**** **********
NB: This newsletter is published every Monday. Point your browser to www.tayosolagbade.com/sdnuggets to read at least ONE new post added to my SD Nuggets blog on a different category from Tuesday till Saturday (sometimes even Sundays)
in line with this publishing schedule 
**********
GET LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP OF MY INNER CIRCLE ($500 USD!) WHEN YOU BUY BURT DUBIN’S SPEAKER MENTORING PRODUCTS/SERVICES – LEARN MORE HERE!
1 of 2: PUBLIC SPEAKING – How To Excel As An Employee (4 Experience Based Strategies)
[This issue is dedicated to experts-who-speak, who work in paid employment e.g. as Sales/Marketing Professionals, Public Relations/Corporate Affairs Managers, Legal Experts & career persons in general]
Except you are a CEO of the company you work for, there is a good chance you have ambitions to move to the next rung of the corporate ladder, and as far up as possible before you retire (or resign).
That implies you want to get promoted, and/or given more career advancement opportunities.
It would also be nice to enjoy more perks such as an official car, driver, allowances or even official residence etc. This write up offers you tested and proven experience based ideas you can use, to become a well recognised high flyer in your company within the shortest time possible.
When you put in a lot of effort in doing your job, it can be quite fulfilling to eventually learn you are being rewarded with something tangible such as the above.
Promotion in the workplace is a sure sign that one is progressing within a company.
Nobody likes to be left spinning his/her wheels in the same job for years. Sadly however, that is exactly what happens to many employees – they may start out with bright prospects in the company, but at some point, especially when they approach or settle into middle management, nothing comes their way any more.
The Question Is Why Are You NOT Getting Promoted?
Why are you not being called on to do those special assignments that can get you into the spotlight, to be noticed by those who matter in your company.
Why is it that no one ever thinks of nominating you to go on that course meant for “workplace champions” who will then return and coach other employees using what they learn? Why is your colleague often picked to go on secondment to sometimes senior positions, and you are not?
My Answer – You Are The One Holding Yourself Back!
You need to do some sober reflection here. If you’re not getting promoted, or you’re missing out on career advancement opportunities, it’s most likely because you are NOT doing enough of the right things to get noticed by those who make the decisions in your company, about who gets promoted, or sent on secondment/other high profile assignments.
Let me use an analogy that explains why I am so sure.
Think about any nation that sends a team to the world cup. Take Nigeria for instance. We all know that when it comes to WINNING, most Nigerians would gladly have the best possible ELEVEN players on the pitch, than fight to get a less competent tribesman or woman to play.
Why? Because we love to win. The same thing applies to well managed companies. The decision makers want the company to post the best performance possible. So they ALWAYS strive to select the best people from their army of employees to do the most important work necessary to achieve the company’s goal.
Now, THAT is the key:
If you want to win more opportunities to further your career, or get promoted, you will need to actively engage yourself in doing things on and off the job that will make those decision makers in your company SEE you as a valuable asset in the company’s arsenal.
They must become convinced that giving you such opportunities will benefit the company and other employees. Once you achieve that, you will be amazed by the regularity with which you will get chosen over many others.
What Can You Do, To Increase Your Chances?
1. Get A Variety Of Experiences Under Your Belt & Put Them To Use:
The first thing I always emphasise to ANY person who wants to advance his/her career as an employee, is the need to get as much exposure to varied workplace experiences as possible.
Just as is the case in life, the key to becoming a high flyer in an organisation, is to possess real world relevant COMPETENCIES, which when put to use, will enable you deliver results that the company wants. Bosses often love an employee they can count on to keep things going according to plan. Someone they can leave things to, and go to bed. A person who can be trusted to protect their interest/that of the company.
In order to be this kind of person, you will need to acquire good knowledge of different aspects of YOUR boss’ job. This implies you will also be familiar with what everyone who reports to him does. Most importantly, you will ensure you are VERY competent in doing your job. Once these are achieved, you will be able to combine doing your job, with looking out for opportunities to add value to other people’s jobs. Soon, your boss, colleagues and others will notice your efforts.
2. Never Turn Down ANY Opportunity:
The reward for success is more responsibility or more work. And it will likely come at a higher level. No matter your prejudices about a specific project or assignment, NEVER turn down an opportunity extended to you, to tackle an new or different job. Not even if you feel you know nothing about it.
Believe me, you can learn what you need to know right on the job in a matter of days, weeks or months, depending on the job type. Most times, as you climb up the ladder, your assignments will be supervisory or managerial in nature. You will be doing less by yourself, and more by getting others to do stuff.
All you need to do, is dedicate some time and effort to understanding what your subordinates do, so as to better manage them to do it. Even if your assignment requires your hands on involvement, do so until you become proficient. Make a success of this, and you would have added another invaluable body of knowledge/experience to yourself.
