Bank some leadership skills for the future

6 steps to advance your career.  Even if you are heading out the door in your current job, there’s no time like the now to brush up your personal skills:

1.  Relationships are key. That’s all networking is. Pick up the phone and call your contacts, ask them how they’re doing, offer to assist them in any way you can and this will come back to you when you would like a favour, a recommendation or an introduction.

2.  Cultivate your personal brand. Make sure you're networking effectively, and volunteer for speaking engagements. That's how you can position yourself as an expert in the field, not just a "hard worker."

3.  It’s nice to be nice – this is becoming a lost art. Find it and use it.

4.  Brush up your communication skills. Learn to be more confident by acting as though you are and communicating a message of surety, calmness and success.

5. Think about the kind of leader you want to be. Find a role model and watch how they communicate their good leadership.

6. Take personal responsibility. If you make a mistake, as we all do, take responsibility and solve the problem swiftly and in person. You'll deepen that relationship. If you do something wonderful, make sure everyone knows about it. 

Face the fear and do it anyway

What's stopping you achieving your goals? Often it can come down to something as simple and insignificant as fear.  Insignificant I hear you ask?  Surely fear is with us to protect us from danger, to exercise our fight or flight mechanism, to allow us to live longer by staying out of the way of things that may harm us. OK, agreed, but is the fear of speaking to that senior leader about mentoring you or addressing concerns you have with your line manager really going to end your life?  No of course not.  Sometimes we build so much fear around doing something that may make us feel uncomfortable that we give life to it. That taking charge of our own lives and challenging our perceptions of ourselves will in some way harm us. It all comes back to that childhood indoctrination - don't step out of line, speak when you're spoken to, don't blow your own trumpet. Well, who else is going to do it for you? The only time we have is now so why not start by squaring up to your own fears and perceived limitations and start the fan fare. What's the worst that can happen?  Someone says "turn down the volume"? OK, but you can still keep playing the tune, perhaps just in a different way. Life is all about testing and learning and you are your best teacher.