Top 10 Habits of Career Champs!

As a career coach I define a career champ as someone who is in charge of their career and who knows how to navigate through the career minefield both, in times of trouble, and in times of glory. Having worked with nearly 6,000 clients throughout the world I have observed some common traits among my clients who have shown remarkable success in their careers as I watch them deal with the challenges they face as well as the successes they achieve.

My client pool has diverse flavorthey range from crack sales and account managers to highly talented Silicon Valley technologists and entrepreneurs across a broad age group. So, this list is universal to most professionals engaged in a career and who want to become a Career Champ themselves!

Regardless of their flavor, there are certain common themes that I observe as I engage with them to help them in their careers. Here is a partial list of the most common habits that I find universal among this group:

1. Recognize when they need help understanding a developing situation at work and how to position themselves to benefit mutually (both for themselves and for their business) from that change. This includes impending lay-offs!
2. Build relationships within their ecosystem and nurture those relationships through social interactions that go beyond what they do transactionally every day.
3. Even with their detractors and adversaries they find ways to help them with their agendas and initiatives. They do not gossip behind their adversaries back, but work with them to understand their agenda, without judging them, often asking for their advice. They know teamwork always wins!
4. When they have an idea to make a change they first vet their idea with trusted colleagues and then refine it before socializing it across a broader audience. They identify trouble spots and proactively work with those who may try to sabotage their initiative as it gets some traction.
5. They show fiercebut not blindloyalty to their boss and their management chain. They are not afraid to voice their views on what their leadership needs to change for them to create greater value for their organization. Once a new change takes effect they fully support it, even when they did not originally. When they lose faith in their leadership they move on.
6. Career Champs know, how, in an emergent situation, they can create greater value for their business, and in turn, negotiate a better deal for themselves before the outcome of that situation plays out. They ask and negotiate before; they do not assume.
7. They openly acknowledge the stellar contributions of others anywhere in their organization spontaneously and give them public credit with alacrity.
8. Career Champs quickly admit their mistake; they share the blame without pointing fingers at others, even when they know others were equally culpable.
9. They practice assertive communication (read up on aggressive, passive aggressive, and hostile communication to better appreciate this trait) and work with others to get their point of view across, even in a volatile situation.
10. Career Champs show remarkable resilience. When they encounter a setback or failure they first search for the learning and reflect on how they can grow from it. Then they bounce back from such setbacks without becoming martyrs.

There are many other habits that Career Champs display in their everyday life. Just becoming aware of the more common habits listed above, others may better understand how they, too, can become Career Champs!

Good luck!

About Author

Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader.

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