6 WAYS TO END YOUR CAREER
You are probably asking yourself, “Am I reading right or did the author make an error with the topic of this post?”. Well, friends, I assure you that you read that right! This post is all about six great ways to ruin your promising career!
We all read about the steps to a successful career, tips to excel in your career, the best ways to climb up the ladder and how to sit at the table but we hardly read about how we can completely ruin a carefully crafted career that has taken us months or even years to build.
It is highly important to understand the negative impacts that our decisions and attitudes can have towards different aspects of our lives, as this will ensure that we are more deliberate with our actions.
Let’s go straight to finding out these great ways through which we can end our careers within the blink of an eye.
1. Be Incompetent: Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘incompetence’ as “lacking the skills or knowledge to do a job or perform an action correctly or to a satisfactory standard”. One way to ensure your incompetence is to stop learning, developing your skill set and deliberating failing to pay attention to your professional and personal growth.
Failure to master your chosen field and shying away from learning will eventually lead to a down turn in your career. You become obsolete and tagged as ‘not to be trusted with sensitive work’. Your superiors become reluctant to assign tasks to you as you have proven not to be a value-adding individual.
2. Timidity and Self-Doubt: I recently watched a movie titled “Happily Ever After” starring Sanaa Lathan, she cut off all her hair and carried herself in an awkward manner, losing her entire self-esteem. She was great in her career before the haircut, but her self-doubt afterwards ruined her presentation to the board – the same presentation that she had presented to the Management staff and received a lot of accolades. She however got the best advice from a Cancer support group after a case of mistaken identity as a Cancer victim – she was advised to own the new look and carry herself high. She took the advice and got back on her feet, smashing her deliverables.
Doubt magnifies every hurdle you face by a hundred times. Every path other than the one you took seems better but only till you choose it. You can be very competent but if you are not willing to speak out based on your knowledge; you will not be invited to sit at the table. So, “OWN IT” darling.
3. Miscommunication: Failure to communicate effectively is one of the best way to lose anything. Good communication skills are key to success in life, work and relationships. Without effective communication skills, a well-meaning message can be misinterpreted by the recipient, leading to error, misunderstanding, frustration, or even a total breakdown of the work relationship. The inability to communicate effectively will hold you back not only in your career, but also in your social and personal relationships.
4. Lack of Consistency: The best way to lose the trust of anyone is to be inconsistent, you show to the other person that you cannot be trusted with any task. Erratic tactics indicate an unsure mind. Ask yourself, will you trust someone who is double minded?
5. Lack of Integrity: Integrity has to do with “the state of being whole, complete, undivided, undiminished or standing up regardless of the situation.” Integrity applies to many facets of our lives. The act of not straying from the path of honesty will build the strength of character and also strengthen your professional credibility, which is of utmost importance.
6. Bad Attitude: Have you heard the employers say “I will rather hire an inexperienced individual who has a great attitude over an individual who has all the experience with a bad attitude”. Bring on the bad attitude and get yourself out of the door.