The 10 Laws of Excelling in Your Career
Career development isn’t achieved overnight, rather, it’s a life-long journey. However, here is a cheat
Note: The Voiceover above should be played alongside when reading the musings in the last section
Hi Superstar,
Imagine if you applied the 48 Laws of Power to your Career, how invincible you will be. Well, 48 laws are so much to accumulate and I wouldn’t advise you to because you might become manipulative and power-hungry. However, I have noticed that people who have succeeded used one tactic - The Power Strategy. I define this as the ability to keep power abreast and use it to your advantage. Here, you don’t look manipulative or power-hungry and no one can know your true intentions.
Here are the Ten Laws I complied after reading the 48 hours of Power by Robert Greene and Secrets of Success at Work: 50 Strategies to Excel by Nigel Cumberland to help you scale in your career;
No matter how skilled you are, never feel like you are better than your superiors. Don’t get lost in displaying your talents and knowledge, instead, give credit and appreciation to your superiors. To climb the ladder in your career, you must make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite—inspire fear and insecurity and this might get you eliminated.
Don’t get too personal with your colleagues, they are not your family. Keeping your private life private can help you present a professional image while still enabling you to develop and maintain good working relationships with your colleagues. Allowing your private life to have too big an impact on your job conduct can harm perceptions of you at work. By establishing some sensible boundaries, exercising self-control, and separating your work and home worlds you can keep your private life private without being considered aloof at work. Also, never trust anything that comes for free. Most things that come for free come with a burdensome psychological price task. You can become indebted to them.
Keep your personal beliefs outside work but cultivate a work value. Think of the workplace as the Tower of Babel. There are different people from diverse backgrounds who possibly have different and complex ideologies and beliefs. To excel in your career, you must be receptive and accommodating to the different people around you. Moreover, cultivating a work value helps in keeping you career-focused, they are beliefs or principles relating to your career or place of work that describes what you believe matters regarding your career. When your work aligns with your values, it can help you find meaning in what you do daily at your job and this can help further your career.
Never say more than you are meant to. Instead, let your actions speak for you. Be careful of how much you let out in the workplace. A running mouth can destroy your entire career. Even in interviews, when you are trying to impress your interviewers with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. As Greene put it, “Words are a dime a dozen, and people will say anything to prove a point. Action is where you demonstrate your power”.
Your reputation is your strength, guard it. Your career depends on your reputation, never be associated with nasty deeds. You must maintain a spotless appearance because your name is your strongest weapon, make it unassailable.
Be Dependable. The trick here is to Act Like a King to Be Treated Like One. Make yourself a magnet of resources and make people depend on you. Never teach them enough so that they can keep relying on you. The more relied on you are at work, the more your company feels the need to retain you through benefits and promotions.
Don’t be a loner. When you decide to isolate yourself from your colleagues, you cut yourself from valuable resources, assistance, information, and a crowd to protect you- humans are social creatures, and power comes with social interaction. Therefore, be at the center but don’t be in the spotlight because you will become an easy target; don’t form cliques but be a member of every clique and lastly, maintain your independence.
Be the creator of your universe. Do not accept the role that society has given you or be put down by your background. Forge your own identity, one that commands attention and master your image rather than letting others dictate it for you.
Be Strategic. Never reveal how you reached your position of power to anyone, or they may use it against you. Patience is a virtue. Learn to bide your time and only strike when the timing is right.
Know when to celebrate yourself however don’t let success go to your head. The moment you achieve victory is often when you’re at your most vulnerable. Don’t get ahead of yourself with your overconfidence and push beyond your initial goal target.
ENTRY LEVEL ROLES
0-2 years experience;
MID-LEVEL ROLES
3-5 years of experience;
SENIOR LEVEL ROLES
5-10 years of experience
INTERNSHIPS
MUSINGS
Thanks for being such a good sport
Good Sport according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary means a person who is not rude or angry about losing, someone who is kind or generous. Be a good sport and let him play with you.
Last week, I finished reading I’m Glad my Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy and I wish I could hug Jennette and say, “I know what it feels like being called a good sport.. I know how you feel”.
For as long as I can remember, I was a good sport.
“Oh, Mary-Esther is understanding. She is a good one, she will understand”
“Oh, It’s Mary-Esther, she will do it anyway”
I was known as the one ready to compromise, ready to let go, ready to understand, ready to make everyone happy.. except me.
Everyone loves someone that is ready to compromise… but never let it be you. I have come to realize that if you want to advance, be happy, excel, never be a good sport-because people will eventually take advantage of you.
Being called a good sport is never a compliment and never think of it as being nice. There is a thin line difference between being a good sport and being nice - one is an inconvenience. More so, being a good sport won’t make you a social butterfly, you are basically a means to an end. You don’t need that.
So the next time, you are being called a good sport, evaluate yourself - Are you truly happy?
With Love,
Mary-Esther