Author: admin

Take a look around you. Are you floating dejectedly through life? Or are you finding the passion in your work and enjoying what you do?

‘Passion’ is a much abused word and telling a potential employer that you’re ‘passionate about filing cabinets and have always wanted to work in the archive and retrieval industry’ is probably a total lie. However, people think that by inserting the word ‘passionate’ into a sentence they can fool people into believing they’re committed enough to warrant hiring for a job.

Passion can’t be faked. It means the excitement you feel when you have ‘that’ task to do. It’s about being interested in your profession, taking time to read up on trends and developments and finding yourself smiling when other people are grumbling. I don’t mind if it’s raining today …I have some coaching to do and that joy of doing a job I love always trumps the weather.

Recently a client was struggling to convince his manager that he really did want a big promotion. The client wailed to me ‘why doesn’t anyone believe me – I really want the job’ …and yet although he was saying the right words, his actions seemed to indicate he was indifferent to the opportunity. ‘Saying passion’ isn’t enough …we have to ‘do passion’ as well. Eventually my client realised this, produced a blistering piece of work and in doing so secured his promotion.

You can’t keep a passionate person down. They keep overcoming obstacles, work happily to get the job done, seek out new opportunities and treat everyday as a treat to be savoured, rather than a chore to be endured.

Now, your task is to score yourself on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) for the amount of passion you feel towards your current role. Have a look at the result. Are you happy enough with this score? (Mine’s a 9 by the way…rising to a solid 10 on Radio-Rich days).

If it’s a low score then maybe talk to someone and start to make changes in your working life.

If it’s a high score, take a tea-break and feel smug for five minutes. It’s okay to be passionate and enjoy what you do!

A modern career doesn’t have to be complicated and any job can be fulfilling if you can find the passion, so this week go looking for yours! Happy hunting!

Isn’t social media marvellous? You can link up to people from all over the world who can then use the magic of the internet to ignore you at the same time. That is techno-progress on a grand scale and without the benefit of wifi and laptops we’d only be ignored by the neighbours or the milkman.

Now though, we can be ignored by thousands of tech-savvy people who can choose not to talk to us from a smartphone or a laptop, a tablet or a pc.

I tweeted about this the other day and instantly had four replies, picked up three new followers and generated a decent amount of conversation. Being ignored had never been so much fun.

However, one particular friend pointed out that although we all want to be noticed (it’s a basic human need), it is up to us to go and say ‘Hello’ to people. We can be proactive and can start conversations and enjoy being un-ignored!

I took her advice and simply said ‘Hello :-)’ to 10 Twitter followers who I hadn’t chatted to for a while. This lead to six chatty natters, a piece of friendly coaching and an offer to co-author a book.

A brilliant return on an investment of only 10 Hello’s!!

So, this week your task is to say ‘Hello’ to 10 people – and don’t go for your best mates, instead find people in your organisation, business or network who you’ve chatted to before, but not contacted for a while.

It may lead somewhere good and I’ll be staggered if it doesn’t lead to a few smiles and a feel good vibe. And if people feel good about you then that can only benefit your Modern Career!

Go for it!

Hello! (And goodbye for this week)