Two Career Insights That Changed My Life

I was recently invited by Elon University’s Student Professional Development Center to speak with students interested in global health, communications and journalism about trends in these industries.

My discussions with professors, students and staff ranged greatly, but in many of those conversations I found myself sharing two of my biggest career insights. They’re applicable to people in the industries I mentioned, but certainly not specific to them.

These principles have helped me tremendously because they have led me to important self knowledge. They’ve also facilitated my thinking and provided direction for the type of professional I want to be.

I got a good response to sharing these principles, and so I decided to pen them here.

Principle #1: Pay attention to what motivates you.

A popular response to questions of career angst is to follow your passion.

But most people don’t have one overarching interest. That’s why this TED talk about “multipotentialites” — or people who have a wide range of interests — has accumulated more than two million views. It resonates with a lot of us.

I was never too concerned about figuring out my professional passion. I guess I never accepted the premise that there would be one thing out there that I’d really love and find fulfilling.The picture seemed more complicated.

Even though I didn’t buy into the passion advice, I still wasn’t sure what to look for or pay attention to as far as finding a fulfilling career. I’ve had more than a few despondent moments when I’ve been in jobs that I thought should be exactly perfect for me — given my interests — but weren’t.

So at a certain point, I started to think more about motivation, and what kinds of things made me look forward to going to work.

Discussion about professional passion often seems to center on subject matter and issues. You can be passionate about planes or the environment or women’s reproductive rights. Whereas motivation, for some reason, seems to get people thinking more in terms of tasks or operations.

Let me explain how this has worked for me. Looking back, I noticed that I’ve enjoyed jobs the most when I was learning. Specifically, the learning was on topics I actually wanted to know more about. I’m a pretty curious person, but I’d only be kidding myself if I claimed to be interested in everything under the sun.

Another thing I realized is that deadlines motivate me. Some people find them overwhelmingly stressful. But I like having something very specific to work towards and I like being in an environment where I am forced to check things off the list. I feel accomplished and because I have a competitive streak, I do what it takes to never miss a deadline.

So by asking myself what motivates me at work, I uncovered two important insights: I like a deadline-driven environment that requires me to learn.

Principle #2: Make it as easy possible for others to say yes.

This isn’t my idea. But I can’t recall where I first heard it.

There are a variety of reasons you need people to say yes — to get new customers, to green-light your idea, to form a new partnership, to help more people.

So what does it take to get someone to easily agree to something? The process sounds simple but it is hard to do. Getting a yes, requires you to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and see things — completely and utterly — from their perspective. Then you need to work backwards to come up with an offer that they’ll feel good about accepting.

It can be challenging to truly see things from the other party’s perspective, but the execution is really the hard part. To make an offer irresistible requires you to create all the conditions necessary to make it that good. This means anticipating and answering questions before they arise and taking responsibility for a lot more than is required of you.

I took this approach with a virtual conference I created on global development. Since I was starting from nothing, I had to convince speakers to participate in an event that hadn’t happened before and that likely wasn’t going to attract a massive audience. I was inviting them to participate in something unproven that wouldn’t give them that much exposure. Tough sell.

So I decided to work with partner organizations. I knew if I could get respected and established groups on board, speakers would see it as a seal of approval. But then I arrived at the same issue: why would groups like Young Professionals in Foreign Policy or the Meridian International Center want to back an unproven entity?

I had to give them a reason to want to take a chance. I approached dozens of groups. I had contacts at some of them, but others I approached completely cold. I put together some compelling language, outlining every aspect of the plan (anticipating their questions!) and painting a clear and appealing vision.

I figured if I could get them excited about the big picture and make it easy for them to fulfill their part of the partnership, it would be easy for them to say yes. In this case, I was asking partners to help me with promotion, so to make it easy for them I sent them suggested language and graphics. I really wanted them on board, so I did the work for them.

It worked. More than 80% of the partners I approached decided to work with me. I had about the same success rate with speakers too.

Making it as easy as possible to say yes is also a great approach to take with job searching. If you really want someone to hire you, do all the research and work necessary to highlight your qualities that make you an irresistible candidate. In early interviews that means finding out exactly what they are looking for and finding ways to seamlessly highlight your past experiences that will inspire confidence that you could do the job really well.

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