If you want to get ahead in your marketing career, you have to stop using four-letter words that begin with the letter "F."
No, I'm not talking about cleaning your mouth out with soap. Of course, cursing your boss is probably not going to get you very far. But the F-words I share with you here are far more lethal, more destructive, and more devastating to your career and professional fulfillment.
The ugliest four-letter words that begin with F can hold you back if you don't keep them in check. The words?
F _ _ R
F A _ _
F _ K _
F _ N _
Have you guessed them?
The key to building a successful and rewarding marketing career is removing the F-words from your vocabulary, mindset, and actions. Here's how.
Fear
"Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear." —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sometimes fear is good. If you are walking alone down a dark alley at night, fear will keep you alert. However, in the workplace, fear is often less productive. I work with lots of clients; even those at the C-level can become paralyzed or at least hindered by fear from time to time. And once they are able to look, through a different lens, at the situation that prompted the fear, they open themselves up to new opportunities.
As you manage your career or seek a new job, fear can prevent you from making a networking connection or asking a high-profile colleague for help. It can affect an interview with a prospective hiring manager or stop you from applying for a position that you would really like to have. Fear impedes success and breeds more fear. The more you fear, the worse the fear becomes.
Replace the word "fear" with "greet." Greet challenges rather than be afraid of them. After all, a challenge is really an opportunity to shine, grow, and demonstrate your greatness. If you hope for the best rather than fear the worst, you'll be far more successful.
Fail
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." —Sir Winston Churchill
If you never fail, you aren't taking enough risks. And without risk, you don't grow or stretch yourself. Without growth, you stagnate, while those around you move ahead. Failing, if you look at it from a different perspective, is really a step in succeeding. So replace the word "fail" with "grow."
Often, it is fear of failure that prevents action.
As you advance in your career, failing can be valuable. When you make it to the shortlist for a particular job but are not selected, take what you've learned from the experience and apply it to your next job opportunity—perhaps for an even better position. If you choose not to risk failure, you place growth at risk.
Highlighting your failures during a meeting or job interview can be just as powerful. Let a prospective manager know that you are motivated to take calculated risks and willing to fail if it means learning, growing professionally, and moving forward. Take inventory of events that you classified as failures, and look for the growth that came from that.
Fake
"The most exhausting thing you can be is inauthentic." —Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The most successful people in the world are comfortable in their own skin and willing to be themselves; yet many people feel that they need to create an image to be successful.
As we know in the world of personal branding, you will increase your fulfillment and reach your goals when you are willing to align who you are with what you do and how you do it. When you give yourself permission to be yourself, you are energized, inspired, and confident. This makes you more attractive and interesting.
Besides, you can get away with being inauthentic for only so long. Remember Milli Vanilli?
Replace the word "fake" with "genuine." Be real. Give yourself permission to put a lot of who you are into every marketing campaign you manage, every meeting you attend, and every presentation you deliver, and you will see how powerful authenticity can be.
Fine
"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I think "fine" is the ugliest of all four-letter words. No one gets excited about things that are fine.
"Hey, Chris, how's the new guy in Web marketing doing?"
"Oh, he's fine."
Fine—adequate, average, OK, acceptable. Do you want your work to be described with these words?
Yet you were trained from a young age to become fine. In fact, your full-time job has probably involved resolving weaknesses instead of maximizing strengths. Sure, I think it's great to improve your weaknesses—but not at the expense of maximizing your strengths, and only if those weaknesses will get in the way of your success. When you apply your strengths to everything you do, you raise yourself far above "fine." You become great, excellent, exceptional, extraordinary. And that's how you want to be known. Isn't it?
When you stop being fine and focus on your greatness, people will use superlatives to describe you. You start to build your personal brand around those things that differentiate you and make you interesting.
Replace the word "fine" with "great," and strive for greatness by leveraging strengths rather than improving weaknesses. Never settle for adequate.
Eliminate the F-Words
If you want to eliminate these words, practice makes perfect. And the key to eliminating them is to first recognize when they are part of your vocabulary and your actions.
So it's up to you: "Fear, fail, fake, fine"—or "greet, grow, genuine, great." Decide which words will be part of your vocabulary and career-development strategy, and then make decisions accordingly.
Be great!
Check out our June 2009 online seminar from William Arruda You 2.0: Measuring (and Improving) Your Personal Brand on the Web to learn the top 10 ways to use social media to build your personal brand.
