How to Advance Your Career, Stand Out as a Leader, and Like Your Life

22 May
2012

Business Networking

Free downloads for you all this week: the 30-minute MP3 and transcripted Social Capitalist Skills Session with Patty Azzarello, the author of Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life. Here’s a few takeaways from the lessons she passed on during her interview with myGreenlight co-founder Sara Grace, gleaned from a career that took her from Hewlett-Packard’s youngest GM to the head of a $1 billion software business to CEO at 38:
  • Why “follow your passion” can be career – and soul – destroying advice, and what to do instead;
  • The two-step personal branding secret that quickly established her husband as a superstar at his new company;
  • How the world’s most respected executives make it seem like they know all the answers, even when they don’t.
It's a great interview, and a great book. In fact, I liked it enough to write the forward. An excerpt:
Patty never forgets that success is about more than incremental or even stratospheric gains in your career; it's about enjoying your work and nurturing the relationships you make along the way. She recognizes that the most efficacious "corporate power grabs" aren't those that pit you against the people around you but those that draw them into a shared collaborative vision. To be a leader is not just to find solutions but specifically to find those that help build, strengthen, and expand your team.
To give just one example, I love Patty's recognition that diligently creating a strong network of relationships means that anyone is a potential project resource, not just your direct reports. When you make a conscious decision to "connect better" (step 3 in Patty's strategic map) you have access to intelligent resources that your counterparts do not. People are happy to help you out - it doesn't have to be in their job description. They're hungry to be on your team, and stuff gets done. I always say that you need to start every day, every event, every meeting with the same two goals: Find a way to help and find a way to care. Care about what you're doing and care about the people you're doing it with. This book serves up a powerful course of action that will keep you true to both those intentions so that both extraordinary success and life satisfaction can be yours.
Enjoy the Social Capitalist interview – and get the book!