Is love too strong of a word? Have you met people who tell you how much they LOVE their job? Love at work between a company and its employees can be expressed in many ways, but reading this you will have a gut reaction in your stomach when considering the question: who loves you more your existing boss or the future one you have yet to meet?
Often executives need an impartial ear to tell them if they are thinking about this right. Your mentors, your peers in other companies, prior bosses and external experts can help with being a soundboard for you as you think about your current role and when or if you should move next.
Should you be nervous or more confident than ever? Especially when tech giants are laying off employees including Amazon, Google, Meta and Cisco? - I don’t believe you should be more nervous, but I do advise you dedicating time to reflect and plan by evaluating your network, your personal valuation, and not letting your own network become dehydrated, so they are there for you when you need them.
Start with this important question:
Do you feel in demand and satisfied with the rewards and recognition you receive in your current role and company?
Your valuation is like a stock valuation or share price of a company and this will go up and down throughout your career.
In fact, you have two valuations, an internal valuation and an external valuation. Depending what your valuations are depends what action you need to take.
Consider your internal valuation right now. This is determined by your compensation, your promotion history, your exposure and access to senior executives, your involvement in strategic projects, the feedback you receive from those who can influence your career. Rate it now, is it high? Is it correct? Could it be a lot better?
Now think about your external valuation. This is determined by your external reputation in your industry, how often the head hunters call, how frequently you are asked to speak at events, in the media on your area of expertise. Rate it now, is it high? Are you a best kept secret? (I know not all companies like and encourage external involvement but your personal valuation is still impacted by this) Is your reputation outside the company stronger than it is inside the company?
Depending on where you are in your career and depending on where you have focused your time and energy, those two valuations may be quite different.
The question for you to answer is where do you want to spend your time and energy to increase your valuation? Internally or externally or maybe a little of both?
A divisional president that I was working with called me, exasperated. He said, ‘Val, I cannot believe he got that job. He should never have got that job. I worked with him three years ago, and he was mediocre at best!’
As we discussed it, we realized that while the promoted executive’s achievements weren’t that great, he did excel at showcasing his achievements with his CEO, his board and externally. Talking more with my client, we discovered that his own specific focus had been solely concentrated internally to the detriment of his external reputation. That was where he decided to spend is time improving those relationships.
How well you promote your achievements externally can affect your company valuation, who wants to invest in you, which strategic partners will want to do business with you and how rapidly you can grow.
Your external reputation can also drive up your internal valuation. This happened with an executive I worked with who was able to secure prominent media interviews and she was asked to speak at external events that were then shared internally. As a result, she became more well known internally and with the board of directors which ultimately led to her getting promoted across multiple divisions driving up both her Internal and External Personal Valuation.
I’d love to hear how high your Internal and External Valuations are and which you will be spending time to increase.
Dedicated to growing your business,
Val
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