The Ultimate Career Success Workbook

The Ultimate Career Success Workbook
Author: Rob Yeung

We work with all sorts of individuals and teams of people as well in a variety of
organizations in industries ranging from publishing to construction, and consumer goods to investment
banking. But, recognizing that we cannot meet all of our potential audience in person, this book sets
out to help you look after yourself: tackling the issues that we have most frequently come across in
recent years.
Not sure whether you are in the right job or not? Not sure whether you have spent too long working
for the one employer? Or maybe you are wondering how to beat off competition from your peers and
climb the career ladder? If any of these questions describe you, then this is the book for you. These
are just some of the other career questions that this book sets out to help you answer:
How can I get the promotion I think I deserve?
Am I really happy doing what I am doing at the moment?
How can I juggle my personal goals and aspirations with my need to earn a living?
I find myself unemployed: how can I find a new and satisfying job?
How can I be happier and more successful in my current job?
How can I find a different employer who will value me (and pay me) more?
What can I do to improve my career prospects?
How can I have a career and not just a job?
The good news is that most people have not realized that they need to take their careers into their
own hands. Or, if they have realized, they are too lazy to do anything about it. So for the minority of
people such as you, the reader, who is willing to invest in thinking about your career, you will be able
to carve out a successful and rewarding career.
Putting in the Hard Work
There is no magic formula to achieving a better career, I am afraid. You cannot simply wave a magic
wand and hope to have a more successful and satisfying career in a few easy steps. You cannot
simply read the book from start to finish and expect your new life to appear. In fact, any book that
claims instant results is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. It is going to take hard work.
I would recommend strongly that you do not read this book all in one go. There are many exercises
and questionnaires for you to complete, contemplate, and come back to. You may read a section, go
have a coffee, start an exercise and leave it for a week before finishing it. You might then need to take
a few days to talk the implications over with colleagues, friends or other confidantes. Advice that is
written in a book can never provide you with all of the answers, especially when it concerns
something as momentous as your work and life. This book is only meant to stimulate your thinking and
give you a handful of ideas: but you need to invest the time, thought and energy to reflect on how
those ideas could help you in achieving your personal career goals.
But this book is not just about analysis and logical thinking to determine what you should be doing in
the future. Your feelings and intuition have an important part to play in helping you to get the most out
of this book. There are quizzes and exercises in here that are designed to make you think, but they
are not aimed at pushing you in one career direction over another. The ultimate test of whether a
career decision is right for you is whether you feel that it is the right thing for you. For some people
then, the hard work comes in using their intuition and tapping into their feelings as much as using logic
and planning.
The hard work does not stop there. You may need to challenge beliefs and assumptions you hold
about yourself or have to face uncomfortable truths. You may have to address interpersonal issues at
work, training or retraining may be necessary, and maybe you will need to spend evenings and
weekends studying. And it is certain to take months rather than days or weeks to see any real
improvement in the quality of your working life. However, if you stick with it, this book will put you on
the right course to having a more enjoyable and profitable career.