Dear SafetyXChange Members,

The secret to a successful career and a successful life is to keep work and life in balance. The secret to achieving balance is to find what your convictions are and to conduct your career and personal life in a way that's faithful to those convictions. I'd like to share some thoughts and observations that might help you do this.

Are Your Priorities Things You Really Care About?

Finding out what your priorities are sounds like the easy part of the formula. I assure you that it's anything but. In fact, it's one of the most common reasons people fail to achieve satisfaction. As Stephen Covey, author of the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, describes it:

"Most people say their main fault is lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds."

So to each of you SafetyXChange members out there, I ask: Are you so busy with your job and life that you're not taking the time to invest in yourself? In other words, are you focused on getting to know yourself and finding your values and priorities?

Being Faithful to Your Priorities

The second part of the formula is to find a career and a way of life that's faithful to your priorities. That, of course, is easier said than done. It's therefore hardly a surprise that for so many of us, there's a gap between what we really want to do and what we actually do. Sadly, it often takes some sort of catastrophic personal or professional event, such as getting fired or the death of a loved one, to make us recognize that our priorities are out of whack and adjust them.

An Introspection Resource

There's a resource that might enable you to recognize and correct dysfunctions in your own priorities without experiencing a disaster. I suggest you read an article called " Do Your Commitments Match Your Convictions?" in the January 2005 issue of the Harvard Business Review. You can download this article for $6.00 from www.hbr.org.

The authors of the article, two academics from the London Business School, Donald N. Sull and Dominic Houlder, present a self-exploration process to help readers analyze their life preferences and identify gaps between their values and the way they actually live.

The article doesn't just explain how to find the gaps; it suggests a way to close them. In the end it's all about commitment - acknowledging commitments made in haste that are not in sync with values and taking control of future commitments so that past commitments won't take control of you.

Conclusion

As safety professionals, you understand the importance of making proactive efforts to identify problems and straighten them out before accidents happen. The same principle applies to the way you pursue your career and lead your life. If you feel that what you do is out of sync with who you are, don't wait for a crisis. Make a proactive effort to straighten yourself out.

Reading the Sull and Houlder article is a good way to start the process.

Wishing you career success,

Lauryn Franzoni
www.ExecuNet.com

MEMBER REPLY

Call Back Protocol

Point:

I've long believed that one returns phone calls, period. Even if it's an unsolicited call, one can quickly say "Sorry, I am not interested. Have a good day" - click. If a firm is advertising a job, I don't care if they get 1,000 responses, they can at least send an email or not a form letter saying thanks but no thanks.

Gerald Edgar
SkyJack Inc.

Counterpoint:

I respectfully disagree. Although it sounds simple, responding to each and every job application is a highly burdensome process particularly for small companies. Moreover, the protocol has changed. So many companies fail to send rejection notes that a response is no longer universally expected. One thing a company can and should do to take the edge off is state in the ad that it will contact only the applicants in whom it's interested.

Glenn Demby
Editor-in-Chief
SafetyXChange

A WORLD OF HAPPINESS

By Glenn Demby

The countries with the happiest populations:

1. Australia (46% described themselves as "very happy")
2. United States (40%)
3. Egypt (36%)
4. India (34%)
5. UK/Canada (32%)

The countries with the least happy populations:

1. Hungary (35% said they're "very unhappy" or "disappointed")
2. Russia (30%)
3. Turkey (28%)
4. South Africa (25%)
5. Poland (24%)

Source: 2005 Global Happiness Study, GfK NOP (Nuremberg, Germany)

STATISTIC OF THE WEEK

Fifty-six percent of all small businesses fail within the first four years.

- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Story Tools:  Email This Post  Print This Post Top