The Two Critical Relationships for your Career

We've all seen those people on Linkedin or Facebook with 500+ friends. Is it possible to know that many people and, if so, is it useful? It turns out the answer depends on what you want to achieve.

There are two types of relationships: weak ties and strong ties. They are both useful but for different reasons.

Weak Ties are those people who you are acquainted with. These are the people where you start a phone call with "Hi Sue, not sure if you remember me but we met at the UQ Business School function last month". You have lots of weak ties with all the people you have met over the years. Weak ties are critical for job search. They provide you with information about industry developments, possible job openings and networks into other areas. The greater your career change, the more important weak ties become. For example, shifting from being an engineer to a TAFE teacher requires you to build a whole new network with different people and your existing weak ties will be the start.

Strong Ties are those people you know really well and are critical for learning and development. Phone calls start "Hey Sue, how's it going?". You know them well and can call them at any time. Strong ties provide opportunities for mentoring (informal or formal) as your in depth discussions reveal lessons from their own experiences. Strong ties are also chances to receive feedback on your progress and how others perceive you. Because your relationship is strong, insight can be shared without judgment.

Weak ties are critical for future job searches; Strong ties are critical for short term performance. Invest in both types of relationships.

People lessons from natural disasters

A month ago I wrote a post about the career lessons you personally can learn from the January Floods in Australia.

The natural disasters haven't stopped however. Major fires in Perth and now a harrowing earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. What we know is that we are resilient and with the right support we will pull through as individuals and as a community. Here are some further thoughts and reflections on the impact of traumatic events:

1. Everyone responds differently to a traumatic event. Be patient with all people as they each process what’s happened in their own way.
2. Take note of the important things in your life and where they come from. Life isn’t just work, but work is part of life.
3. Community is (almost) everything. The team work displayed in the recovery effort has been amazing. In your own career having great people around you is critical. As the Canadian Blueprint for Career Development says: “Engage your allies, and be a good ally”.
4. Sustainability ...... lets not take anything for granted especially Mother Nature and our planet!
5. Events make us reassess life. What is your sense of meaning and purpose? Why do you do what you do? Is 2011 the year to reassess your career direction?

Flexibility and adaptability are crucial skills in our lives. And resilience. One lady in the Brisbane floods lost everything in their storage facility which contained the belongings they salvaged three months prior from another storage facility...that had burnt down. That’s resilience.

The new new Psychological Contract

Here's a concept you may not have heard of for a while: the psychological contract. This was coined to describe the bond of trust between employer and employee which started as "obedience for security". In other words, if I display obedience to you Mr Employer, then you provide me with a secure job.

Of course, this psychological contract was irreparably damaged over the past two decades starting with the waves of downsizings in the 1980's.

The mid 1990's saw the new psychological contract evolve into "initiative for opportunity", that is, you provide me with opportunities then I'll display my initiative. To a degree this still exists today, however, the display of initiative has tended to benefit the individual far more than the employer.

I believe the psychological contract has shifted again. It is now "Purpose and Meaningful Work". Work is no longer transactional - the exchange of loyalty for money or opportunity for outcomes. Rather, work today is a collaborative project between employers and employees that is not dictated from the top down. Rather, the most successful companies clearly articulate their purpose consisting of their vision for the future and the values that will guide their behaviour to get there.

"Meaningful" is the glue which binds the individual to the organisation. If work has meaning, individuals will stay. The challenge is for people to communicate what is meaningful to them and for organisations to be flexible enough to provide the environment for meaningful work to occur.