Promote Yourself by Dan Schawbel Read Free Book Online

Not all of them, of course, just the ones that could affect your performance, give you an advantage, make you stand out on the job, or that could affect your ability to get a job in the first place.
    So, ask yourself the following questions and come up with a list of your top five to ten strengths:
    â€¢ What am I the best at?
    â€¢ What do others say I’m good at? (In a lot of ways, this is more important than what you think of yourself.)
    â€¢ What does my job require me to be good at?
    â€¢ What matters at the job and do I have the right skills to excel?
    â€¢ What skills do I need to have to get me my next promotion or raise—whether it’s where I’m working now or somewhere else?
    â€¢ What else do I need to know to get to the next level in a career here or at any other company?
    â€¢ Am I playing to my strengths in team settings and making my team more successful?
    â€¢ Do my coworkers and managers know what my strengths are and do they see them as contributing to the team’s success?
    â€¢ Are my strengths being underutilized? If so, why, and what can I do about it?
    Got a pretty good handle on your strengths? Great! Now let’s take a quick look at areas where you could improve. Yes, I know I’ve been saying to focus on your strengths, but we all have weaknesses, and ignoring them could undermine your performance and limit your career mobility. Ask yourself these questions and put together a list of five to ten weaknesses (the ones you want to focus on are the ones that could—or do—affect your current or future job):
    â€¢ What could I improve on? What do I think I should be better at?
    â€¢ Are my weaknesses preventing me from doing my job correctly or from excelling on the job?
    â€¢ Has my manager given me feedback about my weaknesses?
    â€¢ Which weaknesses do I need to focus on in order to improve at work?
    If you’re having trouble with compiling lists of strengths and weaknesses, don’t be shy about asking the people you work with to help you. Consider it a kind of informal peer review. Two important caveats: Ask for feedback only from people you trust. Second, don’t do this too often. This may sound a bit silly, but a lot of employers I work with complain that too many of their young workers are constantly asking, “How’m I doing?” If you’re constantly trying to get people to tell you what they think, you run the risk of being perceived as someone who can’t work independently, who needs too much hand-holding, and who’s not leadership material.
    Instead of indiscriminately hounding your manager or your coworkers for feedback on your performance, try to find the proper time. For instance, if your manager brings up a certain skill of yours that you aren’t confident about, ask how you can improve it. Similarly, if you’ve used Excel to put together a financial projection but a colleague comments that your numbers are off, that’s the perfect time to ask for some guidance on what you can do to improve your Excel skills.
    Another creative way to get feedback is to have a weekly conversation/meeting with your manager to review your progress. Tell him what you’re working on and be honest with what you’re having trouble with. People usually like being asked for help—as long as you don’t go overboard.
    Well, that’s how things would be in an ideal world. In reality in most cases, unless it’s an official performance review, most people won’t come right out and tell you about your weaknesses (your strengths, maybe) even if you ask. It seems too rude. So you may have to play sociologist. If you pay close attention to the way people respond to what you say and do, you’ll get a lot of nonverbal feedback—facial expressions, body language, tone of voice. (Since reading people is a soft skill, we’ll tackle it in the next chapter.)
    And while you’re talking to