On independence

If you are in the office today, it being a short workweek in the USA, it’s bound to be a quiet one.

Although I do recall closing on new acquisitions in my corporate finance days in a mad rush before a quarter end, or over a long holiday weekend, and I am aware that not all my readers are in my country, our work life is full of challenges with deadlines and time goals.

So perhaps as you read this you are amid a normal workday. Or you are reading from home over a cuppa in your jammies.

Our independence this Fourth of July weekend, although not exactly my theme today, is another way for me to segue to address your independence.

On LinkedIn, of course.

I offer some questions to address and assert your past, present, future continuum in your own words:

• How long did you work for someone else? Comment on your tenacity and maturity in each job, the increasingly complex responsibilities you undertook, until you left there.
• Then how did you apply those same transferable skills to your next position?
• How did they help you achieve more and grow further and be more valuable (self-assessed value to yourself and to others, right?)
• Does your description of each job in your past demonstrate your accomplishments, in context, and without unnecessary statistics that mean something to you but not to the reader? Free yourself from resume-talk and tell your career story. And kick out that  description of the company in each job in your Experience; it’s a copout that no one wants or needs to know since we are reading about you, not them.
• Why did you succeed at each position?
• How did you lead there?
• What skills did you hone there?
• Who can recommend you for specific anecdotes and instances of brilliance, ones in which  you aced a task?
• Beyond your job, how did you contribute to the industry via associations, organizations, speeches, workshops at conferences, published work to further the company’s, and your position in the eyes of peers (especially yours, of course!)
• For what awards did you receive recognition, and why?
• In other words, why do you excel at each stop along your career journey?

In demonstrating your excellence, in your own words, plus from others’ recommendations too, you liberate yourself, broadcasting yourself as a leader among the others who stand back and complain. When you master a new opportunity, you offer refreshing views that command attention and lead to action. You are independent as an employee when you make yourself more valuable and admired.

If applicable, re-read the above from the lens of yourself as an entrepreneur. Your boss? Well, that’s you. Tell us how you liberated yourself from corporate American and why this was meaningful. But you must tell us or we will never know. Sticking your neck out is common as a solo. It’s how you gain recognition and new clients by referral. You earn it every minute.

Whether employee or entrepreneur, independence is yours to own.

Raise your hand to offer your ideas, articulate, defend, and celebrate them. Liberate yourself. Bring others along with you. Open your eyes and ears. Opine. Debate. Agree. Or agree to disagree.

Choose your soapbox. I chose LinkedIn. I suggest you make more of it to work for you too.

I’ll be back after the holiday on Monday, July 8 at 800am EDT. Have a safe, restful long weekend.