Confirm, in writing, all important information
Posted by: ElizabethSanchez
Mr. Jim Hutton's suggestions for career enhancement, as presented at the 2008 GMC.
SUGGESTIONS FOR CAREER ENHANCEMENT
1. Be honest and have integrity
2. Have a good reputation and keep it
3. Love your work
SUGGESTIONS FOR CAREER ENHANCEMENT
1. Be honest and have integrity
2. Have a good reputation and keep it
3. Love your work
Improve Your Letter Writing Skills
Posted by: ElizabethSanchez
Jim Hutton's 6th suggestion for career enhancement urges us to improve your letter writing skills.
Very few people seem to be able to write letters anymore. Perhaps e-mail has contributed to this.
Our sales people were all university graduates, but their draft letters to customers were pretty grim.
To help them, I always asked them to put down on paper what they wanted to write and to give it to me for revision, but I always told them to be absolutely honest in what they included.
Very few people seem to be able to write letters anymore. Perhaps e-mail has contributed to this.
Our sales people were all university graduates, but their draft letters to customers were pretty grim.
To help them, I always asked them to put down on paper what they wanted to write and to give it to me for revision, but I always told them to be absolutely honest in what they included.
Be A Good Listener
Posted by: ElizabethSanchez
Jim Hutton's 5th suggestion for career enhancement is to be a good listener.
In 1973, I went with the local manager to call on the maintenance foreman of a large overseas oil company.
On his desk was a plaque with this inscription in Spanish. Since I did not read Spanish, I asked him what the inscription said. He said it epitomized his life history. Then he translated it for me.
After I heard the translation, I told our host that it also epitomized my life history and it still does today.
In 1973, I went with the local manager to call on the maintenance foreman of a large overseas oil company.
On his desk was a plaque with this inscription in Spanish. Since I did not read Spanish, I asked him what the inscription said. He said it epitomized his life history. Then he translated it for me.
After I heard the translation, I told our host that it also epitomized my life history and it still does today.
Love Your Work and Improve Your People Skills
Posted by: ElizabethSanchez
Jim Hutton's Suggestions for Career Enhancement
1. Be honest and have integrity
2. Have a good reputation and keep it
3. Love your work
4. Improve your people skills
5. Be a good listener
6. Improve your letter writing skills
7. Confirming in writing all important information
8. Send the right signals out and you will get the right signals back
9. Keep all your promises
10. Keep in touch
11. Improve your telephone manners
We'll now continue with his discussion of suggestions to love your work and improve your people skills.
Love your work
All of us have noted how much more can be accomplished if we love our work and are therefore highly motivated. We have all observed what motivated athletes can do by winning when no one gave them a chance. All loved what they were doing.
There is a Chinese Proverb that goes like this:
“If you would be happy for one hour, take a nap.”
“If you would be happy for a day, go fishing.”
“If you would be happy for a week, kill your pig and eat it.”
“If you would be happy for a month, get married.”
“If you would be happy for a year, inherit a fortune.”
“If you would be happy for life, love your work.”
Love your work and you will accomplish much more and have a happier and healthier life.
In early history, work was considered a necessary evil. Not anymore. Today our work defines us.
Now when we meet someone new, we usually ask them what they do even before we ask where they are from.
New York Federal Judge Milton Pollack died recently at 97. Work, he often said, kept him alive.
Here is my thought about work:
Find a job you truly love and you will never work another day in your life.
Love your work.
The next suggestion is:
Improve your people skills
A few years ago, I was playing golf with a retired senior executive from a major oil company. While waiting between holes, I asked him a few questions about his career and what experience gave him the most satisfaction. He told me that during his last few years, he spent several hours each week on a committee whose only job was to evaluate the outstanding performers and recommending who among this select few would be promoted and move up to even bigger and better jobs and to eventually run the company. He went on to say that invariably those not selected for promotion failed due to shortcomings in getting along with people or in their people skills. He said all were competent technically in their fields. All the engineers were excellent in their disciplines. The mechanical engineers were good. The chemical engineers were brilliant. The civil engineers were outstanding. The geologists, accountants, and lawyers knew and did their jobs well technically, but the failure of almost all of this group to move still higher in the organization was due almost entirely to their inability to communicate well, to manage people, and their inability to get along well with their colleagues, their superiors, and their subordinates – their failure in the “people” category.
