Do colleagues and clients seek you out to bring clarity to complex conversations? Are you able to communicate across a well-developed network of cross functional resources to serve internal and external client needs? Are you comfortable you when working across job titles, pay grades, levels of education, generations, and professional disciplines?
If you responded “yes” to any of my questions, then stop acting so surprised when professional colleagues seek you out. Over the course of your present, and future, career trajectory you are known as a purposeful go-to resource for colleagues and clients. Your courage, consistency, as well as hard and soft communication skills, bring light and clarity to convoluted business and operations issues. Acknowledge this powerful professional purpose of yours. Not only do you work hard to develop your superpowers as a go-to resource. Also, you continuously refine your superpowers because you are relentlessly curious. As a result, you continuously seek the What, How, and Where behind each of the Whys you ask. As you learn and clarify, everybody learns and clarifies, as they create great outcomes together.
When you are a purposeful go-to resource for colleagues and clients, you are trusted because you are truthful.
Becoming a go-to resource does not mean that you always have the right answer to every question. However, as a purposeful professional, you are renowned for providing strategies and asking questions which identify and remove the chains of groupthink. Since you are not a shape-shifting answer provider, you will not tell people what they want to hear. Rather, you provide everyone with consistent, honest and truthful responses, across professional disciplines. And yes, at times your responses make them feel uncomfortable. Yet, above all, your professional integrity makes you the trusted, ethical, purposeful, go-to resource for colleagues and clients alike. In return, as you honor their trust and confidence, your word becomes your bond.
Moving forward, intentionally determine your professional purpose (if you haven’t done so already). Is yours the same as I just described? How may working with me catalyze your insights and actions? Your professional purpose is the structural underpinning of why you are a sought-after, purposeful, go-to resource for colleagues and clients. In addition, conducting this type of personal 360 with yourself brings you greater confidence and clarity about why you become so skeptical when working with people who are not similarly trustworthy. And this professional epiphany is mission-critical to your career trajectory moving forward. Discovering this insight drives you to more purposefully identify the colleagues and clients you will enjoy doing business with, future forward.
Catalyzing you to get out of your own way and get to where you really need to go, together. | Professional Innovation | Cross Functional Leadership | Speaker, Consultant, Mentor |
How do you become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant, and strategically valuable throughout your career trajectory as the problems you solve become more complex? Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset ™ speaking, consulting, and mentoring programs catalyze people who solve problems differently to collaborate more innovatively as they create and implement great outcomes together. Regardless of whether you are a traditional thinker or a more out-of-the-box one, Babette’s 3 Core Questions, 4 Change Agreements, and 5 Professional Whys get everyone to where they really need to go, together.
Babette is a business-oriented STEM professional, qualitative Voice of the Customer facilitator, PMI-certified Wicked Problem Solver, Duke Corporate Education licensed Strategic Agility practitioner, and Six Sigma Green Belt (Quality). She is a member of SHRM, PMI, and the National Speakers Association (NSA). All programs delivered virtually or in-person. Her playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available in digital format on Amazon.com. Contact Babette here. Image source: Adobe Stock.
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