But here’s the best part:
There is a good chance that the new competencies you acquire in the course of carrying out that unfamiliar assignment, will equip you to excel when you get back to your normal area of work. I say all of this from personal experience.
Success in paid employment comes mainly to those who LEARN from lessons taught by the experiences they have in the course of doing work that is assigned to them. If you turn down opportunities because you feel the job is unfamiliar or difficult, you deny yourself valuable opportunity to ADD new experiences that can make you more competitive.
3. Avoid The Mistake Of Waiting To Go On Courses:
You will be very unwise to wait for your company to send you on training courses as an avenue to acquiring the competence you need. In my experience, and from my studies of many books on management, EXPERIENCE gained while on the job plays a massive role in moulding managers exposed to them, into the high-flyers they later become.
Management courses offer mostly theoretical grounding.
The onus is always on the manager to them return to the workplace and APPLY what s/he has learnt. The assumption is also made that the workplace will present challenges in a manner similar to what was covered in the training course. Very rarely does this happen.
Each of these people will communicate his/her desired result, typically derived from a need to achieve the company’s goal, to his/her subordinate(s). At some point, the desired result will be translated into specific tasks for people at your level. So long as each person does his/her assigned bit, the overall company goal will often be accomplished.
Once you gain this understanding, it will be easier to appreciate the role YOU have to play in the entire scheme of things in your position of responsibility.
It is the lack of understanding of how the role they play, fits into the BIG company picture, that makes many employees fail to take their jobs as seriously as they should. This limited insight also prevents them from seeing the opportunities that could fall into their laps, if they were to step up and proactively play their parts, to facilitate improved processes that would help the company perform even better than planned.
4. Ignore Office Politics:
Ah yes, of course there’s is the challenge of office politics making nonsense of efforts you might make to use the ideas offered here. However, the truth is that office politics is everywhere. It happens in every part of the world – even in the best run companies.
Due to the fact that rewards will be given out to persons deemed to have been most instrumental in helping achieve the valued organisational goal, direct and indirect competition for the spotlight, will naturally happen amongst employees at various levels.
I believe it is the company’s management that decides how much office politics can SWAY decision making. In most well managed companies(I was lucky to work in one), people who depend more on politics than on-the-job performance rarely get far, compared to those who do the opposite.
If you work in such a company, where MERIT is the primary determinant of career advancement for employees, then the ideas I offer here CAN help you get FAR ahead, if you diligently apply them.
Even if you don’t, I can assure you that you WILL still reap great rewards – it just tends to take longer, and you’ll have to also endure longer periods of adversity. If that does not appeal to you, moving to another company could be a viable option.
As far as office politics goes, I have only ONE piece of advice for you: Do NOT get involved in it. Carefully identify those who play it, and tactfully maintain a safe distance from them – in your own interest.
Why Should You Listen To Me On This?
This is another in a series of Performance Enhancement write ups I have committed to publishing on this website, to help employees and career minded persons who aspire to climb high, as fast as possible, up the corporate ladder.
Looking back at the time I spent in paid employment, I sometimes feel I had the gift of knowing HOW TO do my work in a way that would get me noticed, and marked for career advancement opportunities almost at will. Very rarely did I do ANYTHING to curry favour or attention from superiors.
Yet, they repeatedly chose me over others who were many years ahead of me on the job. I knew no magic tricks. All I did was work hard to LEARN how to do ANY job assigned me, and I also actively studied books and real life managers I admired.
Then I went out daily and applied all that I learnt with single minded dedication, rarely giving a thought for my comfort or convenience. 99% of the time I put the needs of the company first. In other words, I did what I have suggested you do in this write up
One more thing:
I’ll also tell you that I followed my instincts a lot, and asked questions about everything – to the extent of constructively criticising the way things were been done, to proposing new ways to do them – some of which got adopted.
The result was that I became a high flyer in a relatively short period of time.
Final Words
I have written, published and presented management research papers in the past, that capture key points outlined in this piece. Just in case you are reading my writing for the first time, and wonder what really qualifies me to comment on this subject, I suggest you click here to view my resume which details of specific experiences and accomplishments I rapidly recorded in the relatively short period I spent in paid employment.
Related: Become A Leader At Work, By Making Your Company’s Decision Makers Take Favourable Notice Of You!
PS: This write-up was first published online on Monday 2nd April 2012 via spontaneousdevelopment.com (my former 9 year old domain – which is now defunct).
*******
This newsletter (which I use to promote Burt Dubin’s Speaker Mentoring Products/Services) serves
experts-who-speak. Starting – Monday 13th April 2015 – it MORPHED in name and content served, to a 2 part Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, to better serve them. You just read the “Public Speaking IDEAS” part above. What follows below is the “Web Marketing IDEAS” part.