To me, it seems that people with only technical skills reach a plateau in their careers and unless they possess other talents outside their disciplines, they top out and don’t move up.
It is like this diagram:
You move up the ladder to a certain level; then you stall.
In order to break out of the pack, you require talent and abilities out of your discipline. Here is what a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh said:
“I advise students all the time, you have got to have something you can do for a company now. That is what gets you in the door. But, if you want to succeed long term, you’ve got to have a broader range of skills and problem solving abilities.”
Hopefully, this presentation will help you toward this goal.
Work hard to improve your people skills. Practicing the other topics I am discussing will help in this category.
1. Be honest and have integrity
2. Have a good reputation and keep it
3. Love your work
4. Improve your people skills
5. Be a good listener
6. Improve your letter writing skills
7. Confirming in writing all important information
8. Send the right signals out and you will get the right signals back
9. Keep all your promises
10. Keep in touch
11. Improve your telephone manners
We'll now continue with his discussion of suggestions to love your work and improve your people skills.
Love your work
All of us have noted how much more can be accomplished if we love our work and are therefore highly motivated. We have all observed what motivated athletes can do by winning when no one gave them a chance. All loved what they were doing.
There is a Chinese Proverb that goes like this:
“If you would be happy for one hour, take a nap.”
“If you would be happy for a day, go fishing.”
“If you would be happy for a week, kill your pig and eat it.”
“If you would be happy for a month, get married.”
“If you would be happy for a year, inherit a fortune.”
“If you would be happy for life, love your work.”
Love your work and you will accomplish much more and have a happier and healthier life.
In early history, work was considered a necessary evil. Not anymore. Today our work defines us.
Now when we meet someone new, we usually ask them what they do even before we ask where they are from.
New York Federal Judge Milton Pollack died recently at 97. Work, he often said, kept him alive.
Here is my thought about work:
Find a job you truly love and you will never work another day in your life.
Love your work.
The next suggestion is:
Improve your people skills
A few years ago, I was playing golf with a retired senior executive from a major oil company. While waiting between holes, I asked him a few questions about his career and what experience gave him the most satisfaction. He told me that during his last few years, he spent several hours each week on a committee whose only job was to evaluate the outstanding performers and recommending who among this select few would be promoted and move up to even bigger and better jobs and to eventually run the company. He went on to say that invariably those not selected for promotion failed due to shortcomings in getting along with people or in their people skills. He said all were competent technically in their fields. All the engineers were excellent in their disciplines. The mechanical engineers were good. The chemical engineers were brilliant. The civil engineers were outstanding. The geologists, accountants, and lawyers knew and did their jobs well technically, but the failure of almost all of this group to move still higher in the organization was due almost entirely to their inability to communicate well, to manage people, and their inability to get along well with their colleagues, their superiors, and their subordinates – their failure in the “people” category.
To me, it seems that people with only technical skills reach a plateau in their careers and unless they possess other talents outside their disciplines, they top out and don’t move up.
It is like this diagram:
You move up the ladder to a certain level; then you stall.
In order to break out of the pack, you require talent and abilities out of your discipline. Here is what a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh said:
“I advise students all the time, you have got to have something you can do for a company now. That is what gets you in the door. But, if you want to succeed long term, you’ve got to have a broader range of skills and problem solving abilities.”
Hopefully, this presentation will help you toward this goal.
Work hard to improve your people skills. Practicing the other topics I am discussing will help in this category.
Have a Good Reputation and Keep it!
Posted by: ElizabethSanchez
Today we continue with the second of ten suggestions for career enhancement that Jim Hutton gave in his 2008 GMC presentation, have a good reputation and keep it.
