This little snippet of career consciousness is inspired by the folks who brought you, “Dress for the job you’d like to have.”
The point of that advice being that you should start grooming yourself today – literally – for the position you want tomorrow.
It’s a worthwhile thought, although a little limited. After all, I’m a freelance writer and if I started dressing like I do now back when I was supposed to look like someone in authority, things wouldn’t have gone well at all.
Just the same, I get the point. We’re supposed to let where we’d like to go inform our current activities, but all too often it’s where we’ve been that shapes our reality.
It’s often said that we’re always ready to fight the last war, and this is true for those in career combat mode as well.
So I started wondering what it would be like to operate with the benefit of the experiences we hope to accumulate.
Say you want to be a top flight, gold star, award-winning sales professional… How would you handle cold calling? Creating contact lists? Conducting follow-ups?
What if you wanted to be a seasoned, effective and efficient manager… How would you go about structuring your day? Your communication procedures and reports? Performance reviews?
And what about those future entrepreneurs? How would you go about networking? Developing contacts and building relationships? Studying business plans?
Of course, you can’t know exactly how the expertise you’ve yet to acquire will help you because you don’t know what it is, but strange as it may sound, I think this silly little mind game of mine will help all of us do one thing right away – it will help us take ourselves more seriously.
The future Sales Meister will think, “To be the sales person I want to be, I‘ve really got to approach my cold-calling technique in an analytical way.”
The Management Hall of Fame Candidate will think, “To be the manager I want to be, I need to find communication styles that really connect.”
And the Future Maker of the Better Mousetrap will think, “If I want to run my own business, I should see how successful companies prepare themselves for growth.”
You don’t want to get too carried away with this, and start acting like you’re the CEO when you’re the receptionist, but a little gravitas can be helpful.
For one thing, if you take yourself seriously, others are more likely to do the same.
And for another – if you’re constantly out there trying to apply lessons that you’ll understand in the future, there’s a good chance you’ll be learning some really important stuff in the present. And that’s a great way to build the kind of future you want.