*******
Burt Dubin works with people who want to be speakers, and with speakers who want to be masters. Click here to visit his website NOW and submit a contact form message telling him what challenges you’re facing, and how
you’d like him to help you. Tell him I sent you, and you’ll get a pleasant surprise offer from him.
2 of 2: WEB MARKETING: To Achieve Sustainable Success, Closely Monitor News About Current Affairs and
Politics! [FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD]
“If you want to achieve sustainable success in business (especially in a volatile market place like Nigeria), it’s in your best interest to develop interest in current affairs and politics, because those are the two key ingredients that really keep this country from having a stable sociopolitical climate.
And for as long as that stable sociopolitical climate does not exist, every person running a business will probably have to sleep with one eye open.” – Tayo K.
Solagbade
It’s FREE for all my Web Marketing/farm business clients, and ALL members of my Inner Circle as well as for ALL subscribers to THIS newsletter.
If you are not yet ANY of the above, just send me a message here to let me know.
If you want me to send you the full MP3 recording, just say so in your message.
NB: If you’re already a client or subscriber, email me via tayo at tksola dot com and let me know you want it
Alternatively, click here to request the FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD.
******
Question: But who is Burt Dubin, and why do I (Tayo K. Solagbade) think you should you learn from
him?
Answer: Burt is a 3 decade veteran in the professional speaking business. After achieving top level cross continental success as an
expert-speaker, he has established a reputation for mentoring some of the highest paid speakers in the world. He owns SpeakingBizSuccess.com, SpeakingSuccess.com and BurtDubin.com.
Burt helps those he mentors (experts-who-speak) to Position, Package, Promote, and Present* themselves successfully to clients (*He calls
them the 4Ps). That’s why it’s no surprise that on Burt’s website, considerable space capital is devoted to useful business marketing articles as well as products.
It might also interest you to know that MANY years back, Burt established himself as one of the best marketing minds in the world. To really put this FACT in
proper perspective, I’ll provide more specific details in form of an example.
A few years ago, Burt contributed an article to a powerful publication titled “The Most Effective Articles Ever – By The World’s Top Marketers“. That 574 page ebook features timeless marketing advice from 71 of the world’s top marketers – including Jack
Trout, Joe Vitale, Yanik Silver…and Burt Dubin.
That’s ample proof that (in addition to Public Speaking), Burt would be a great resource to learn business marketing from!
Click here to read TONS of Burt’s useful articles on professional public speaking and business marketing.
While there, be sure to download his audio experiences (MP3) on the right. Most importantly, take a few moments to use the link provided on the top right, below the banner, to send Burt a message, about your needs and interest in his mentoring solutions.
Full Disclosure: I represent Burt as Sole Agent for his products/services, which means if YOU buy from him, I get paid.
But that’s NOT the main reason I represent and recommend him. I have benefited in many ways by learning from Burt. Through his writing, his audio recordings,
and from directly relating with him.
Before we teamed up in 2011, I’d been studying his work and adapting it to succeed in my work from way back in 2002. It does not matter what part of the world
you’re in. If you know how to adapt them to suit your peculiar local needs, Burt’s ideas and strategies WILL work for you. I am living proof of it!
That’s why I never tire of CONFIDENTLY recommending him to others.
If you need help putting the ideas shared above to use, let me know HERE.
in.
*************
Learn about Burt Dubin’s speaker mentoring products (books, audios etc) below…
If you need help purchasing ANY of Burt’s products, call me on +229-66-122-136 (in Benin Republic, my base) or +234-803-302-1263 (in Nigeria) or email tayo@tksola.com
Have a great week :-))
*************
Useful Resources for Speakers
*******
NEW: Speaking Ideas: 25 Articles and True Stories for Experts Who Speak and Those
Aspiring (Volume 1)
Download above PDF
******
NEW: KUKURU DANGER™: 5 True Stories
About the Adventures – & Misadventures! – of a School Age Child Trying to Find Purpose in Life
Download above PDF
“(Tayo Solagbade) is amazing and I think he is going to produce some impressive results online…” – click here to read full comment by Patrick Meninga (US based 6 figure income blogger who gained fame for building a $2,000 per month adsense website and selling it for $200,000).
—————————–
“Tayo, I honestly believe you are one of those who will succeed at anything he does. Your commitment and effort has been outstanding….Thanks for all your hard
work since I’ve been here – you will be sorely missed. I don’t need to wish you good luck, you have the ability to make your own luck. – Andy”(R. Jones)*
*Operations Manager, Guinness Nigeria Plc Benin Brewery, December 2001 (Handwritten comments in farewell/xmas cards sent to Tayo Solagbade following his resignation to
start his own business).
———————–