I cannot over emphasize this. Bear in mind your reputation is built up...
hour by hour,
day by day,
month by month,
year by year...
over a lifetime and can be severely damaged or destroyed in a heartbeat by inappropriate behavior.
Victor Hugo's thoughts about this almost 150 years ago:
“Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and especially upon their destinies as what they do!”
It is still true today.
As Shakespeare put it:
“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.”
Charles W. Eliot, a 40-year President of Harvard University, had this to say about reputation:
“It is the judgment of your contemporaries that is most important to you; and you will find that the judgment of your contemporaries is made up alarmingly early, and often lasts a lifetime. Live today and every day like a man of honor.”
From “The Unwritten Laws of Engineering” (an ASME publication):
“In a surprisingly short period, individuals are recognized, appraised, and catalogued for exactly what they are, with far greater accuracy than they usually realize. Therefore, it behooves you to let your personal conduct, overtly and covertly, represent the very best practical standard of professional integrity by which you would like to let the world judge and rate you.”
Here is a Bible quotation:
A good name is more desirable than great riches.
To be esteemed is better than silver or gold.
Proverbs 22:1
Bear in mind that your reputation goes out in front of you – it does not follow you. The industry is small and the word gets around. Your image is created by all that you say and do both inside and outside your organization. To many people, a person’s word transcends what is put in writing. Have a good reputation and keep it.
Join us next week for Mr. Hutton's next suggestion, Love Your Work.
I cannot over emphasize this. Bear in mind your reputation is built up...
hour by hour,
day by day,
month by month,
year by year...
over a lifetime and can be severely damaged or destroyed in a heartbeat by inappropriate behavior.
Victor Hugo's thoughts about this almost 150 years ago:
“Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence on their lives, and especially upon their destinies as what they do!”
It is still true today.
As Shakespeare put it:
“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.”
Charles W. Eliot, a 40-year President of Harvard University, had this to say about reputation:
“It is the judgment of your contemporaries that is most important to you; and you will find that the judgment of your contemporaries is made up alarmingly early, and often lasts a lifetime. Live today and every day like a man of honor.”
From “The Unwritten Laws of Engineering” (an ASME publication):
“In a surprisingly short period, individuals are recognized, appraised, and catalogued for exactly what they are, with far greater accuracy than they usually realize. Therefore, it behooves you to let your personal conduct, overtly and covertly, represent the very best practical standard of professional integrity by which you would like to let the world judge and rate you.”
Here is a Bible quotation:
A good name is more desirable than great riches.
To be esteemed is better than silver or gold.
Proverbs 22:1
Bear in mind that your reputation goes out in front of you – it does not follow you. The industry is small and the word gets around. Your image is created by all that you say and do both inside and outside your organization. To many people, a person’s word transcends what is put in writing. Have a good reputation and keep it.
Join us next week for Mr. Hutton's next suggestion, Love Your Work.
Be Honest and Have Integrity
Posted by: ElizabethSanchez
The number one, most important, suggestion for career enhancement that Jim Hutton gave in his 2008 GMC presentation is to be honest and have integrity. In this post, he expounds upon that point.
The leitmotif or major reoccurring theme of my book is honesty and integrity. This is not a recent philosophy. I was left a strong legacy by my father who said honesty was not just the best policy...it was the only policy. My father lost his job in the middle of the depression because he would not help steal oil from the landowner. He discovered at a pumping station where he worked that the pumps were taking suction out of the same tank oil from the wells was flowing into. The oil was not being measured or gauged so the land owner would be paid the proper royalty. He promptly alerted the landowner of what was going on. He was laid off a few weeks later. He lost his job because he was honest. This was in the middle of the depression. This shows how important integrity is to me.
Here is what Warren Buffett says about integrity:
“I look for three things in hiring people:
The first is personal integrity.
The second is intelligence.
The third is high energy level.
