Facing your career with confidence – my Thoughts to the Faculty of Management at UPSA

As I look at faces of the level 400 students (final years) I see expectant but confused people about to leave the university for the world of work. They remind me of my own little story. After I left the university as a young engineer, I was enthusiastic about the prospect of career success as an engineer but I was confused, too, about how I could achieve this success. I approached a man whose career success I had admired for a long time and asked him for his secret. He looked at me and calmly said, “My son, “the secret is confidence and integrity.” With that advice he went back to what he was doing. He had confused me the more. I decided then to find what link there is between career success and confidence and integrity.

Mr/Madam Chairperson, the Vice Chancellor, members of the Faculty of Business Studies, students, ladies and gentlemen, what I found is interesting and I am honoured for the opportunity to share it as I speak on “Facing your career with confidence.” I believe that after we run through them, we will know that he gave me his real secret to career success.

What is confidence?

One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation. – Arthur Robert Ashe

First, what is confidence? I found from the Concise Oxford Dictionary that “confidence means the feeling of self-assurance arising from an appreciation of one’s own abilities.” In terms of career, I discovered that the following tools will boost people’s confidence towards success.

Career objective

To be confident that you know what you want to achieve in your career, you need a clear objective. It focuses you on what you are aiming at and gives you the drive to take initiatives that lead you to your career goal. This is a professional university, so I assume that all of you going out have chosen your areas for careers already. You need objectives to pinpoint your direction? But note that careers needn’t mean working for others. The best career is creating your own. – If you do not create your dream someone will get you to work for their dream.

Relevant skill

But a career objective alone can’t help you. You have to have the relevant set skills that your career requires. The reason is, it is your skills that your employer needs. Note here again the best employer you can have is your clients and customers. Without them, you are like a car without an engine. You are of no use. Your confidence level will be high if you know your subject well. This is easy to see. Even at campus, those who we all know are brilliant are always confident to face examinations. It is the same with career.

You can gain more knowledge in your career to improve your confidence by learning your job formally and informally.

Formally, you train by taking courses relevant to your career. Don’t wait for your employer’s sponsorship alone. This is the mistake most career people make. They think that improvement in their skills benefits their employer, so the employer should bear the cost. Yes, the employer benefits but you benefit more because it is knowledge you have gained and nobody can take it from you. Your employer may dispense with your services but he cannot take your knowledge from you. It is even an advantage if you surprise your employer by doing new things for which the company has not trained you. You gain the employer’s respect and confidence and it is to your credit self-development. For me I have to have a minimum of one international conference, conventions or course a year. I worked for a company that did not believe in it. I used my vacation and my salary to finance one of such trips when they will not finance it.

Beyond the formal training, talk to people in your field who have experience more than you do. You may be good but somebody is definitely better than you. Seek knowledge from that person to increase yours. Don’t mind who the person with the knowledge is. It is not important at this point.

Let me tell you my personal attitude to seeking knowledge. I don’t mind from whom I seek knowledge, for as long as it will improve mine, so I learn from my subordinates and peers as well. And I must say it has been helpful to me. As a young engineering working at Sokpoli Ltd on internship, I worked with the staff as an electrician apprentice, the thought we all that they had acquired in decades, and I learnt it in months – It does not matter who you learn from, what matters is what you learn and is it fit for the purpose.

Apart from seeking knowledge from people generally, it is always good to have a mentor, somebody who has superior experience in your field who you look up to, somebody who is your yardstick and guiding light. Normally, establishing a good, wide but carefully selected network will help you to find a mentor. Look for integrity in your mentor, he or she who will not compete with you or steal your ideas. But he should be able to tell you like it is, because he does not want anything from you.

Be a good listener when you seek information. Being a good listener means you listen attentively and seek clarifications where necessary. Take down notes where appropriate.

We are still talking about facing your career with confidence – Robert Collier “Your chances of success in any undertaking can always be measured by your belief in yourself.”

Build resilience

With skill you are on a good footing but you need resilience too. One thing you have to note is that life naturally has ups and downs. This affects all facets of human endeavour and your career is no exception. You will experience lows and highs. Enjoy the highs and overcome the lows. It is the lows that can kill your spirit and enthusiasm. But always take them as challenges you need to deal with, or better still look at them as opportunities to excel, so that you can grow in your career. Always rise from the lows. Resilience is what I call this ability to rise from the lows. It takes a confident person to believe that he can, and actually, rise when he falls.

One of the famous quotation of my brother Komla is apt here, it links resilient to the next sub theme – 1 Samuel 30:6 And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.

