In the progression of legendary journeys the “Union of Opposites” often revolves around reconciling the differences between the sexes or between some conflicting parts of the heroine’s personality. We see similar dualities overcome by bringing together different cultures to share and understand one another. Around the world we’re faced with news of the disharmonies between western and arabic cultures, racial inequalities and backlashes against immigrant populations.

In organizations we see silos built up to separate groups who are both intertwined and interdependent for success. Functional areas who jointly support large, value-driving processes often don’t communicate enough to see how the different parts interact. Pain in one group is diminished in the face of the easier solution in another.

More important to your career is the internal struggle to reconcile opposing perspectives. Open your eyes to the way different pieces integrate into a cohesive whole. The small changes made in one place can create large variations for someone else and realizing this lets you negotiate successful outcomes for everyone.

The objective is not to see the world in black and white or good and bad. Bringing together the different thoughts on your own is usually impossible. Reach out and find someone who sees the situation differently and really listen to what they have to say.

What you’ll probably find is that the “bad” responses and interactions are actually “good” for someone else. Find ways to bridge the gap and find ways to make both sides “good”. You’ll quickly find allies on the “other” side who are interested in solving issues for everyone. The successes that come from those solutions let everyone join in the rewards as well!

Shift your perspective to include more and see the success that follows.

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and attempting to learn the bagpipes.

This mindset can be really limiting to your career and to introducing new ideas, especially if it’s your boss who has it! Breaking through this mindset raises your credibility, lets you share your experience with a broader audience, and generally makes your life easier.

So where do you start?

Lay out each of the responsibilities you have and the tasks you perform. For each one add information about what it takes to do it, how you learned to do it and how long you’ve been doing it. Take time with laying all the information out for yourself and, if you can, get input from other people performing the same work on what you might have missed. If there are manuals and documented processes, use them to flesh out your list further.

Once you get through, you’ll probably find that the things that make up your job look pretty overwhelming. This is a good thing.

Next, you need to find a way to share this with the people who don’t get what you do. That might sound really difficult, but there are plenty of ways to slip the information into conversation. Some examples are:

• Give really detailed status reports
• Describe what you’re going to do next
• Draw pictures of what you do and what you’re going to do
• Describe things you’re waiting for
• Raise up things stopping you from doing your job properly
• Make suggestions to improve processes

And that’s really all there is to it. It’s not an overnight fix, but you need to be consistent. Changing someone’s understanding of what you do when they have no exposure to it takes time and persistence.

In the end, it will be worth the effort.

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and attempting to learn the bagpipes.

At one time I thought I was unusual in this, but the more time I spend talking to people the more it seems common amongst knowledge workers. One of the groups I worked with on a day-to-day basis were call center representatives. Now you’d think that this would be a fairly easy to explain position that had fairly simple boundaries.

Am I right? How many variations can there be on answering a phone?

Well, when it comes down to it there are lots of things that you could be doing in answering a phone, quite possibly hundreds! It all depends on how you see the work and how much detail you think is needed to get the message across.

For example, a person could be part of a service group taking incoming or making outgoing calls. Once you cross that bridge, you could be talking about different tiers of service, whether you’re conducting advocacy calls, sales calls, coaching sessions, training calls or any combination in between. When people are aware of what they do and have some experience behind them, they tend to see more nuances in their work as well.

What sets people apart in answering this question is whether they know why they do what they do. The old story about two men digging a ditch comes back again and again, but still makes a great example:

Two men are digging a ditch and both are asked the same question, “What are you doing?”

The first man replies, “I’m digging this ditch.”

The second man replies, “I’m building a hospital.”

There are lots of things that come out of this story, but it shows a very clear difference of perspective of the value that the worker has of the work being done. The message for leaders and organizations is to guide employees to the kind of purposeful enlightenment of the second man.

If you think about it, both men are working in the same way in the same environment.

Which would you hire? Can you say what purpose your work has?

In any case, what do you do?

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and (periodically) attempting to learn the bagpipes.

Lots of activity and some added stresses marked days 18 and 19.

Firstly, a couple of opportunities appeared very suddenly and had a lot of pressure behind them. Both had a good head of steam behind them before I came into the picture and some very motivated people were looking to close some deals.

