“What do you mean, I never get any opportunities”, or “There is typically someone else who gets the opportunity”, or “I don’t know what to do to become visible to opportunities” are all perceptions I meet over and over again.

Then we explore some of the root causes for the perceptions. Maybe we are waiting for other people to step forward and ask us to take action, or maybe we believe there is a formal process or a code of unwritten rules that we don’t understand in order to become eligible for those making the decisions.

These patterns are common when analyzing both internal as well as external professional opportunities.

Sometimes, the professional opportunities are not even appearing to us because we don’t know how to recognize them. What is that you want more of in your professional life? And what do want less of? By looking more into the job content and degree of challenge, it becomes easier to broaden the “smorgasbord” of professional opportunities and get a glimpse of alternatives in totally different roles and industries.

The challenge and risk then mainly lie within 2 areas: How well you position yourself towards the broader selection of opportunities and how you manage expectations of yourself as well as expectations by others. In order to make progress, you need to become highly conscious about which type of opportunities you want to attract, you need a strategy to manage expectations and maybe learn some skills on how to position yourself where your stakeholders hang out.

Today’s social media tools enable us to listen to the market and communicate with colleagues, potential employers, customers and business partners in a new way, and this gives you a chance to tell your story, demonstrate your ambition and build your network effectively for long term relationships. And it gives you something else as well: An opportunity to start attracting professional opportunities which may not even exist yet!

So, are you ready to take on some risk and start identifying what you want more of and less of in your professional life?

The post How to embrace risk when the professional opportunity appears appeared first on Katy Caroan.

Then, I ask them to tell me more about what they did previously when they successfully made a change to their career! Often there is silence. And more silence. “What do you mean? It just happened.” Or: “I was lucky”. Most often: “I don’t know”.

Here is the opportunity to uncover your personal recipe for professional success. What exactly did you do to get that promotion? Or to be found by a headhunter? What characterized the circumstances when you were the obvious choice for the recruiter, internally or externally?

When uncovering their stories, there seems to be a pattern of behaviors and actions that happen for each and one. This is the formula that can be used over and over again to attract new professional challenges and use your potential more fully. To some people, acting as your own headhunter comes naturally with ease, others might need a trigger to get focused. Whatever your situation is, you will always be in a position to pursue new professional adventures if you are fully aware of your personal recipe. Maybe it’s high time to test and refine your recipe this time of the year?

The post How to unlock your own recipe for professional success appeared first on Katy Caroan.