let’s zoom out and broaden our lens.
If we’re frank with ourselves and we pause for a moment to objectively look into our past to think of all the people we’ve been introduced to—teachers, coaches, family friends, supervisors, community leaders, colleagues, academic advisors—did we treat these connections as seedlings to nurture and grow, or did we dismiss them as unimportant, transactional encounters? Most of us can look back and recall many examples where we did not expend the energy needed to keep a potentially valuable relationship alive.
You see, developing a robust professional network takes time, energy, and skill. Contrary to the common perceptions noted above, everyone can build an impactful professional network. Doing so requires a host of human skills (a.k.a., soft skills) such as communication, influence, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, active listening, persistence, drive, courage, intention, and many others.
As an important aside, professional networks can contain people whom you also consider to be friends, but don’t conflate the two groups. This is a common tactical career error. Professional relationships are, for lack of better terminology, professional. The intersection between your friend network and your professional network should be small when viewed as a venn diagram.
Also note that while there is likely a small subset of your professional network that will help you out of the goodness of their hearts, the majority of professional relationships are mutually-beneficial, two-way streets. You add value to them and they add value to you. If this value equation gets out of balance, the party that’s receiving less value will be reluctant to help the other party in the future and will ultimately opt out of the network. Hence, professional networks require continual monitoring and maintenance for the strength and balance of the value equation.
A portion of the bi-directional value equation is reputation. My reputation matters to the members of my professional network and vice-versa. Can I be trusted? Relied upon? Am I kind? Do I hold others accountable? Am I a favorites-playing gossip or am I an equitable, inclusive leader? Do I care or am I just playing the game of business for myself and my own benefit? Do I consistently produce results?
This focus on creating and adding value leads us to the second part of our (not so) secret formula for success—results. But alas, we’ll have to leave it here for today and continue the conversation next week. Thanks for listening and have a wonderful weekend as you recharge for the week ahead.