But if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”
From “The Unwritten Laws of Engineering” (an ASME publication)
“The priceless and inevitable reward for uncompromising integrity is confidence: the confidence of associates, subordinates, and outsiders. All transactions are enormously simplified when your word is as good as your bond and your motives are above question. ”
Integrity is an inside job and must be developed from within us.
Integrity is the alignment among:
• What we think (beliefs and values)
• What we say to others
• What we do
It is:
• Not determined by circumstances
• Not based on credentials
• Not to be confused with reputation
We build our integrity one step at a time over a long period of time.
When we commit to living a life of what we think, say and do, we will be a person of integrity. People who have integrity live and act in harmony with their values and beliefs. Reaching a higher level of success depends on an individual’s ability to be a person of integrity.
Why is integrity important? Trust. Without trust, we have nothing. Trust is the single most important factor in personal professional relationships. The more trustworthy we become, the more trustworthiness we inspire in others.
All of us are dismayed by the recent rash of corporate scandals. This cartoon illustrates how bad it got. We have all heard the old saying that a few rotten apples spoil the whole barrel. The spectator asked if the second man is looking for rotten apples in the barrel. The second man, who is from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), replies no, he’s looking for good ones. This was a bad time in our country and shows how bad it became.
One word of caution and I cannot say this strongly enough: Don’t allow yourself to be encouraged or convinced by your boss or your superiors to do something dishonest in your work. I say that because if later there is an investigation by the authorities, top management will often bail out on you and claim they had no part in the dishonest scheme and that you acted alone. You will be left all alone with the problem. You will be hung out to dry.
Be honest and have integrity at all times.
The leitmotif or major reoccurring theme of my book is honesty and integrity. This is not a recent philosophy. I was left a strong legacy by my father who said honesty was not just the best policy...it was the only policy. My father lost his job in the middle of the depression because he would not help steal oil from the landowner. He discovered at a pumping station where he worked that the pumps were taking suction out of the same tank oil from the wells was flowing into. The oil was not being measured or gauged so the land owner would be paid the proper royalty. He promptly alerted the landowner of what was going on. He was laid off a few weeks later. He lost his job because he was honest. This was in the middle of the depression. This shows how important integrity is to me.
Here is what Warren Buffett says about integrity:
“I look for three things in hiring people:
The first is personal integrity.
The second is intelligence.
The third is high energy level.
But if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”
From “The Unwritten Laws of Engineering” (an ASME publication)
“The priceless and inevitable reward for uncompromising integrity is confidence: the confidence of associates, subordinates, and outsiders. All transactions are enormously simplified when your word is as good as your bond and your motives are above question. ”
Integrity is an inside job and must be developed from within us.
Integrity is the alignment among:
• What we think (beliefs and values)
• What we say to others
• What we do
It is:
• Not determined by circumstances
• Not based on credentials
• Not to be confused with reputation
We build our integrity one step at a time over a long period of time.
When we commit to living a life of what we think, say and do, we will be a person of integrity. People who have integrity live and act in harmony with their values and beliefs. Reaching a higher level of success depends on an individual’s ability to be a person of integrity.
Why is integrity important? Trust. Without trust, we have nothing. Trust is the single most important factor in personal professional relationships. The more trustworthy we become, the more trustworthiness we inspire in others.
All of us are dismayed by the recent rash of corporate scandals. This cartoon illustrates how bad it got. We have all heard the old saying that a few rotten apples spoil the whole barrel. The spectator asked if the second man is looking for rotten apples in the barrel. The second man, who is from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), replies no, he’s looking for good ones. This was a bad time in our country and shows how bad it became.
One word of caution and I cannot say this strongly enough: Don’t allow yourself to be encouraged or convinced by your boss or your superiors to do something dishonest in your work. I say that because if later there is an investigation by the authorities, top management will often bail out on you and claim they had no part in the dishonest scheme and that you acted alone. You will be left all alone with the problem. You will be hung out to dry.
Be honest and have integrity at all times.
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