On the one hand this is a good thing. Motivated people who like what you bring to the table are interested in negotiating to make everything work and remove as many roadblocks as they can. There’s great energy involved and for the right role it’s a very easy decision.

On the other hand there’s a lot of pressure to decide and act, often without enough time to fully absorb the implications of the decision or action. When not everything sounds right it can be hard to get answers or to understand what those answers mean.

The hardest part of these particular opportunities is that I really like the consulting companies and people from those companies involved. I’ve had great discussions with them and I think their approach and strategies are solid. They’ve been interested and have pursued me to the point where it’s both flattering and a little overwhelming.

By the end of Tuesday, some change occurred on the client side making one of the discussions moot. However an interview was slated for Wednesday morning (more to come on that in Day 20) and all systems are go.

There is a danger in moving forward and a danger in staying still, but having information makes all the difference in decision making processes.

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, looking for a new day job, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and attempting to learn the bagpipes.

It seems like Friday is often a strange day in my process and this was no exception.

I had a very positive, very abrupt meeting this morning and spent the rest of the day following up on it and trying to suppress my excitement. In a strange turn of fate, exactly what I was looking for is hanging in front of me. The role, title, work and ability to really use a lot of the skills I’ve built over my career is sitting right in front of me.

The hardest part of having something like that appear out of nowhere as a complete surprise is that it’s very difficult to remain calm. I won’t deny that I’m over the moon, but I have to temper the emotions with the fact that I don’t yet have the job. Being giddy won’t help the process and building up too much hope in one opportunity lets too much focus land on the one space.

An important point in all of this is that part of the success of today comes in the timing of events far beyond my control. A chance conversation between people I’d never met corresponding with my information and availability landing in the right hands at that time.

But what if I hadn’t been actively making connections? When the time is right, the information has to be fresh in the minds of the contacts you make. Follow up! Work the phone, your email, coffee or lunch meetings, social gatherings and any other positive contact time that you can find.

I’m excited. I’m hopeful. And I’m once again grateful to my immediate contacts for helping me find new and wonderful connections I wouldn’t have thought about or known existed.

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, looking for a new day job, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and attempting to learn the bagpipes.

Day 1

A side-effect of having so many people interested in helping is being really, really busy. This is a good thing.

Day 1 included responding to emails and calls, making more calls and sending more emails to new leads and generally trying to keep my head above water. The time flew by and the activity kept my spirits up. By the time I ended my day (a little early due to a school open house) I had somewhere in the realms of two dozen contacts sent and around a dozen connections made with people I didn’t know two days before.

I got to talking with my brother in the evening who made the observation that I was as busy out of work as I had been with the high workloads I’d been under in the days before.

Lessons from Day 1:

• Keep up with communications: The prioritized list you were working from is still your friend, but you’ll likely be adding to it rapidly.
• All leads are good leads: No matter how strange a possibility may look, it’s work pursuing.

(Since I’m a little behind, Day 2 will be arriving shortly.)

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, looking for a new day job, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and attempting to learn the bagpipes.

New posts are right around the corner, including a new post shortly today!

As always, please keep the comments coming!

Forming long-term habits is not an easy task, and there are many ways in which your hard-won gains can be derailed. At the same time, forming a habit is just another goal that you’re setting yourself. There are a couple of really consistent goal setting techniques that help to kick start your habit forming campaign:

• Make sure you have some way to track progress: Without some kind of progress chart it’s easy to lose sight of how far you’ve come or how far you need to go. There are lots of options, from the mundane to the esoteric. You can go from something as simple as a calendar or notepad with tally marks to something more complicated like a goals management program or checklist like my personal favorite Joe’s Goals.
• Make your commitment known to someone: Whether you’re posting your new habit forming goal to a blog or a community, talking about it with a friend, co-worker or spouse, or standing on a street corner yelling it to the sky, sharing makes you accountable to someone else. Sharing with someone who’ll check in on your habit forming activities or call out when you’re slipping works best, but even if the person doesn’t care you get some psychological prodding from seeing that person (or place) on a regular basis.

So prepare yourself for success and set in motion a plan to take on at least one new, positive habit for the year.

Peter Fitzgerald is the founder of CareerSherpas.com and is currently working on his first book, conducting high-level business analysis, connecting individuals with ideas and opportunities, and attempting to learn the bagpipes.