Motivate yourself

It is important to note though that you cannot be resilient if you don’t have the ability to motivate yourself, because it is self-motivation that encourages you to go on when it seems that failure is staring you in the face, when things are tough such that you begin to feel that your current capability is not enough for your task. – “but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.”

Remember I have just spoken to you about highs and lows. Your lows may come from a boss or a customer who is simply too difficult to please. He will never give you compliments when you do well. Your lows can also come from your peers who specialise in unhealthy criticism and faultfinding of everything you do. This has the tendency to make you feel like giving up. You have to motivate yourself at this point. Anytime that you feel you have to give up on your career, note that it is time to work hard, time to go on. Just take stock of your career achievements to spur you on. Apart from God, You are your best motivator. Nobody can motivate you better than you.

Admit mistakes for correction

But you can also contribute to the lows that affect you. This happens when you are not able to accept your mistakes. People make mistakes. You are a human being. You will also make mistakes. Accept them, look at what caused them, correct them and mark them as pits you should always avoid. If you fail to accept your mistakes, you will not know why you made them and can therefore not correct them. It is a mark of self-confidence to admit mistakes for correction and improvement. In fact, mistakes well investigated and corrected make you grow in your career as you learn lessons from them.

Set success benchmarks

Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work – Jack Nicklaus

While you do the above, it is important to set success benchmarks. Your definition of what success is will affect how well you do in your career. If your measure for success is low, you are not likely to aim at the top. If your standard of success is high, you are likely to see the sky as the limit because you always want to attain excellence. What standard you set also, in fact, points to your level of confidence in your ability to achieve greater heights.

Integrity

Now, Mr/Madam Chairperson, let’s look at integrity, which my mentor said was one of his secrets of career success. How does integrity add to your confidence to face your career? “Integrity,” as defined by the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, is “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.” Thus, integrity is a value and those who leave by it have to tell the truth all the time because they are honest people.

America’s second richest man, businessman Warren Buffet, shows a clear link between integrity and career success when he says:

“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: Integrity, Intelligence and Energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it, it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”

In other words, if you don’t have integrity, you may find it difficult to have a career rise.

This is from an article from Havard Business Review – I have posted it on my blog, www.ashigbey.com

Hubris and greed have a way of catching up with people, who then lose the power and wealth they’ve so fervently pursued. But is the opposite also true? Do highly principled leaders and their organizations perform especially well?

They do, according to a new study by KRW International, a Minneapolis-based leadership consultancy. The researchers found that CEOs whose employees gave them high marks for character had an average return on assets of 9.35% over a two-year period. That’s nearly five times as much as what those with low character ratings had; their ROA averaged only 1.93%.

The research found integrity as one of the key character traits that set aside these virtuoso CEOs apart. You need integrity for your followers to follow you; you need it for your customers to give you their custom. Without integrity will build empires that will crumble like the Enron’s of our day. If you want to build a career that will last, build it on integrity.

How many of you stole or bought your degrees, you are on the part to unfulfillment but you have an opportunity to make good, go back and study what you did not learn. Else it will show. Your challenge as a continent is we do not have leaders with integrity and it is not only political leaders but in all facets and the change starts from me and you. Lets make the change here and now.

Conclusion

As I bring my speech to an end, I would like you to remember that you can face your career with confidence with a career objective, relevant career skills, resilience, self-motivation, honest admission and correction of mistakes, high standard for measuring your success, and most importantly integrity. If you have these qualities, the sky is the limit.

My epilog are 3 things

Don’t leave here hoping to be employed, start thinking of how you can employ people. What are you going to create. Think big and global but start small with an insatiable aptitude and appetite of greatness. Note that the enemy of greatness is good. Get out of the bad Ghanaian habit of “artificial modesty” – How be things small-small. We set very low targets for ourselves and miss them any way, so we wallow in mediocrity. You can become the world best so-&-so. We were all made in the image and likeness of God. If anybody can do it, you can also do it. Dream big but again have a plan and start small.
Let me speak to the Ghanaians among you, build networks, partnerships and lets all give ourselves the opportunity to fail forward. Patronize Ghanaian products, support Ghanaian businesses. Lets stop the self-hatred of the Ghanaian. Yes lets welcome our brothers and sisters from other countries; they will come to complement what we do. But it is only when we have Ghanaians at the helm of ALL industries that Ghana will develop. So support Ghana & let Ghana be at the center of all you do. For those of you who will go into politics, and for all of us let all your actions be geared towards impact and legacy for the Ghanaian unborn, tribute to those dead and gone and a better life for us living today. Let it not be only for winning the next elections.
Lets eschew mediocrity – Most of the great book teach us that, my Bible says in Psalms 107:23 They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; 107:24 These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.