I don’t know many successful leaders who built their careers in a vacuum. We build our careers with people around us. We can’t always control what people will be around us at any given time in our career. Some of the people we work with everyday are incredible and we can’t wait to make a difference as a team. Some people we work with are challenging, we don’t connect well with a few of them, and some people actually get in the way of making a difference as a team.
I would like to focus today on one simple principle…we should always have people around us we choose to have active in our careers.
We share this world with a lot of incredible people. Investing in and having solid relationships with amazing people in our lives also means we surround ourselves with people we want in our life and in our career. In short…we should always have allies in our lives.
Who are those people who we know and can count on to stand with us for what we know is right, what is fair, in what we know to be true? There is no reason to go through our careers alone. There are good people, sisters and brothers, who know us and care for us, people we can trust and turn to for support, guidance and advocacy.
Take a minute and think about those people you can count on and turn to for the support, guidance and advocacy in all the situations we face over a career. Who are those people who will provide you with perspective and balance on your leadership journey? Consider those people who always help you find the best parts of you, the people you can trust when you don’t know who you can trust.
Go ahead and make a list of your Allies. It should be an inclusive mix of the women and men who are, or should be, part of your business network. One of the best ways to break down gender barriers is to have an inclusive list of allies in your network. If you don’t have that list, take some time in the next week, and invest the time to write down your allies. Sometimes, when we make a list like this, we realize we are missing an ally for a specific purpose. For example, perhaps we need an ally to be an advocate for us, to speak for us when we aren’t in the room. When we make a list of our allies, sometimes we realize we need a few more. Make some notes as to how you can count on them and the situations where you believe they will make the most difference in your leadership walk.
It is also important to note what you can do to support this diverse group of people, to be there for them, to be their ally when they need you.
When you have allies, great people standing left and right of you, it is a lot easier to find the courage and commitment to stand up to do what you know is right, to be the person you know you are, even in the face of incredible odds.
When we stand together collectively, diverse and inclusive, we have a strength which cannot be ignored or overwhelmed. There is no reason to do this alone when we can live life…together, as Allies.
Author: Jay Syverson, CRO, Intuitive
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