Future Proof Your Career

If you're not regularly doing this one thing, you're leaving money on the table. LinkedIn's CEO, Reid Hoffman will back me up.

From my vantage as a leadership coach, I've seen the career landscape morph.

As Hoffman puts it in his book The Startup of You:

There used to be a long-term pact between employee and employer that guaranteed lifetime employment in exchange for lifelong loyalty; this pact has been replaced by a performance-based, short-term contract that's perpetually up for renewal by both sides.

The old playbook of activating your network when you need a new job cannot keep up with the pace of career evolution.

Instead, Hoffman sees:

Searching for a job only when you're unemployed or unhappy at work has been replaced by the mandate to always be generating opportunities. Networking has been replaced by intelligent network building.

Here's what that could mean:

• Know what skills or opportunities you need so you understand who to reach out to and why
• Any platform is fair game - LinkedIn, Twitter, a running club, or community organization
• Connect with consistency - once a week set aside time, send one connection message a day, whatever cadence you can keep up with

Business development is the profit engine of many companies.

Connections lead to conversations and eventually contracts.

Your career advancement is no different.

Want to know how to get clear on how to network intelligently so you’re always generating opportunities and ascending into leadership? I can help with that.