30 Career Management Tips — find your mud

This month, I’m providing a career management tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you trigger your own career management activities.

Today’s tip: Find your mud.

What mud should you be finding?

In everything we do, it is far better to find what is incorrect about our situation and work to correct it than having someone else figure it out (like our manager) and point it out to us.

This doesn’t mean we should be working on our weaknesses (we should add to our strengths), but it does mean that we should know where there are issues and start working them independently of any direction from others.

There are good reasons to know — and acknowledge — what needs to be better in our work;

• We’ve identified the issue. Not someone else. It shows we’re proactive because we are proactive.
• We’ve figured out how to attack the issue. Not only do we know about an issue, we’ve already started working on it! How many people do that?
• We know the issue — and fix it before it becomes visible. When you dig up your own mud and fix what needs fixing, people will often never even know it was an issue.

People are afraid to dig up their own mud. They don’t want to acknowledge their mistakes. And it costs them in terms of their career and personal brand.

Dig up that mud.

Scot

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