The Great "I" - It Pays To Talk About Yourself

The Great “I”: It Pays To Talk About Yourself


If you don’t know what you’re best at, no one else will either. In this piece of work talking about yourself is important to knowing who you are, what you’ve done, what you can do. You may think you know, but you have only the vaguest picture until you’ve done this. And, if you have only the vaguest picture of yourself, you’ll be invisible to a hiring influence. I use ‘hiring influence’ often because the person who makes the decision to hire – the hiring influence – could be anyone.

What you’re going to do now is get to know a lot more about yourself. You want to develop a clear idea of who you are and what you’re capable of doing. This is fundamental to your career development. That means, if you don’t do this, you might as well can any hope of growing a career through the working years of your life. Your choice.

Go back over your life and pick out ten incidents that show you at your best. This applies whether you’re old or young or in between. The events can be from work, play, or any other venue in which they happened. In Part 1 you’ll recount the 10 events. In Part 2 you’ll analyze what characteristics, talents, skills you exhibited in action in each event.

All of this is very brief; I’ll tell you how to do it. Then, do it.

In recounting the events, start anywhere you remember one:

• Situation: in one or two lines outline the situation, problem, event in which you took action. What was the challenge?

• Action: In two or three lines explain what you did, not the details of how you did it, that showed you at your best. A very short movie of you in action.

• Result: In one or two lines explain what your action accomplished.

Each little story you tell will uncover more. You’ll surprise yourself.
As you improve, you can go back and rewrite the first ones. You can expect to be a little rough in the beginning; that’s okay. Do 10 Bests.

After the last You-At-Your-Best story go back and start analyzing what personal characteristics, skills, talents or other attributes you drew on to perform the action and get the result you did. The idea is to highlight and define your best abilities from your actual performance in a situation, on the ground, so to speak.

Use two to three lines to analyze your best abilities. This is all about the best you have to offer: organizing it, journalizing it, knowing it.

Now, do it. The format will keep you brief:

• Situation, problem, challenge: one to two lines
• Action: two to three lines
• Result: one to two lines
• ================================
• Analysis: two to three lines about your best.

The 10 events, challenges, stories about you will come up easier as you write them up. Like peeling the onion, another layer is revealed (remembered) as you lift one off. You will feel better about yourself after you complete and digest this piece of work. You’ll probably like it as you go along doing it, too.

What you have here is the start of a Credit Journal of the things you deserve credit for doing. You must always take credit when it’s due you. You must always record in your Credit Journal all the golden nuggets of career excellence that make you a valuable person. More about the Journal and its critical importance next time.

Do your ten best; you’ll like who you find there.

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“It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do and then do your best.” - W. Edwards Demming

I guess that means we should listen, learn and then do, huh?

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Try Mr.Q's High School - Head On highschoolheadon.blogspot.com