A big part of my coaching practice
involves working with senior executives who want to find new employment, change
their career direction and/or improve their skills for professional advancement.
Today, organizations are faced with
rapidly changing environments, competitive pressures globally, ever-changing
technological advances, and more. The need to be more innovative,
productive, flexible, and sustainable has never been greater. Businesses are
constantly evaluating the core competences of their employees to determine their value.
Knowing if you are valued in your
position sometimes is not thought about until a negative event takes place like
being let go or being passed up for a promotion. Realizing you are replaceable jump starts the desire to learn what you can do in the future to become invaluable.
Here is a list of the Six
Invaluable Factors anyone can develop to make themselves truly
irreplaceable. This is adapted from the book, Invaluable: The Secret
to Becoming Irreplaceable, by Dave Crenshaw.
Invaluable Factor #1 – DEMAND
Demand represents how well your
skill set matches the current needs and wants of the market. You have
little direct control over demand, so the only way you can improve upon this
factor is to increase your understanding of current and future market trends
and work to align your actions with those trends. Consider: What
is the current and future market demand for your personal skill set?
Invaluable Factor #2 – ABILITY
Ability represents how well you do
what you do or how much value you actually provide. It is important to
continuously deliver progress and results; it is not enough to just know what
your position is supposed to be or how to do what is required of you. You
must also seek to continually improve on that ability on a daily basis to
become more and more invaluable. Consider: What are you doing
daily improving your ability to perform for the unit you work for and the
organization as a whole?
Invaluable Factor #3 – IRREPLACEABILITY
This measures how difficult it is to
replace you and is a function of two things: the available completion for
your position, and how deeply you understand the unique needs of your current
employer. To stay irreplaceable, you must commit to ongoing research and
reevaluation. Consider: What is the biggest thing keeping your
boss from firing you right now?
Invaluable Factor #4 – FOCUS
Focus requires you to avoid anything
that gets in the way of you spending time in your most valuable activities.
These are the activities that have the greatest impact on the bottom line, both
for you personally and for the organization as a whole. The more you
spread yourself out in many directions, the less valuable you become. As
information and available options continue to explode, so does the temptation
to engage in many less valuable activities. Consider: How well
do you focus your actions on your most valuable activities?
Invaluable Factor #5 – CONNECTION
This assesses your ability to connect
personally with others, both in terms of quantity and quality. The value
that you bring is directly affected by your ability to work well with others
and to share resources with others. Connection is an absolutely essential
part of becoming invaluable. In order to increase connection, you must
not only master the art of face-to-face interaction, but digital interaction,
as well. Consider: How many people feel personally connected to
you?
Invaluable Factor #6 – AUTHORITY
Authority evaluates how strongly the
current market considers you to be the top expert in your field. An
authority is someone others look to when they make decisions. An employee
who is recognized both inside and outside of the organization as a leading
expert dramatically improves his or her value. Consider: Do my
peers, both inside and outside of my organization, consider me to be a leading
expert in my field? Am I regularly consulted on matters at work?
Achieve your full potential! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach with over 20 years’ experience empowering people to attain self-defined success in their professional and personal lives. Book a free session at www.denisedema.com today.
How do you know if your boundaries are being crossed? Generally, there are a few broad categories that comprise boundary violations: verbal, psychological, emotional, and physical. Ethical, spiritual, and moral boundary violations exist as well.
Verbal violations include not allowing you to speak or be heard, raising their voice and/or screaming at you, saying things that are derogatory or inflammatory about your integrity and character, gossiping about you.
Psychological and emotional boundary violations include preying upon your sense of self and self-esteem, using what you’ve told them in confidence against you, lying to you, criticizing, demeaning, judging, or manipulating you, making fun of you, your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, trying to make you feel guilty or responsible for them or a situation, making demands of your time and energy, shaming or embarrassing you, bullying you, assuring you that their thoughts and beliefs are superior to and more important than yours.
Physical violations include moving into your personal space, touching you without permission, being inappropriate or too familiar, especially sexually, (including sexual references and overtures), touching or handling things that belong to you, violating your privacy (cell phone, computer, social media contacts, personal records), damaging or destroying your personal property, threatening you with physical harm.
While admittedly it may take involvement with several different people over a period of time, eventually getting the hang of who you want in your life and understanding who respects you and your space as opposed to people who are out for themselves (and are basically otherwise toxic), here are some tips in the meantime to help you navigate your way to your goal of establishing healthy boundaries.
Know thyself. Get to know yourself as best you can. This means that you need to learn what’s really important to you, what you really value apart from anyone else. Gaining access to your inner world by becoming familiar and comfortable with your own beliefs, emotions, feelings, and ideas is essential. The intimacy you experience within yourself serves as your own personal relational barometer. The better you know yourself the better you are able to understand and choose those significant others that best mirror the kind of life experience you want to have.
Take responsibility for yourself. This means to become aware, to develop the capacity for active conscious involvement, to know what needs to be done for yourself. By setting your own boundaries, you’re telling others how you want and expect to be treated; in other words, you are setting your limits about who can come into your space and what you expect of others once they’re there--- how you want to be spoken to, touched, and treated psychologically and emotionally. Whatever you say goes, no matter what others may think, feel, or believe. A corollary of this is that you are not responsible for the feelings, actions, and beliefs of others, or for the way they react to the boundaries you’ve set.
Develop a healthy respect for yourself.
All of your experiences, including the mistakes you’ve made help to shape your character---who you are. No one beside you, no matter how persuasive they may be, can define you or try to control who you are. When you respect yourself, all of who you are, you should expect that others will treat you with respect. If they don’t, that’s a clear sign not to engage.
Heed the warning signs. Stay away from anyone who has his or her own agenda and thinks nothing of pushing the limit, of invading your space for their own end. This is not a hard thing to recognize since there’s usually not much subtlety involved. In fact, the more you resist their attempts to engage you in a way that’s best for them, the more obvious, desperate, insulting, and shrill they may become as they try to up the ante.
Don’t try to fix people. Fixing others is a way of trying to get love, attention, and/or validation. Getting love/attention/validation must mean you’re “okay”---right? It’s a waste of your time and energy to try to fix them because, bottom line, they’re not interested in becoming any other way than they are. And the fact is you certainly don’t need fixing from self-serving people who want to tell you what to do and what’s good for you.
You are in charge of your choices. You have the right to change your mind or your direction at any time. You don’t need to feel that you owe anyone anything more than you want to give with your free and conscious heart. Anyone who mistreats you, is disrespectful of your wishes, refuses to hear you, and has no intention of changing is trouble with a capital T. Be ready to walk away without fear or guilt, and don’t look back.
Separate yourself from others. It may be difficult to imagine being emotionally attached to others while remaining psychologically and intellectually detached. This means that you are able to separate your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs from others. You understand that your boundaries are different from others. This detachment creates enough room, a kind of “psychic space” between you and others that allows for personal expression while minimizing emotional and psychological entanglement. Gaining a healthy perspective of others without creating conflict within yourself is the goal.
Work on creating the boundaries that will serve your life. Book a complimentary session to achieve your full potential at www.denisedema.com
Source: Psychology Today