Career Advice — The Secret to Standing Out

And how to do it in an unselfish way

Big meaningful perspective shifts don’t come all of the time. In my experience the most meaningful mindset shifts are quite rare. With all of the information available to us 24/7, much of it seems to be noise. However, every once in a while you read, hear, or discover something that truly wakes up something inside of you.

When those special connections are made they are beautiful. Our minds wake up to new ideas and suddenly connect separate insights into cohesive plans.

Today I want to share some lessons I learned from a simple conversation. Afterward I felt inspired to embrace a brand new mindset.

First, a call with a mentor

The past week had been filled with marginal wins. Tiny little checkmarks of accomplishment had been building up. A mini goal here, good praise here. It was what I like to call an ‘up’ week where everything seems to be in flow and confidence comes naturally.

By the end of the week I was feeling pretty good while also wanting to keep my momentum. Thursday comes around and I had a meeting scheduled with a work mentor. We had a Zoom call to get together and discuss goals and action plans.

Conversations like this can be hard at times because there is some vagueness about what exactly to do next. There is a tendency, at least on my side, to move fast. To meet with a specific end goal in mind, but a mentor/mentee relationship is more subtle than that.

Things need time to build especially when it comes to discussing a career.

A slow build-up of conversation…

When two people get together to collaborate in a work setting there is sometimes this undertone that ‘progress’ needs to be made. This might be a personal thing because I hate the idea of meeting just to meet.

It was 2:00 pm on a Thursday when I connected onto the Zoom call with my mentor. This was our 3 or 4th time meeting this year and I had already learned a lot. Each session, we always seem to find one small take away or subtle change I can make to improve as a contributor.

After some small talk and catching up, we starting getting into our career conversations. The conversation was ok but felt slow to build up. At first our discussion seemed to consist more of question and answer than dialogue.

I was doing my best to provide meaningful answers to questions, but I noticed that I was giving a lot of surface level and shallow answers.

It was half into the conversation when my mentor shared a perspective that had instantly sparked powerful connections inside my brain and changed the course of the entire session.

He had asked what I wanted to do with my career? And how I planned to get there…

We started speaking about this longer-term goal. In that exchange, I received some invaluable insight into how to stand out while making a difference.

The Pivot

Every ambitious person wants to see progress in his or her life. My mentor and I started talking about what it would look like for me to move up within my role. Specifically, coming up with ways to grow to the next level.

The following dialogue is paraphrased based on memory, but I believe there are some powerful lessons here.

Mentor: “What does that growth look like for you in the next year? Where do you want to go and how do you want to get there?”

Me: “I am thinking about my role and I want to become a leader on this team. I want to be someone who stands out. To me that means becoming so valuable that if I left there would be a huge gap to fill. I want to become irreplaceable…”

Mentor: “It’s funny the way you describe what growth. It could be that we are in different positions (Technical vs Customer Facing) but I think of growth/progress in a different way.”

“You talk about being irreplaceable. When I think of my role, I’m thinking about how it could run smoothly even after I left. I think about being able to duplicate myself so I’m not needed.”

The sudden insight

Like a jolt of coffee, the insight I gained after he had shared his viewpoint instantly woke me up. It was the phrasing that caused this shift. It might not seem like much, but the simple story of his approach helped me to make some new connections.

The comments he made about ‘not being needed’ hit me. It was a realization that I’ve been thinking selfishly about my contribution.

For a long time, I thought that to stand out I needed to be so valuable that I was irreplaceable. But there is the next level to that. The next level is putting processes and systems in place that don’t rely on you.

I’ve been thinking about things the wrong way for a long time.

The Lessons

Here is a summary of the lessons learned from this conversation with more explanation below.

• Realizing one’s own mistakes can be powerful
• Don’t be a bottleneck
• Collaboration > Competition

Realizing one’s mistakes can be powerful

I often find myself searching for the next lesson that will give me an edge. I look for a piece of advice that will help me to grow. This conversation taught me was that sometimes it is not about the next ‘new’ piece, but rather reforming old ideas. By sharing how I thought with someone else, I was able to hear some honest feedback.

I don’t think my mentor thought what I said was necessarily wrong, but instead he showed that there are multiple perspectives on growth/improvement.

My approach to ‘stand out’ was inherently selfish as someone that works within an organization. My competitiveness and pride didn’t allow me to see the mistakes I was making.

Don’t be a bottleneck

My mindset had been to work so hard that it would be extremely difficult to replace me. I didn’t understand how backward that was at first.

Bottlenecks make my job extremely challenging. Yet, here I was creating that very concept. If I left or wanted to change roles, all of the customers I served might be left out to dry if I didn’t put systems into place.

A shift of perspective here helped me to think about being irreplaceable in a mutually beneficial way. I would rather figure out how to be valuable because of who and what I’ve helped to improve. This is a more comforting thought than creating a hostage situation where I became handcuffed to a position.

Sure, at some stages of your career being irreplaceable is a good goal to shoot for. However, this conversation made me understand that there is a next level. That next level is being able to implement processes that don’t necessarily depend on a single person.

Collaboration > Competition

Finally, this conversation led me to start thinking about collaboration.

In certain sales roles, there is a competition that is created organically. It’s hard to help sometimes because it feels like colleagues have to do better than each other to stand out.

After this conversation, I re-evaluated that very notion. We aren’t competing with each other- we are on the same team.

I had been thinking the team concept completely wrong. I wasn’t thinking about a team at all- I was thinking about how “I” could stand out from the rest.

Ambition can be a powerful motivator, but it can make you forget what’s important. My mentor’s perspective had helped me to reform ideas of what it means to be valuable.

There are certain processes that I’ve implemented in my role that have helped me to ‘stand out’. These same ideas could be so much more powerful with a bit of collaboration. Instead of having just my perspective, I could bring others in and create something even more impactful.

Final Thoughts

I’ll say it again…

The right words, said in the right way, at the right time can completely change your way of thinking.

The mindset shifts that I have shared today are monumental because it connected several ideas in my head. I am happy to have a different way of thinking, but that doesn’t change my starting point.

My challenge now is to take this excitement and execute on it. New ideas are exciting because of the novelty. When you get that burst of insight you can feel the motivation. Now it’s up to me to keep up the consistency and apply these lessons.

If you’ve made it this far, I thank you for reading. Not every lesson is going to be life-changing. I do believe that every piece of advice you receive adds up in some small way.

Perhaps you are the right person reading this at the right time at the right place in your career. If so, I hope these words help you to make your shift in thinking…